—Christian

We live in the future. As if there was any doubt before.

SceneTap isn’t new. It’s been around since last year. But it is finally coming west to the great city by the Bay. Launching tomorrow in San Francisco, SceneTap uses facial recognition technology (captured by video cameras) to determine the age and gender of patrons entering bars with the system installed. What this means is that at any time you can use their app (download here) to get a headcount, along with the demographic composition of the crowd at your local watering hole. Which is great if you’re sick of dealing with all the recently graduated coeds in 6″ heels and tight dresses. Or, conversely, you’re seeking out that sort of company.

Sample screen from a bar in Austin

But the real beneficiaries are the bars themselves. For the first time they get an automated customer tracking system that will clue them in on who’s coming in and when. And based on the liquor consumption, determine what they’re drinking.

Of course, as with any tracking technology, privacy concerns have arisen—most notably with the imminent integration of the San Francisco market. It is potentially unsettling to know that you’re being tracked and tallied as part of a veritable marketer’s wet dream.

But while these dystopic, Minority Report feelings are justified, SceneTap is not the first company of it’s kind. A predecessor, Barspace, that launched amidst similar civil liberties and privacy controversy, installed cameras to stream live footage from participating city bars on its website and mobile app. For the record, Barspace has been pulled from the App Store and their website given back over to the SEO machine.

We’ll see how long SceneTap lasts. But whether you’re happy or horrified by the prospect, the cameras turn on this Friday. Josey and I will be out of town, but we’d love to hear how accurately it works. So wear a big hat and sunglasses and get in there to see if the M/F and age stats are correct! In the meantime, let us know how you feel about this new “service” below.

For a list of supported bars, including Enthusiast favorites Bamboo Hut, Kozy Kar and R Bar, check out SceneTap’s venue page here.

Surveillance camera photo courtesy of spsurveillance.com, Flickr.

—Christian

I’ve had a love affair with the Negroni for a few months now. Hailing from Italy, this is the seminal drink involving Campari. The more popular legend has it that one day in 1919 Count Camillo Negroni, living and drinking in Florence, asked his bartender, Fosco Scarcelli, to give his usual Americano (Campari, sweet vermouth and soda water) a little extra kick. Fosco obligingly substituted gin for the soda, and an eternal classic was born. The less popular legend is that the French general Pascal Olivier Count de Negroni invented the drink “to aid digestion.”
Read more »

—Josey

This is an excerpt from my post “Drinks with Walter,” first published on the Landor.com blog.

Besides being a socially acceptable way to imbibe in the morning, one of the beauties of the Bloody is that it can be customized easily to fit each drinker’s taste.

Drinkers in the states didn’t fill their glasses with vodka much until after the Cold War. During the late ’50s and ’60s, vodka became popular—mostly because of vodka cocktails. Businessmen, mistresses, and housewives alike sipped sweet Moscow Mules and tart Greyhounds—and calmed their hangovers with Bloody Marys. Read more »

—Josey

Have you ever been in your local pub and seen a group of people walk in, drink, and then leave together, excitedly proclaiming how awesome the previous establishment was and how thrilled they are to soon visit the next one, and wondered to yourself: “How do I get in on that?”

Well today is your lucky day.

In honor of our Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade of Drunken Monkeyshines (now with 10% more flimflam and claptrap) here’s our guide to throwing a bitchin’ bar crawl. (If you attend the Parade and have a horrible time, you have only this guide to blame for your misery.)

Read more »

—Josey

Our whiskey has been barreling for nearly one month, so we decided to taste it and toast to Valentine’s Day. The logic being that we made the whiskey so it’s like, our baby or something. This whiskey-baby thing we created together. And it’s been maturing in its wooden barrel-womb for almost a month, which makes it dangerously premature. Ok, we know this analogy is total crap. We get it. We know—total crap. Also, creepy. Also, Valentine’s was two days ago. You can probably already tell, but we’re totally on top of our shit.

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—Josey

Last night, Christian and I tried barreling for the first time.

No, not like that you pervs. That’s for our other blog.

As we discussed in our first whiskey-aging post, we finally accomplished something at Costco even more important than eating thrice our recommended daily sodium intake in samples of Tostino’s pizza rolls and bites of Aidells’s chicken apple sausage. We purchased (!!) our very own all-in-one home whiskey barreling kit, made by the Woodinville Whiskey Company, a small-batch distillery in Washington state.

Per the kit instructions, we first filled the wood barrel with hot water and left it alone to leak—and eventually expand so it would stop leaking—for several days. After this and a good hot water rinse, we were ready to funnel in the white whiskey. OMG, not that kind of funneling.

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–Christian

We recently purchased the Woodinville Age Your Own Whiskey Kit. Shockingly well priced at $40 at Costco ($150 online), we would have been crazy not to purchase this product.

Woodinville Whiskey Company is a small-batch distillery out of Washington state producing bourbon (with a rye on the way), white dog, and surprisingly enough, vodka. They also offer what I believe is the first all-in-one home barreling kit. Included are a 2L chard oak barrel; two fifths of 110 proof, barreling strength bourbon mash white whiskey; a funnel and two tasting glasses. It also came with a handy little booklet that explains the whole process. Read more »

–Christian

Sazerac Bar—Roosevelt Hotel, New Orleans

The Sazerac is one of the oldest cocktails still commonly consumed today. Invented around 1830 in New Orleans (where all the classics seem to have come from) by a Creole apothecary from the West Indies named Antoine Amadie Peychaud, the drink’s original recipe called for cognac, bitters, sugar and a dash of water. Incidentally, this concoction was pretty much the only cocktail recipe back in those days—something now referred to as the Old Fashioned.

Antoine’s particular approach and proprietary bitters were so popular that bars (or “Exchanges”) all over NOLA started serving it. Legend has it that a man named Sewell Taylor, owner of Merchants Exchange Coffeehouse, was serving the drink at his bar when he became the sole importer of Sazerac-du-Forge et fils Cognac. Shortly thereafter Aaron Bird took over the Merchant’s Exchange from Taylor, who had gone full-time into importing, and changed the name to Sazerac House after the liquor in their signature drink. And the first branded cocktail was born.
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—Josey

Just as everyone who drinks has a drunk personality type, those of us who drink to excess also experience our drunk personality’s bloated and dehydrated evil sister-in-law—the hungover personality type.

In Part I we looked at The Teetotaler, The Hypochondriac, and Misery Loves Company. Here are three more:

The Strategist. Between the cases of coconut water she gets delivered to her apartment, the multiple bottles of liver- and energy-restoring vitamins and ibuprofen perpetually stocked in her medicine cabinet, the extra-large aloe juice in the fridge and the raw apple cider vinegar on the counter—it’s obvious this isn’t her first rodeo. Read more »

—Josey

Just as everyone who drinks has a drunk personality type, those of us who drink to excess also experience our drunk personality’s bloated and dehydrated evil sister-in-law—the hungover personality type.

Let’s take a look at a few of the more common:

The Teetotaler. 364 days a year, he’s the quiet guy in the back cubical who looks confused when you regale him with stories about your brother’s bachelor party last weekend in South Lake. Read more »