to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol?

so the average response in this thread: I can't drink too often because I'll go too far; or, I drank too often, therefore I drink little to nothing now. This depresses me. I make no judgment on anyone.

http://i.imgur.com/7afqZIe.jpg

xp Have a Belgian beer place like a block from my house and I feel that. Generally keep it as a kind of treat though, cuz damn does a tab there get expensive.

I pretty much drink until drunk nearly every Friday and Saturday night, though have a good handle on limits and am in control. Also one night during the week, generally Wednesday. Still a huge part of my social life (single, early 30s), but I'm getting to the point where the hangovers are outweighing the pleasures. Something might need to change soon. I'm in good physical shape though. Feel like a big part of me working out has been to keep this lifestyle feasible and not be a total wreck, but mentally it's getting rough. Been such a routine for so long, not sure where to go from here.

w/ me Alfred it's more that after I increased my anti-anxiety med dosage to 150 mg I began realizing that at the old dosage, alcohol and the meds didn't really have issues co-existing, but now the two definitely don't play nice if I have more than say, three drinks. sometimes the rebound anxiety is excruciating.

lol at the tab comment circa, yeah the problem with enjoying such treats = they ain't cheap

I suspect my daily / weekly intake probably moves the median in a less depressing direction, Alfred, although my doctor wouldn't agree.

Laphroaig made me wonder why iodine doesn't have more culinary uses.

Sheesh @ the laphroiag haters

I think I have a well-rounded palate for booze as long as it's not too sweet. There's a pizza restaurant near us that seems like it might just be a way for the owner(s) to write off a ridiculous amaro collection on their taxes, and I've enjoyed some of the truly odd ones. I will go for many, many types of whisky. I am also fond of anisettes. This is a long way of saying that the list of what I like is longer than the list of what I find worthless and/or disgusting. What I can't deal with:

- "session" IPAs; just make a goddamn pale ale, or call it a Light IPA, you jackasses
- white rum, silver tequila, moonshine, or any of that clear bullshit that's obviously better after some barrel school
- the vast, vast majority of wine, I used to like this stuff but really, grapes? I can't anymore.
- fancy vodka, why
- soda beverages in my drink - tonic, cola, or sprite, who cares, stop
- limoncello, jesus

we have a tequila bar here now that's mostly great ambiance/music place instead of a tasting bar but the menu is half tequila, half bottled beer

i'm making my way through anejos

I wish I could remember where in New Orleans I saw Lagavulin for $11 a few weeks ago, after never seeing it for less than $19 in any other bar.

wow people must have forgotten Ron Swanson already

I might be into peaty scotch laphroaig-style these days, but I have had quite the aversion in the past

my only alcohol/life balance issue is, now that I have my life relatively balanced, is not being good at keeping up with water and food when I go out. I very seldom drink to regret, although with age I'm noticing memory is more grey when I've been out socializing and drinking. I think part of it is a lack of anxiety making me hyper-focused on awkward moments and replaying them the next day, and just genuinely relaxing instead, though!

I've been taking a small amount of kratom before getting on the plane and all of a sudden I don't get the interminable headaches that were an inevitability of flying the previous few years.

Me three! Getting to the airport early before a trip starts for a martini is one of life's civilizing pleasures.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, August 10, 2017 12:48 PM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i approve of the general concept, but bless you for finding a good martini at the airport.

I drink when I meet up with friends or go see shows, otherwise it's a beer or glass of whiskey a couple evenings per week. Don't always want to drink when out as 3 drinks is the point where a day-long hangover becomes a 50/50 shot, depending on how carefully I look after myself (if I'm biking home I usually end up dehydrated without realizing it). I have a family wedding to go to with all my rowdy cousins and I'm dreading the day after, I haven't been truly drunk in ages.

honestly, airports are more likely to have someone doing things literally by a book, using shot measuring and mixing via checklist than some restaurants offering cocktails but having some guy who knows how to poorly eyeball a shot and use a soda gun who says "what?" if you ask for a manhattan

I went with friends to a suburban restaurant that was supposed to be pretty good by local standards. Ordered food in the bar area, and I was ordering some flavored margarita (hah) off the menu guessing their bar acumen was iffy, my friend asked for a negroni because I mentioned it was a good summer drink.

waitress had never heard of campari, neither had the bartender, and they didn't have it

if you drink a plethora of things you quickly can sniff out via a glance at the bar and menu selection whether it's a real bartending situation or a mixers/liquor plus exactly what is on the menu situation

because I have ordered drinks at a bunch of places

- "session" IPAs; just make a goddamn pale ale, or call it a Light IPA, you jackasses

Used to think this, have come around a bit. 1) I've started to have some really good session beers, so people must be getting better at making them and 2) I'd always argue with my wife, why drink Bud or Coors or any other shit beer? Why bother? And her argument is (fair) that if you hit the good craft stuff over the course of a game or something you'll end up sick or on the floor. Session beers allow you to keep drinking without ending up on your ass.

- white rum, silver tequila, moonshine, or any of that clear bullshit that's obviously better after some barrel school

Barrels definitely change and improve stuff, but there is nothing wrong with silver tequila, aka blanco tequila, aka still the product of 100% pure agave, a plant that takes 7 years to mature in only a couple specific environments. Even reposado or anejo, it's really not aged that long. White whiskey can go fuck itself, though, fuck you white whiskey makers for being so desperate to get something on the shelf while your other stuff sits in barrels that you've convinced people your bullshit bathtub booze is worthwhile.

- the vast, vast majority of wine, I used to like this stuff but really, grapes? I can't anymore.

Yeah, I'm not picky about reds, but really don't like whites.

- fancy vodka, why

Vodka can be made by anyone, anywhere, with almost anything. I once heard vodka described as an elaborate joke the rest of the world played on America.

- soda beverages in my drink - tonic, cola, or sprite, who cares, stop

I'm cool with this, not fucking sprite or anything, but a good G&T is sublime, and can't beat stuff like Campari mixed with mineral water for a refreshing summer sipper.

- limoncello, jesus

Yeah, fuck this melted popsicle shit.

OE with the cold-when-blue sensor or gtfo

otm

The insipid wateriness of session ales is part of what made me come back around to plain old Coors, 'Gansett, Natty Boh, etc. I'd rather have a purpose-built 4% lager than waste my time finding the unicorn that is a successful attempt to shove a square IPA peg into a round all-day-drinking hole.

That, and the record hot summers, and realizing if I'm going to pay $5 and like my Tecate when I go out for tacos that have radishes in them, why not just pay $6 and have more fun on my patio?

stiegl radler baby

3/4 of the craft beers from Texas are summer beers, I'm never lacking for light + tasty.

Psh, shandys. Stiegl Radler is like 2.5 alcohol, barely beer and fruit juice. It's not a step up from flavored malt beverage, but ... nah.

This thread has turned into every other ilx thread about what ilxors think is a 'good' drink or a 'bad' drink. Pity.

some drinks in moderation are good, and we are all bad

Aimless... he drinks a bitter tonic

I am an aficionado of thread topics even more than an aficionado of alcoholic drinks. As a drinker, I am unreasonably forbearing. As an ilxor, I am uncompromising.

Radlers and Shandys seem like Orangina to me, in that they are better when made at home from the basic ingredients (lager and OJ, or lager and lemonade, etc, or OJ and soda water, if you need me to explain the Orangina connection). No way I'm paying extra for that stuff in a can when I have all the necessary ingredients at home as part of my basic grocery bill.

Aimless wrecking shop, new display name results

Bars frown on me bringing my own supplies, though.

Does Bartles and Jaymes still exist? Zima's back, and flavored malt beverages are doing well. Time for a full on revival of bad drinks, countered by a more contemporary dedication to good drinking.

tbh the bitter truth embodied in thread title is at some point, there is just drinking

I understand the bar camaraderie idea, and the local where you drink shots and sip your beer and socialize like a living room that's more than furniture and maybe a tv. Sneering at malt beverages is like sneering at single malt scotch or well-crafted beer or whatever else -- even if you're optimizing an idyll flavor profile, or seeking out rare liquor, every few people are going to have a tiny drink that gives you no intoxication -- we like some level of intoxication. And we might say it is cleaner or well-honed, or even a different experience due to economic disconnect but you like to drink.

i guess so - maybe he wanted people to get the satisfaction of buying him a drink? or perhaps he was just a sociopath.

If you want white whiskey, you need to get some real stuff 'apple pie'. Make sure it burns blue. Put it in the freezer and have fun.

"Session beer" is a British term I believe, although not an especially old one, probably reflects the fact that we start drinking several hours earlier in the day than you do and if you're settling in for a good long session in the pub then you don't want to kill yourself too early on. It's at least partly a marketing team, a session beer will sell to people who wouldn't buy something sold a light beer.

For most of my adult life, beer in the sub-4% range in Britain has (with some honorable exceptions) been pisswater. One of the best things about the whole craft beer thing has been a proliferation of beers at around 3.5% that actually taste of something.

Oh god yeah, reading in pubs is wonderful and something I would never give up. You can't really have more than a couple of drinks in that situation though, and it's more of a winter thing. You need the right pubs around you as well.

i generally agree about it being a winter thing, but i've gone to my local on one or two hot sundays recently, days when there's nobody around or i don't want to do much other than be alone, and sat in their beer garden reading and sipping a pint - there's a peace there you can't always find at home.

Going offthread even more, but I do miss the days when you could go into any pub and get a pint of mild on tap.

I choose my pub reading carefully because some bartenders/bar patrons interpret a book propped up against the condiment caddy differently. Some, correctly, understand a book to mean "I will be cordial about refill requests but would otherwise prefer to be left in companionable silence."

Others view it as a potential conversation starter. I normally dread the question "Watcha readin'?". The asker either doesn't really care (in which case I may as well answer "midget-based erotica"), or (perhaps worse), the asker IS very interested in the author or the topic. In which case they are likely to want to discuss it. Look, pal, if I wanted to discuss Faulkner with people, I would have stayed in graduate school.

a pint of mild on tap

I think up North you maybe still can. I went in a pub across the road from Macclesfield station a few years ago and they had Banks's Mild on tap. It appeared to be a standard option, not a guest ale or something like that. I see Banks's is now owned by Marston's, and if I recall this was a Marston's pub, old-fashioned, plain, not geared to ale enthusiasts.

I used to drink Banks's Mild sometimes when I was a teenager but tbh I think that was more down to it being 99p a pint vs £1.40 for Best Bitter than anything else. Kinda want a pint of it now you mentioned it just to see what I think of it as a more experienced beer drinker.

I had a pint of it in that pub I just mentioned. It was okay. I like mild anyway, one of my favourite kinds of beer. I see now from the Marston's Wikipedia page that mild is more of a Midlands than Northern thing, Macclesfield being more or less on the cusp of the two.

re: britishes drinking earlier.

I've personally never felt the pull of restrictions like "no drinking except on weekends" or "no drinking before X:XX" or "no drinking alone."

A drink is just as alcoholic - and just as desirable - at 5:01 PM as it was at 4:59. Or, for that matter, 11:59 AM.

It makes as much sense as saying you can only have sex on weekends, or only at night, or only with someone else.

Wasn't there something about the pubs closing too early or something, so people getting a head start? Or did that get reversed?

In my adult life, I've seesawed from drinking pretty much every night to teetotalerism. I've been in the 'lucky if I get through an entire six pack in a month' phase for a while, but I kinda feel like alcohol may become a more central part of my life in days to come.

Josh, I always heard that the session thing was from Britishes worker shifts (possibly during wartime manufacturing efforts) where you needed a beer you could drink before going back to work. But that could be spurious; I dunno.

Josh - I think the story is they started licensing hours during WWI to improve worker productivity by shutting pubs at 10:30pm, and also closing during the day between (I think) 3pm and 7pm. This stayed after the war finished and at some point 10:30pm got changed to 11pm except on Sundays. Then the afternoon closing went in the 80s apart from Sundays, which was changed in 1995 (I know that one is correct). So yeah the received wisdom is that Brits chug so much beer down so they can get drunk before the early closing time.

Licensing laws were relaxed some time after 2000 but a lot of pubs still close at 11.

I love stuff like this btw

https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/presidential-drinking-habits-washington-jefferson

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-the-pilgrims-wore-beer-goggles/

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/152901/rabbi-wolpes-picks-revisiting-prohibition

There's some book I read years ago about drinking that I loved but I cannot remember the title or the author for the life of me right now. I think it had a cider recipe in the back. It was by a woman.

Didn't it used to be customary to have Friday lunch down the pub with your officemates?

Oh, "The Joy of Drinking" by Barbara Holland. It's good. She's dead now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/09/the-author-who-brought-us-the-joy-of-drinking-a-tribute/63259/