Drinking the Devil's Acre: A Love Letter from San Francisco and her Cocktails

Drinking the Devil's Acre: A Love Letter from San Francisco and her Cocktails

Duggan McDonnell

Language: English

Pages: 256

ISBN: 1452135258

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


An Amazon Best Book of the Month, Drinking the Devil's Acre: A Love Letter From San Francisco & Her Cocktails is a smart, delightful mix of barman's memoir and literary journalism, with layers of spirited history and liquid wisdom. A tender tale of love for delicious drink, and for one's city, a book for anyone with a passion for history, cocktails, San Francisco, and the wanderlust of travel. 
Wayne Curtis, in the Wall Street Journal, wrote: 'My nominee for the best cocktail book of the year? Duggan McDonnell's "Drinking the Devil's Acre". The book is named for a few famously hard-drinking blocks set within 19th-century San Francisco's famously hard-drinking Barbary Coast. Mr. McDonnell weaves short essays with recipes, and makes a case that what sets his city apart from other cocktail meccas is a "unified preference for bright, bitter, and boozy on the palate." He gently encourages us to color outside the lines with experiments using widely available ingredients. .. "A delicious cocktail is a balanced cocktail," Mr. McDonnell writes in his "rules for budding barmen." Likewise, a good cocktail book is balanced book, with a mix of history, local color, a few eccentric characters and straightforward directions for making tasty drinks at home. In all this, "Drinking the Devil's Acre" delivers.' 
The Devil's Acre was a single, saloon-soaked block within the notorious Barbary Coast of old San Francisco. It was the wickedest, wildest place in the whole wide world -- not where you went to whet your whistle. But, just a few short blocks away, marbled drinking palaces reigned and civilization was sung as cocktails were shaken in tin and served in copper mugs. The high art of the cocktail lived at the edge of the West's most electrifying nightlife. Several generations later, San Francisco boasts this very same culture with the farm-to-glass movement is at its height.  
Twenty-five iconic cocktail recipes made famous by the City by the Bay--from the legendary Pisco Punch, the Mai Tai, and Irish Coffee, the rediscovery of the Gold Rush-era Sazerac and the whimsical Lemon Drop--are accompanied by an additional 45 recipes and McDonnell's 'Bartender's Secret Formulas,' including contemporary San Francisco classics as the Revolver and La Perla. Every chapter is guaranteed to keep the pages turning, the party going and your spirits flowing.

Locally Brewed: Portraits of Craft Breweries from America's Heartland

The Cocktail Lab: Unraveling the Mysteries of Flavor and Aroma in Drink, with Recipes

The One Minute Wine Master: Discover 10 Wines You'll Like in 60 Seconds or Less

Booze for Free: The Definitive Guide to Making Beer, Wines, Cocktail Bases, Ciders, and Other Drinks at Home

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

inserting one single point in the negotiation: they would no longer produce wine, only aguardiente de vino. At the time, this exception was scoffed at, thought of as absurd. Peru immediately transitioned into a grape-distillate drinking culture. no. 3: the pisco punch 67 The distilled spirit came to be called Pisco, as the best spirit of the Viceroyalty of Peru originated in the valley inland from that little port on Peru’s Pacific coast. That it came north to San Francisco and became wildly

to the terroir of Jalisco, Mexico, to the farmers and the old families who have been in the tequila business for generations. Tequila has received more than a facelift; it went in for a full surgical brand makeover, and every bottle, that is, every brand, champions its use of original stone tools, the many years it takes for an agave plant to mature, and its slow distillation. It’s a welcome, very intellectual theme, albeit a strange one: doesn’t anyone remember how tequila once became the

Aromatic Bitters (page 104) Expressed lemon peel for garnish Pour the liquid into a mixing glass, add ice, stir forty times, then strain into a rocks glass over a single stone of ice. Garnish with the lemon peel and thank God that man invented the cocktail. To step into Elixir, at the corner of Sixteenth and Guerrero Streets, is to experience what a great neighborhood saloon can be. At only six hundred square feet, Elixir boasts more than three hundred bottlings of whiskey, plus hundreds of

bracing at all. That’s not necessarily true. Yes, the French 75 is a quick sip and altogether refreshing, but if you’re not careful, its elegance will bite back. Harry’s New York Bar, Paris, is the birthplace of the French 75, and to alight atop a bar stool inside its environs and sip a French 75 is a pilgrimage for any barkeep worth his salt. Plus, it’s a damn fine way to spend an afternoon enjoying great drink. As I’ve mentioned, San Francisco holds much in common with Paris and has also been

cucumber vodka 1 oz/30 ml fresh lemon juice ½ oz/15 ml diluted agave nectar (see note, page 143) 2 dashes orange bitters 1 oz/30 ml ginger beer Muddle 2 of the blackberries and the basil leaves in a mixing glass; pour in the vodka, lemon juice, agave nectar, and bitters; add ice; and shake vigorously. Strain into a highball glass over ice while simultaneously pouring in the ginger beer. Garnish with the remaining blackberry. 188 drinking the devil’s acre Edith Griffin playing piano at the House

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