As you know, tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, one of the biggest amateur hour drinking nights of the year. It's when the folks who only trot out their binge drinking on big holidays head out to the bars, put on a stupid hat, and pretend to be Irish. These folks aren't worthy to shine Shane MacGowan's tooth, but that doesn't mean we want them to feel sicky-poo from green beer on Thursday morning.
We know St Patrick's is mid-week this year, but all the same we put together a digest of our favorite advice for how to beat a hangover.
Before You Drink
Eat: Eat something that has vitamin B and C such as fruit. If you are going to an after hour party, you should eat early dinner before you go to the party or eat while you drink. The fructose in foods will help absorb alcohol.
Hydrate. Drink lots of fruit juice and water now. Think of it this way, for every glass of non-alcoholic beverage you drink now you will save yourself from having to drink two glasses in the morning.
Don't mix it up: Make it a beer night, or a wine night, or a vodka night, but don't make it an "anything goes" night. For one thing, you'll end up drinking too much. But let's face it; most drinks don't mix too well with each other. Your body is going to have a hard enough time handling that rum without you throwing in some gin.
Keep a large bottle of water by the bed you're crashing/sleeping on. When you'll wake up during the night or in the morning, you will be craving for water, but the headaches or someone throwing up in the bathroom will keep you from getting up or walking to get your water. Water by the bed is comfortable and makes the morning a lot more pleasant.
Before Bed: Take two aspirin with a full glass of water - The prostaglandin inhibitors in the aspirin can decrease hangover severity. In the Morning:
Take two more aspirin with a full glass of water - This has been shown to minimize headaches as well as decrease inflammation from leftover prostaglandin. Take (a) multivitamin: Replenishing C and B vitamins in particular can help get rid of the rest of the toxins.
That's right, we quoted ourselves - what're you going to do? It's our blog. And we know you'll forget most of this advice by the time you're in the trenches with food dyed miller lite (the most Irish of all drinks) but if you lay the groundwork before you go out you should be able to at least avoid yuking on your boss's shoes. Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Do you want to learn more about whisky? Of course, we all do. That's why Mark Gillespie's WhiskyCast is great. You can listen to it while you do other things - work, brush your teeth, or drink whisky, for example. And now, you don't have to be tethered to your stupid computer to do it - with the introduction of the WhiskyCast iPhone app.
In addition to Gillespie's tasting notes, the WhiskyCast app will let listeners access the four most-recent episodes directly from their iPhone or iTouch without the need to download and sync their player to a computer. The application was developed by JacApps, a division of Jacobs Media, which has built similar applications for numerous radio stations and has a unique knack for programming iPhones to play streaming live audio.
When was the last time you thought about taking a drink? If you're thirsty, you reach out and take the glass, and you put it to your lips. But what if drinking didn't come that easily? What if taking a shot or sipping a beer took a whole lot more planning? We recently found this article where a young woman with quadriplegia explains how she goes about taking a shot. It's eye-opening, the heroic measures it can take to get a simple buzz, and we thought it was cool enough to share.
First, make sure the bartender doesn't fill up the shot glass right at the brim. Second, you have to make the big decision: Should I use my mouth, or spend about 3 minutes trying to pick it up with my limp hand and try to precariously hold it? (I guess it depends what kind of a rush you're in to start drinking). Usually, since I think it looks AWESOME, I like to use my mouth. Pick it up tightly with your lips, use the back of your hand to balance it, and throw your head back and drink.
[via Disaboom] Well done, Tiffiny. And for those of you out there who think that doesn't sound too tough, we recommend you try the exercise in the following video to put things in perspective.
We wish we could be linking to Rumdood under better circumstances, we really do, because he knows a ton about his namesake. We're linking to him now because he has put together some really nice resources for readers who want to help Haitians in the aftermath of the earthquake, but who aren't sure how. We've already donated our $10 to the Red Cross by texting "HAITI" to 90999 - he had some other great ideas too.
There's not much we can say right now so we're planning to put our money where our mouths are.
We've known for a while that Jim Meehan of NYC's Please Don't Tell was a class act, but we love the fact he got a chance to do it on national TV. Here's what we learned in this video:
Don't be afraid to give people what they want, even if you're sure of what they "should" drink, or if you have cocktails you want to mix for them.
Batching cocktails is awesome.
Jimmy Fallon can actually make us laugh.
The Roots like tequila.
That is all information we can use in our lives. Thanks Jimmy Fallon's show we never watch! And thanks to Mr. Dietsch for the link.
4 Ways to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions This Year
Tis the season for temporary self-betterment, or in the parlance of our time...New Year's Resolutions. We know a lot of people who make them, but we don't know too many who actually stick to them. A lot of resolutions, at least in our circle of friends, have to do with drinking (mostly along the lines of "As God is my witness, alcohol will never pass these lips again" on New Year's Day...until they're at the bar for the hair of the dog).
We're a bit late with this (shocking we know) but we've put together a list of manageable ways to stick to your resolutions this year...assuming you've even made it this far. Check out our tips for turning over a new leaf without breaking a sweat below.
Don't Make Any Resolutions at All: This is our usual tactic. Why? Because we're damn near perfect as it is, and we don't want to make the gods angry.
Don't Be Afraid to Caveat: The addition of exceptions make your resolutions much more flexible and workable. "I'm going to stop drinking" makes you a stick in the mud. "I'm going to stop drinking...more than 18 beers...during the week...unless chicken wings are involved" makes you a paragon of flexibility.
Support Your Friends: Did your buddy make a resolution to go to the gym every day, and actually do it? Show up at his house with three pizzas and a beer ball to celebrate his willpower. When he politely refuses because he's trying to lose weight (or whatever), he'll still let you stay to eat your pizza and drink your beer while watching his giant flat screen television. If he doesn't, gently remind him that next year's resolution should be to "not be a dick."
Set Reasonable Expectations: It's really easy to quit something you don't do very often, or at all. Tell your friends you're going to stop trying to invade Australia when you play Risk. Or that you're going to stop cutting your toenails in their kitchen sink. Alternately, tell them you're going to stop buying them rounds and see how long they support that.
Have any other ideas for how to create and stick to your half-assed resolutions? Let us know in the comments below.
If you're anything like us, the word "webcast" makes you want to head for the hills. As cubicle- and office-dwellers for the last decade or so, we've been to our share of these things, and they're usually relatively dry affairs, and by "dry" we mean there's no booze. Not so the one we've been invited to next week - there will be, and that booze will be scotch. It will be scotch, in fact, that comes out of this box:
The affair in question, with the jaw-busting title of "Johnnie Walker Black Label Centenary Journeyman Blending Webcast with Master Blender Andrew Ford," is entirely about blending scotch, not sitting around drinking it. But guess what you do with scotch after it's blended? That's right! Fedex dropped off our blending kit today, and we're not usually ones for unboxing posts and booze porn (y'know, like food porn but with liquor) we just had to share what we got. More pics after the jump.
Great! Just what we need is another iPhone app aimed at getting us drunk. We realize that might come across sounding sarcastic, but we really mean it. There aren't enough electronic ways to get us drunk. The latest is the Drinkspiration from Absolut - 400 drink recipes, and no...they're not all for vodka-based drinks.
Try vodka, gin, rum, brandy, whisky, and tequila-based cocktail recipes, depending on your mood, location, popularity, color, and time of day. We like the GPS function too, where you can check out what people are drinking based on location...a little big-brothery but why wouldn't you want to share what you're drinking?
Check out the video below, and download the app at iTunes.
Everybody have a great time at the season's first BBQ or whatever you do to commemorate the holiday, but don't forget to stay off the sauce if you're getting behind the wheel Well, that's true all the time but you know what we mean...this is a big cop weekend and there'll probably be more than one roadblock out there this weekend.
A while back we did a post about pudding shot recipes, and it continues to be one of our most popular stories. However, we've been a bit hesitant to make them, because since they don't set up like Jell-O it seems like you'd get all gloopy and chocolate-faced. However, an astute reader has finally solved the mystery for us; we'll let her tell you in her own words.
I used to work at a bar, and what we did is get the little sauce cups, not too small and fill them with your mix. Then place all million of the cups on a platter and freeze. The fun of this is watching someone reach their tongue to the bottom and try to get it all out. Hope this solves it if you haven't already.
Mystery solved! Thanks Katlyn.
Image via Jellatio (More pudding shot recipes are available at that page too)
We got an email from a faithful reader last week, who was looking for some fundamental truths about booze. This person was looking for the bright side (and hopefully the light side) of drinking, and came to us. We were flattered, and it also made us think a bit. There are all sorts of people out there who demonize liquor, but there's a positive side to the stuff too. We wouldn't know half our friends if bars had never been invented, and we certainly wouldn't have screwed up the courage to actually talk to girls without a few stiff belts.
So, without further ado, our paean to our favorite hobby, or as the Bard says, "the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
[Edit: Looks like the Modern Drunkard beat us to this topic, and their execution was better too. Check it out at 10 Best Things About Booze. Frank Kelly Rich, we bow to you yet again, you beautiful bastard...]
1. Drinking Can Make You a Dancer
Picture this with us: a wedding, let's say June. Horrible 70s music blasting from the DJ's tower of power, and all the women from age 7 to 70 are out on the floor, writhing and gyrating like someone dropped a live wire into a puddle in their midst. As you see grandma drop her walker and power slide at the end of "You're the One That I Want" from Grease, you ask yourself...where are all the men?
Oh, right, there they are. Clustered by the bar with a panicked look in their eyes, pounding down open bar drinks like Popeye on spinach. Most of them will be there for a while. Occasionally one or two will be picked out of the herd by their significant others or lope off looking for bridesmaids. And the drunker they get, the more likely they will be to lead that chicken dance the DJ is begging for, or do some kind of Steve Wozniak-eque worm in the middle of an impromptu break dance circle. By 11:45 even the most resistant stragglers will be out on the floor, weaving and bobbing to the music, drinks clutched like Linus's safety blanket in their hands.
Hey, guess what we found? A list of the 10 best cities to celebrate St. Paddy's day. Yeah, we realize it would have been more helpful a week ago, but what can we do? Just think about next year - you'll have 364 days to get over tomorrow's blistering hangover and we just realized we have friends in seven out of ten of these cities. Irish road trip!
10 Best St. Patrick's Day Festivals in the United States at Beer Taste Test
One of the things that we constantly think about is building our own home bar. As you might expect, we have a nicely-stocked liquor cabinet here at the Liquor Snob offices, but we'd love to have our own space reserved purely for experimenting with cocktail recipes and whipping up drinks.
That's why we're excited about the prospect of the new home bar series from the KegWorks blog, which will lay out the things you should think about when putting in a bar of your own. We like how they have tackled their project, including a series of questions such as moveable vs permanent, wet vs dry, and theme vs evolving decor. These are all things we might not have thought of, and we're already starting to workshop some bar designs.
Let's face it, kids...Valentine's Day is on its way, and if things go right you'll probably be opening a bottle of the bubbly. What better way to impress the object of your affection than by opening them a bottle of champagne...with a sword? The technique, apparently called "sabering" looks pretty simple, and is WAY impressive.
Just make sure you alert your flame somewhere between pulling out the champagne bottle and drawing a sword, to keep them from thinking you're about to perform seppuku or engage in murder/suicide. We're not the most romantic guys on the Web, but we think that might kind of spoil the glow of the evening.
St. Patty's Day Advice: Avoid a Hangover
As you know, tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, one of the biggest amateur hour drinking nights of the year. It's when the folks who only trot out their binge drinking on big holidays head out to the bars, put on a stupid hat, and pretend to be Irish. These folks aren't worthy to shine Shane MacGowan's tooth, but that doesn't mean we want them to feel sicky-poo from green beer on Thursday morning. 
Do you want to learn more about whisky? Of course, we all do. That's why Mark Gillespie's WhiskyCast is great. You can listen to it while you do other things - work, brush your teeth, or drink whisky, for example. And now, you don't have to be tethered to your stupid computer to do it - with the introduction of the WhiskyCast iPhone app.
We wish we could be linking to 
Tis the season for temporary self-betterment, or in the parlance of our time...New Year's Resolutions. We know a lot of people who make them, but we don't know too many who actually stick to them. A lot of resolutions, at least in our circle of friends, have to do with drinking (mostly along the lines of "As God is my witness, alcohol will never pass these lips again" on New Year's Day...until they're at the bar for the hair of the dog). 
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