Definition
yup·pie (yŭp’ē)
n. a young, ambitious, and well-educated city-dweller who has a professional career and an affluent lifestyle.
dil·lem·ma (dĭ-lěm’ə)
n. a difficult or perplexing situation or problem.
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Tag Archives: alcohol
home is where the hops are
Before we even signed the lease to our apartment, my roommate decided that he was going to start brewing his own beer once we had settled in. This frightened me. While I’ve been blessed with a unique set of skills that have helped me excel in the art of drinking beer, manufacturing it isn’t something that I’m familiar with. What I envisioned was our place turning into a scene like the photo below:
with the whole experience ending with a fire, perhaps an explosion or two, injuries, possible arrests, and neither of us getting drunk (the last part bothering me the most, obviously). Luckily none of that happened, except for the last part. I took some shots of the pre-brew scene in our kitchen.
It should probably be mentioned that I didn’t help at all. Nope, not one bit. In the greatest display of laziness in 2011 thus far, I didn’t lift a goddamn finger to assist my roommate in this project other than tasting the beer after it was brewed to make sure that it was indeed not going to send us to the hospital after the first sip. In fact, when he went to bottle it (the hardest part of the whole process if I understand it correctly), I slithered into my bedroom and took a glorious cat nap. When I woke up from my slumber, the kitchen was filled with bottled beer and my roommate’s pain and struggle. With that being said, the yet-to-be-named home-brewed IPA turned out pretty good. So good that I’ve already started laying out the ground work on how we can one day open our own yuppie brewery, rake in a ton of cash and live like kings.
Another thing I learned second hand about brewing beer is that the clean-up sucks. The bottom of the ale pail was filled with a sludgy goop of hops, barley, and nasty that has to get disposed of. Since the blueprint I’m drawing on how we will build our brewery empire has little mention of me participating in actual brewing and zero mention of me participating in the sludge disposal, it was pretty awesome when I found out about this company called Purpose Energy. Based right here in MA, they use what’s called a “Biphase Orbicular Biodigester” system to harness the methane gas that beer byproduct gives off to power the brewery. While I’m sure it’s probably not a pretty process, they’ve run successful pilots with Yuengling Brewery and most recently Magic Hat in Vermont, where they are saving the company $2/barrel. OK, so it’s not exactly the everlasting fountain of beer, but PE is taking a significant chunk out of brewery’s carbon footprint and saving them a buck. And as the future (insert important sounding job title) of a successful brewery, these are things I must take into consideration.
Anyone else out there interested in or experience in brewing their own brewskis? Talk to us in the comment section!
-MillsyF
-MillsyF
the beer line dilemma
We know 2011 has only just begun, but unlike a lot of our homies, we haven’t hit a professional sporting event yet this year. Anyone who would like to donate some tickets our way, feel free. But what we don’t miss about watching games from the couch is the long-ass lines to get a beverage in a stadium. Meet the Bottoms Up Draft Beer Dispensing System
Promoted as the World’s fastest beer dispensing system, this innovation in pouring technology is looking to seriously change the beer pouring game by eliminating the pour all together. Using a magnet, beer can be shot into the cup from the bottom and then sealed off once the perfect quantity has been reached, foam head included. Based on the video, you can see the “pours” are pretty consistent, with little spillage and waste. While I won’t hold my breath waiting for this to pop up in TD Bank North Garden, extra points go to the first frat house to get one of these for casual use.
(shouts to RDC for sending this in)
-MillsyF
get your next fill up at Sunoko
Remember that lethal drink that everyone was stuck on a couple months back? You know…the one that got banned everywhere east of the Mississippi?
Has it been that long?
Before you pour out a swig of Sparks in memory of your fallen alcholic energy drink of preference, you should probably read this:
Company turns Four Loko booze into car fuel
So, you all were putting that devil juice into your body like it was 1999 and now it’s getting turned into 87 octane?
Thank goodness Redbull x Vodka still have plenty of country within the yuppie community.
-MillsyF
the vodka dilemma
Never go to the bar and order this:
Unless you’re OK with drinking the sweat of this:
Just thought we’d give you a heads up before the weekend!
-MillsyF
Putting the “whiz” in whiskey
You know what’s really irritating? When people put down the ideas of others. For no reason other than just because. With all the innovative and ambitious people in this world, and so many ideas with unrealized potential, how can anyone really be justified shooting one down? The fact is, we’ve all been guilty of it at some point in our lives, and it stinks.
Well, hold your noses folks, because with the amount of criticism we’re about to dish out, this blog could get real stinky, real fast.
While on Inhabitat yesterday, I stumbled upon a post featuring Gilpin Family Whisky. Now, you’re aware of how much I loves me some whiskey, so you should know that for me to outright refuse to give this the yuppie stamp of approval, something had to have gone terribly wrong. Given the fact that there are literally dozens of different ways to distill whisky (or whiskey if you’re Irish or American), doesn’t that sound a bit odd for someone to take such a wrong turn with it? Yeah well, you haven’t learned of the secret ingredient yet…
What makes Gilpin Family Whisky unique is not the grains used to make it, or the age of the wooden casks it is fermented in. Gilpin Family Whisky‘s secret ingredient is…the urine of elderly diabetics. You see, mastermind James Gilpin discovered that the large amounts of sugar excreted on a daily basis by type-two diabetic patients were made to be an ideal whisky base, as they are already full of natural mold and bacteria growth (his grandma was his first patient) . Realizing how fast the whisky market is growing, Gilpin and a group of economists quickly discovered that this was a resource he could quickly capitalize off of, in the form of a high-end single malt whisky.
Now, I trust an economist with choosing my liquor as much as I trust a bartender managing my stock portfolio. I refuse to even label this as a yuppie dilemma, because with all of the alternative options there are for whisky consumption, I can’t see why drinking pee pee is OK. Ever. Clearly there are a multitude of reasons why we cannot endorse this, but for now we will focus on 3.
- Its Appearance (see above). First things first, if someone is trying to get me to do something nasty like drink somebody’s repurposed urine, they for damn sure cannot bottle it like that. That looks like Shaq had a full bladder in the backseat of road trip, and the only thing he could find was an empty Carlo Rossi wine jug. It looks just like some pee! And if you’re not going to at least add some artificial coloring, please have the decency to put a paper label around the bottle so someone won’t be able to see it as they take a generous swig from the jug. I mean, I’ve drank whiskey & ginger ale’s darker than that. They would have a much better chance marketing this as tequila. But then again, I doubt if I’d take a tequila-pee body shot off of even Zoe Saldana’s midriff.
- The “High-end” label, and therefore price. So let me get this straight: you made this from your grandmama’s urine, and I’m now supposed to pay extra for it? Yeah, I don’t think so. I don’t care if you told me that mixing this whiskey into a Manhattan would bring me immortality, and that I should trust you because R. Kelly is your VP of Operations, I would never call this top shelf. And if for some odd reason this stuff takes off, the first rapper I hear talking about poppin’ bottles of that Gilpin Fam’ will be the catalyst of my eternal boycott of Hip-Hop.
- There is absolutely no way to serve it. Let’s just pretend you’re the adventurous type, and you decide you’re totally game for getting drunk off of a senior citizen’s urine. You have a few friends over for drinks, and one of them goes for the bottle of Gilpin. So um, you gonna tell ‘em what’s in it? Because if you don’t and they find out, it’s plausible that they might try to physically harm you. However, let’s say you tell them straight up. Now you’re the guy/girl who drinks piss in your spare time. You probably don’t even want to know what those people will start thinking you snack on when no one else is around. Have fun explaining your way out of that one…
There might be a few of you out there who will disagree with me. Perhaps out of spite, or maybe out of a desire to hold me accountable for the hypocrisy of my opening paragraph. And if so, please feel free to chime in via the comment section and put me in my place. Like I said earlier, there are far too many great ideas with unrealized potential for anyone to ever be fully justified when shooting it down. What more perfect way to prove that statement right than for Gilpin Family Whisky to take off and be the new top shelf liquor of choice. And if that becomes that case, yes: I’ll be eating my words.
But eating words sure sounds a helluva lot better than drinking pee.
-MillsyF
before you take that sip, you should know that…
We guess that's a sacrifice we're going to have to make
thanks Lem for sending this over
-MillsyF
shameless alcohol ad
Just watch this. Does this seem strange to anyone else?
We’ll just come out and say it: young black professionals don’t drink Coors Light. I’m sorry, but we just don’t. And no, playing the O’Jay’s greatest hits isn’t going to convince us otherwise. Call us when the Heineken train arrives.
There. It’s been said.
-MillsyF
a little leg
When you’re really young, overhearing grown-up conversations can really throw your life for a loop. Back when I was a wee little Millsy baby, my aunt’s car had broken down on her way to a family get together. This was before the dawn of the all-powerful cell phone, and she’s no mechanic, so it was up to her to elicit the help of a friendly stranger. She eventually arrives at the party, fashionably late, with the story of how a gentleman picked her up and drove her 25 minutes out of his way to get her to the party. When someone asked her how she talked him into it she dipped her head back and laughed.
“Didn’t you know? Men are simple: show a little leg and a big smile, and you can get anything you want.”
Over a decade later, a good portion of my “good deeds” have lent proof to this theory.
Any readers on the same page as me might be interested in these…unique, bottle openers made by Australian company Fire Monkey. The Leg Opener is made of stainless steel with a stiletto that works just as well as the jacked up lighter you probably currently use to pop open cold ones. There’s even a magnet built into the thigh to put it on your fridge, clearly a conspiracy plotted by the grocery industry to seduce you into eating your own food. Thank goodness the Leg Opener doesn’t have a face to smile at us, otherwise we’d be in a mess of trouble. It’ll run you about $30 bucks
(via cool material)
-Millsy F
the too-much-whiskey dilemma
My friends are really good at inadvertently saying things that make writing this blog really easy. Here’s an example:
This past Saturday, I was at my best friend’s apartment downtown. Just so you get a sense of what he’s like, this is the kinda guy that has subscriptions to Esquire AND GQ, loves fedoras, and chronically suffers from the happiness most of us have only dreamed of experiencing since we exited childhood. You can see why he’s like a brother to me.
The three of us (our mutual best bud, Dan, was there. Can’t forget him) are sitting on his futon channel surfing between soccer and golf when he tells us about a dilemma he’s in:
“Man, there’s so much whiskey in this apartment. I almost wish I could trade it in and get rid of it.”
Too much whiskey? Trust me, this isn’t an ailment MY apartment frequently suffers from; a big reason why we’re delighted when he invites us over to drink HIS bourbon. Now he wants to get rid of all of it? There had never been any “HEY! Let’s drink something different tonight,” moments I could remember. As far as I knew, this was a ritual we collectively enjoyed, and following the most direct path of logic, I couldn’t for the life of me understand what he was talking about. And what the hell was he going to trade it in for anyway? Last time I checked, liquor stores weren’t offering lease options on Maker’s Mark. Simply put, this was not passing the litmus test of being a legitimate problem in my eyes and I write about yuppie dilemma’s as a hobby. I didn’t really know what to say, so I just stared at him with a mixed expression of bewilderment, disappointment, and suspicion.
I think he sensed Dan and I silently plotting a military tribunal in our minds, and so he quickly elaborated:
“OH! No, don’t get me wrong. I still love whiskey! It’s my favorite! It’s just that it’s a lot easier to make summer drinks with gin or something like that”
Ah ha! A brilliant point and a near catastrophe averted. But how were we to solve this dilemma though?? The three of us put our heads together to think of something. but that didn’t really work, so we just used a drink recipe app on my phone and voila: The Cranberry Cooler
Here’s what you’ll need: some whiskey (we used Jack Daniels), cranberry juice, lemon juice, sugar, ice, and a blender. Fill the blender with ice and add 1 1/2 parts of the cranberry juice and 1 part of Jack. Throw in 1 oz of lemon juice and 3 teaspoons of sugar. Blend on high for a little bit, grab some glasses, and po’ it up. It’s damn refreshing and for those who don’t particularly like their drinks too sweet, the cranberry tames the whiskey but keeps it mild. But be careful because these go down fairly easily and will have you sporting your best sauce face before you know it.
And to all my friends reading, keep up the good work. You guys make this so much fun.
-MillsyF
