The Fifth Drink

Welcome to thefifthdrink.com.  This is a website about anything a person can drink.  We want to be a reference for mixed drinks, shots, cocktails, martinis, spirits, wine, beer, saké, cider, mead, coffee, tea, juice, soda and water.  If we missed something, let us know.

We also have a blog that follows the making of the fifthdrink.com.  If you are creating your own website or blog, check out the Creating a Website link.  Hopefully you will find some information you can use.

We’re aiming for a higher form of drink.  It’s an ongoing process, one that has no definitive end, so if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, let us know.  Enjoy your drink. 

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I was tempted to give the title of this article more finesse, because barley wine is supposed to be a sophisticated beer.  It was originally created for the English elite, the upstairs people, as a substitute for wine.  But as we all know, sophistication both abhors and indulges the crass.  Aside from the fact that I couldn’t resist such a succulent succession of plosive British B’s (think of the Black Adder:  “Britain’s Brave Boys Battle against the Boche!”), barley wine is, in fact, a decidedly bad-meaning-good type of beer.  The hops, malt and alcohol content are all absurdly high.  Everything is huge when it comes to barley wine—it just can’t be bold, not even naughty, it has to be bad. (Click here to read more  . . .) 

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It’s finally cold even here in Miami, at least some of the time.  I know all the northern people groan when they hear me wishing for cold, knowing that they have been condemned yet again to foul, frost-burdened weather for eight months of the year.   I feel for you, I really do.  I’ve been there—I was born during a blizzard in upstate New York.

But now I live in South Florida, and I just survived an indescribably hot Fall season.  It was honestly hot to the point of frightening.  We had relentless, record-breaking highs, clam chowderesque humidity and even a few November hurricane threats to top things off.  I have to say that Global Warming is a very real threat for those living in any slightly-above-sea-level tropical states or countries. 

But the worst thing about our Indian Summer was that it was too hot to make hot drinks.  This is a shame, because a good hot drink stirs the soul like no other.  They enliven the body and promise the spirit comfort when times are most bleak.  So northerners take heart, you can enjoy the pleasure of hot drinks now and for many months to come, while I have to wait for those few cherished weeks of chilly weather.  Here are my five treasured favorites in the meantime: (Click here to read more...)

1. Hot Toddy
2. Irish Coffee
3. Tom & Jerry
4. Hot Red Blooded Frenchman
5. Jean Gabin

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This post may seem a little late, seeing that I am writing about winter beers after the 2009 holiday season is done and gone.  But remember that a lot of these beers are still on the shelf and, more importantly, they’re on sale.  Clearance—the gift that really does keep on giving.  I recently picked up a 6-pack of decent holiday beer for $3.99, and I saw a nice bottle of holiday barleywine just go from $5.99 to $2.99.  They’re still good beers, some of them great, and most importantly, it’s still cold as hell outside, even here in Miami (20’s and 30’s is officially cold by any standard outside of Alaska).  There are many frigid months ahead that call for darker beer.

Initially, I wanted to try six different American craft brew “Winter Warmer” beers this season and post reviews for each one.  This proved to be more challenging than I initially thought it would be.  A good review is pain in the ass to write.  At a bare minimum, you have to stop before you drink, take a picture and write notes after every sip.  It wasn’t always easy to generate that level of intellectual curiosity, but as it turns out, I motivated myself by working in the holiday spirit.

When I think of “Winter Beers” I’m really thinking “Christmas Beers”.  Beers with pictures of Santa and holly on the bottles, and more importantly, snow scenes.  For northerners, this is a time when the everyday weather can kill you—literally, you can freeze to death.  You have to dig deep to enjoy life in the middle of winter, and that’s what Christmas does.  When the days are bitter and the nights are long, it forces us to appreciate the fact that we are still alive and that every experience is meaningful.  So I harnessed this spirit and discovered a deeper appreciation for the tasting process, even if it seemed like homework to drink a beer after a hard day’s work.

Out of sheer obsessive insanity, I ended up doubling my tasting to twelve winter warmer beers, and I’ve compiled a list with tasting notes for each.  I started this project with a cheese pairing theme as well, but I quickly realized that wouldn’t work.  Good cheese just falls off a cliff after a couple of days in the fridge, so I’ve omitted those notes.

So here they are in alphabetical order with awards for the Top 5 Winter Warmer Beers first. (Click here to read more...)

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The deliberately bacchanalian title for this post is true—sports does interfere with my quality drinking.  It’s not that I can’t do any drinking while watching sports, but that I can’t get any quality writing done about drinks while watching sports.  It used to be that playing sports interfered with my quality drinking and writing even more, but then my thorax got a little too busted and I had to give up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.  You have to hang it up when you can't feel your hands and feet anymore, trust me.  So now it’s all about sports  viewing for me, and since I work a varied schedule and don’t have cable, I can’t pass up the opportunity to watch one of my favorite teams when I’m lucky enough to find them on television. (Click here to read more...)

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Welcome to the Telephonedrink Project.  This mission, if you choose to accept it, will send drinks to your telephone by using Twitter.

I have four projects that you can choose from. Whenever I send a Twitter message, it will begin with one of these abbreviations:

I tried to fit everything into 4 letters, but I couldn’t squeeze in the words martini or cocktail.  I thought MART would be better than COCK, so that’s what I’m using.  When you see one of those four letters, you will know the subject of the tweet, so you can either read it or delete it depending on your interest. (Click here to read more...)