Billy's Booze Blog

For many people drinks have a bit more associated with them than just their ingredients – there’s a slab of experience surrounding the drinking, ordering or making of said drink, all unique and tied up to memory. One of those with the most baggage for me is the Whiskey Sour.
I’d known of the existence, although [...]

Yet again I have been struck by the urge to inflict my sarchastic voice and workings of my shaky hands upon you, the lovely people who are reading my excuses for drinking things. After my recent gin related experiments I ended up (due to a rubbish measuring jug) with about 3 measures of gin left [...]

My occasional flirting with Qype and the London food blogging community leads to fairly random events popping up on my radar – this Tuesday I ended up at one. The idea of supper clubs isn’t particularly new: a bunch of people, some you know, some you don’t, turn up at your house and you make [...]

The lovely people of Qype, especially organisatrix extraordinaire SianySianySiany, have looked after me again, this time be helping with one of my missions for the year: learning more about vodka – somehow I managed to wangle may onto one of Bob Bob Ricard’s rather exclusive vodka tastings. At first I felt this rather strange as [...]

Partly an excuse to post a picture, shot in my ghetto studio mk2 with my new polarising filter, partly a real news story – it seems that there’s an Angostura bitters shortage on.
I’ve recently heard tales that the company that makes Angostura had gone out of business and as such there would be no more, [...]

I can date the beginning of my love of good whisky fairly accurately to December 1997. I’d been working in my student Union bar for about 6 months and had recently tried single malt whisky, rather than my usual foray into the spirits world of Bells and Coke, and found that It Was Good. To [...]

While wandering in the wilds of Islington the other week, trying to find things to fill the time between work and a gig (by the mighty A, supported by some people I don’t remember and the rather good Stars of the Search Party) I did a quick search on the Randomness Guide to London and [...]

I never used to be much of a fan of the cocktail, equating them all with “screwdrivers” in my head – booze and some kind of mixer that had ideas above its station. However, over time I started to realise that there was a bit more to it than that, all thanks to one drink [...]

I’ve already written about the inaugural Blaggers’ Banquet over on my other blog, but as I was a barman I thought I’d post something here about the cocktails we banged out during the evening.
Firstly, due to the donation of a case of Sipsmith Vodka and Gin, we acquired a bottle of vermouth (later complimented by [...]