#rice-gin

#rice-gin

"We're a new distiller - we don't have the luxury of waiting to know if our whisky is going to be great. It has to be great from the outset."

"Our study confirmed that in an environment of loud noise, our sense of taste is compromised. Interestingly, this was specific to sweet and umami tastes, with sweet taste inhibited and umami taste significantly enhanced," Robin Dando, one of the study's authors, told the Cornell Chronicle after the study came out.

We [were] very determined to make a product that was consistent, safe and performed well. And that's what we've ended up with.

You can skip the entire cumbersome step of straining your rice by placing a fine mesh sieve or strainer on top of your pot and pouring the rice directly into it, rather than into the water. Leave the sieve in the pot for the whole cooking process with a cover placed on top. The steam rising from the water will cook the rice, giving you a perfectly separated, airy result.

But then the playoffs arrive, and you and I are reminded of what makes twilight football-outdoors and on grass-special. You start off in broad daylight as both teams fuck around for a quarter or two. Then the sun slowly begins to bleed away, taking all distractions along with it as it sinks below the horizon. Now we're in primetime, when everyone is watching. Now every player on the field is in the spotlight, and you, the viewer at home, are dialed in.

The U.S. spirits landscape has evolved far beyond the recognition of simply being the birthplace of bourbon. In recent years, we've seen a transformation in both the quality and individuality that the country's craft distilleries have been able to produce. While previous decades were dominated by the big-name distilleries, far more awards are going to craft distillers who have mastered the art of producing high-quality whiskeys, rums, gins, and more.

The project comes from a deep bench of hospitality heavyweights: Jimmy Rizvi, the restaurateur behind Bungalow, and Kanvar Singh, of Midtown's ever-popular Elsie Rooftop, lead the partnership along with beverage director Hirotomo Akutsu, formerly of Tokyo's Bar Trench (ranked 94th on the World's 50 Best Bars 2025) and creative director Rio Azmee of Shinka Ramen. Every detail, from the way a cocktail is built to the way the room feels, is deliberate.

"I wouldn't say the bramble is the only way to enjoy contemporary gin, but it's absolutely one of the most flattering cocktails to highlight the category," says Justin Lavenue, co-owner of Austin's famed cocktail bar The Roosevelt Room. "Contemporary gins, which tend to lean away from heavy juniper and more toward citrus, floral, root, and herbaceous notes, shine in cocktails where those subtleties have room to breathe. Unlike many other gin-based classics, the bramble gives them exactly that platform."

just before we collectively stumbled into this shitty timeline marred by "fake news" and idiot fascism, a journalist did that thing that journalism used to do: hold power to account. In this case, the power was Big Bay Leaf, and the reporter was Kelly Conaboy, writing for the Awl on a "vast bay leaf conspiracy" that-then as now-cons well-meaning home cooks into buying weird leaves that taste and smell like "nothing."