Monday 5 - Practical Manuals of Dipsology

The Drunkard's Progress: From The First Glass To The Grave. Currier & Ives Lithograph, 1846.


By Way Of Introduction

The subject his month is drinking. The drinking of alcoholic beverages, to be more specific. There is an axiom in the martial arts that sates: "The manner of spitting or drinking is either hard or soft." I have only a remote idea about how that applies to fighting and combat, but I can certainly adapt that to the a tippler's lifestyle.

Drinking alone is the height of personal reflection and is only improved by drinking with a close friend. Getting drunk with someone is something special. If you manage the event well you will have a lasting memory. If you overdo it you’ll (maybe) have a lasting memory and a good story to tell.

In this vein of thought I feel you ought to know something about your drinker before we proceed. The Accountant is an elemental drinker. I prefer my liquor straight and more often than not I will be seen with a beer in my hand.

I like all forms of whiskey, with a slight spot of nostalgia for rye. When it comes to gins I confess that I enjoy the heavily flavored gins like Bombay Sapphire (I hate product placement but its necessary here). I like the notion of tinctures. All those herbs and spices seem so alchemical, mystical.

When it comes time to make or order a Martini (I’m always nervous when I order a martini – fearing the eventual disappointment) I prefer vodka, pre-chilled and a whisper of vermouth. Olive to garnish. I don’t do it dirty at first but instead prefer to try to compartmentalize each aspect. Inevitably the third or fourth martini is filthy with olive juice and vermouth.

I love absinthe, both out of a feeling of connection to its tradition and a sincere like of the anise flavoring. Plus it numbs the tongue marvelously. One can do anything with a tongue that numb, he says loosening his tie.

Beer. I’ll tell you what… I can drink Rodenbach Grand Cru like water. Some say it tastes like salad dressing but I don’t care. I like savory and sour more than I like sweet. The heady froth of a well-hopped American IPA is pretty wonderful but I also love my stouts. Particularly the heavier coffee influenced ones. To me though, when it comes to stouts, it doesn’t get better than a good old-fashioned bottle of Guinness Extra Stout. Makes me want to make a muscle just thinking about a bottle of the stuff. Belgian golden ales and German wheat beers are great associates to be with on a bright spring day. I love drinking strong beer outside on absurdly sunny days. Nothing can disappoint me on a day like that.

I’ve been seen with such noble offerings as Piels and Pabst, both of which I drink with no concept of irony. Their there. I’m there. Why not shake hands? Piels in fact reminds me of the most impressive drinker I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. Marty was his name and I worked with him at a gas station. The man was in his seventies and would throw back pounders like they held nothing but air inside. If I believed in a god I'd ask them to bless Marty. Thinking of Marty when I knock back a Piels will have to suffice.

Wine hits me like that first cup of strong coffee on an empty stomach. I get all kinds of notions and ideas. I talk incessantly and want everyone to try and build a better wheel. I don’t know wine as well as I could (should, I guess is a more flattering word for the spirit). I am lucky enough to have a handful of friends that make it a point to know wine. To them I am grateful.

Lastly the mixed drink. Even here I’m yet conservative. Gin and tonic with a dash of lime juice and wedge of the fruit. Rum and coke, again with lime. Juice and gin or vodka (I almost killed myself on pineapple juice and gin). Vodka and cranberry is pretty alright, but I can only drink it in certain company. Margaritas are great for the sunny day, though I insist strong beer is the best. Tequila lacks beer’s sublimity.

Some of my friends get excited when I get wound-up or sloppy drunk. I prefer to believe that it’s because I can drink prodigiously. I fear however, that it might have something to do with being stubborn and prideful.

I think that’s enough. You get the picture. I’m a mellow, soulful drunk.

Now that you know my inclinations I’ll introduce you to the professionals.


How To Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivant’s Companion by Jerry Thomas. Hesperus Press. ISBN: 9781843911876. 167 pp. $19.95. Buy it here and support The Devil’s Accountant.

Raise your glasses and keep them up.

Jerry “Professor” Thomas is largely considered the “Father of American Mixology” and is regarded as one of the finest bartenders to ever live.

How To Mix Drinks is the seminal work on “mixology” and it contains a dizzying array of drinks both long forgotten and sublimely enduring. Whether it’s his signature drink, The Blue Blazer (I feel drinks need to be capitalized like the titles of poems) or a healthy glass of White Tiger’s Milk, Thomas’ guide will amaze modern readers (tipplers) for both the freshness of the ingredients and the artful procedures required to create these masterpieces.

Okay, here’s to Professor Thomas. Back they go. Cheers!

We have for some time now become accustomed to bottled premixes and the easier to prepare shortened versions of drinks. While reading Jerry Thomas’ recipes you are instantly struck by the notion that much of the art of bartending is missing today. Missing, perhaps, but not forgotten. We have Hesperus Press to thank for that.

I’m not going to humbug the modern drink. A busy bartender needs every asset (like a premix) to complete the tasks of their noble trade and if a Tom Collins premix is going to save time and get me my next drink quicker, well, then I’m all for it. The recipes in Thomas’ book seem in comparison more like bread and cake recipes – from scratch – and indeed they often contain ingredients that are more commonly found in batter recipes today than in drinks.

Indeed there are entire genres of drink that are no longer to be commonly had (or at all). How many of you have knocked back a Cold Rum Flip. Or a Flip at all.

Cold Rum Flip

One teaspoon powdered sugar, dissolved in a little water.
One wineglass of Jamaica rum.
One fresh egg.
Two or three lumps of ice.

Shake up thoroughly, strain in a medium glass, and grate a little nutmeg on top.

Or perhaps you’ve never had a…

Silver Fiz

One tablespoon of pulverized white sugar.
Three dashes of lemon or lime juice.
The white of one egg.
One wineglass of Old Tom gin.
Two or three small lumps of ice.

Shake up thoroughly, strain into a medium bar glass, and fill up with seltzer water.

Thomas was known for his showmanship as well. The mixing of his signature drink, The Blue Blazer, must have been something to behold. A meter of flaming blue liquid passing effortlessly from one mixing glass to another… As a rule, Thomas would only make this for someone if it was colder than 50 degrees outside or if the patron had a cold.

Other drinks involve more exotic fare, like the wrongly illegal and very delightfully warming liquor, absinthe. Some of these old-timey recipes will put down even the most stalwart of drinker.

There is a charming list of fruit and milk punches as well as recipes for lemonade and some older, less common, orangeades. For the organic DIY crowd these punch recipes will certainly make for a joyously bright sunny Saturday afternoon or a warm and cozy offering for a chilly New Years party.

Every recipe demands the real thing. Thomas lived in a time where substitutes were nonexistent and the real thing was needed to lend its flavor. Truly, Hesperus Press has done the lover of drink a great service by making this legendary manual available once again. The edition is garnished with contemporary illustrations.

Throughout the month I will be trying my hand at producing some of these drinks. This will include the two mentioned above. Raw egg and all…

I will of course keep you informed as to my findings. The things I do for literature. I tell you…


Artificial Paradises by Charles Baudelaire. Translation, Introduction, and Notes by Stacy Diamond. Citadel Press. ISBN: 9780806514833. 204 pp. $11.99 (used copies available through link). Buy it here and support The Devil’s Accountant.

One day a truly philosophical physician—something that is rarely seen—will write an authoritative study on wine, a kind of double psychological profile in which wine and man make up the two subjects. He will explain how and why certain beverages immeasurably augment the personality of the thinking being and create, as it were, a third person through mystical operation whereby natural man and wine, the animal and vegetal god, representing the Holy Father and Son of the Trinity, combine to engender a Holy Ghost, the superior man, who proceeds equally from the two.

—Charles Baudelaire, On Wine and Hashish

Charles Baudelaire was the most Satanic poet to ever put ink to page. He is allowed this title because of his special predicament, that of supreme libertine and Catholic mystic. This is easily demonstrated in the Dionyesian ubermench described above through the filter of transubstantiation and the Holy Trinity of Catholicism.

Artificial Paradises as published by Citadel contains the complete essays Baudelaire composed on the subject of altered states of mind. On Wine and Hashish is the first of these followed by the title work, which is broken down into two essays, The Poem of Hashish and An Opium-Eater.

The latter two works were very much influenced by Thomas de Quincey’s autobiographical masterpiece, Confessions of An English Opium-Eater and its sequel, the fantastical collection of essays housed in prose poetry titled Supiria de Profundis (Sighs from the depths). Thomas de Quincey as well as Edgar Allan Poe were two of Baudelaire’s most chief influences and he enjoyed many of the same habits as them.

The nature of the work is to serve as guidebook. Baudelaire created the book to serve as a manual of operation and training for those seeking the altered reality offered by drink or drug. Like all of his writings, Baudelaire pulls no punch and describes the most insidious aspects of the drugs. He also, of course, praises the sublime state they bring on.

The work we are concerned with today is On Wine and Hashish, in particular the brief but very charming section titled simply Wine. Composed essentially of a pair of fables, Baudelaire strays somewhat away from wine being the necessary ingredient and instead focuses on a more general notion of the alcoholic drink.

The better of the two fables focuses on an anonymous (and no doubt apocryphal) friend of the famous composer, Niccolo Paganini. The man was a Spaniard and the finest guitarist in the land. He was so adept in fact that in his hands the guitar became as a violin and Paganini (who was a young man at the time) marveled at the layered music the Spaniard could play with only a guitar. So what does this 18th century Segovia have to do with drinking? The man was a complete drunk. He would play only for money to purchase alcohol.

Baudelaire speaks no evil on wine and alcohol. He saves his darker verbiage for his dear “Spirit of Evil” hashish. Though a useful primer and guidebook to meditating on the states brought on by chemical augmentation, the slender section on wine shows us a slightly different lesson. It’s almost a dare.

Baudelaire, with no sense of comedy, offers up a new archetype: The drunkard as heroic artist. Or maybe it’s the artist as heroic drunkard. Whichever. Charles Baudelaire was fearless in that regard. Unflinchingly he could espouse the lifestyle of the libertine and reconstitute its outcome as beneficial sainthood.

After all, one should celebrate all life’s grandeurs.


Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis by Kingsley Amis. Introduction by Christopher Hitchens. Bloomsbury. ISBN: 97815986915282. 302 pp. $19.99. Buy it here and support The Devil’s Accountant.

I once shared a half-litre bottle of Polish Plain Spirit (140 proof) with two chums. I only spoke twice, first to say, ‘Cut out that laughing—it can’t have got to you yet,’ and not all that much later to say, ‘I think I’ll go to bed now.’

Kingsley Amis, —How Not To Get Drunk from On Drink

This is by far the most charming book I’ve read in the last year. Amis is painfully honest in his philosophy of drink, sharing it in equally honest terms. His advice is practical, accessible and delivered always with a nice helping of waggish humor. For those that delight in reading a drink recipe or being told of a particularly funny occurrence that happened to someone while drunk, well, then Amis is your man.

Bloomsbury’s edition is composed of three separate publications by Amis, On Drink, Everyday Drinking and How’s Your Glass?. I personally enjoyed On Drink the most, though all of them will have you in a state of well-humored thirstiness in short order.

The philosophy contained herein (and it is a full-fledged philosophy replete with numerated general principles) is a curmudgeonly one, but its grumpiness is found in all the right places. Here we do not find the faux indignation of the connoisseur, whose often-feigned taste can be made to dismiss perfectly good but pedestrian offerings. Amis has the palate to behave that way, but instead we find a pragmatist in our midst, one who realizes everything has its place.

G.P. (General Principle) 1: Up to a point (i.e. short of offering your guests one of those Balkan plonks marketed as wine, Cyprus sherry, poteen and the like), go for quantity rather than quality. Most people would rather have two glasses of ordinary decent port than one of a rare vintage. On the same reasoning, give them big drinks rather than small—with exceptions to be noted later. Serious drinkers will be pleased and reassured, unserious ones will not be offended, and you will use up less chatting-time going round to recharge glasses.

Practical advice aware of both the reality of the expense and the point of gathering together to drink. Here is yet another bit of advice along these lines:

G.P. 7: Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naïve—or worse.

Reading that now makes me smile. The first time I laughed. Do not mistake Amis though, for a drunk without any discriminating tastes. Indeed, his descriptions of beer and wine are impressive and clearly he possessed a very worthy palette.

The book is good fun for both recipes and advice. Though I do have to warn, substitutions with these and some of the older recipes mentioned in Thomas’ book above might not be wise.

Everyday Drinking is a wonderful addition to the drinker’s library and I want to thank the people at Bloomsbury for bringing back these entertaining books.

Evelyn Waugh’s Noonday Reviver

1 hefty shot of gin.
1 (1/2 pint) bottle Guinness
Ginger Beer

Put the gin and Guinness into a pint silver tankard and fill to the brim with ginger beer. I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the attribution, which I heard in talk, but the mixture will certainly revive you, or something. I should think two doses is the limit.

This recipe is offered by Amis as a refreshing drink, which is obvious from its name.

This was my first trial for the month. I made my way to one of my favorite Phoenixville, PA hideouts: The Pickering Creek Inn (good honest food and a well-chosen list of import and domestic beers - sixty or so in total - both draft and bottle). I chose Pickering primarily because they are one of the few bars to have the good sense to carry Guinness in its true form, that of the extra stout bottles. It doesn’t have the nitrous widget as in the draught cans or bottles (or the draught kegs) and this allows it to maintain a carbonated, coffee flavor that I find invigorating.

As a regular they indulged my request and it was only at the last moment that I foolishly realized my mistake. Ginger ale is not ginger beer. With the substitution of ginger ale the outcome was not bad. It was not good either. It reminded me of the original black tea produced by Sobe a decade or so ago. The crispness and stronger ginger flavor (less sweet) in ginger beer should greatly improve the drink. So, I will have to report back to you on this.

Next Monday I’ll be sharing the best in sodden fiction from right here in the good old U.S. of A.