1575 − Lucas Bulsius moves to Amsterdam and sets up his own distillery. He changes his family name to Bols and begins making jenever. Twenty-five years later, Bols becomes a preferred supplier to the Seventeen Gentlemen, the inner circle of the powerful Dutch East India Company, which means he gets first rights on cargos of herbs and spices, giving him an advantage.
1598 − Spanish settlers begin distilling aguardiente de caña (rum) from molasses.
1620 − The Pilgrims bring brandy and gin with them to America on the Mayflower. In 1657, they begin to import molasses from the Caribbean to open the first American distillery in Boston. In addition, by 1664, they build a second rum distillery in New York City.
Fun Alcohol Facts
›Slang terms for distilled alcohol include “aqua vitae,” “ardent spirits,” “belt,” “booze,” “firewater,” “giggle juice,” “grog,” “hard stuff,” “hooch” (refers to it being homemade), “John Barleycorn,” “liquid courage,” “moonshine” (made by the light of the moon), “nightcap,” “sauce,” “snort,” “swill,” “swish,” “tipple,” “toddy,” and “tot”.
›In the United Kingdom, it is legal for children to drink at home with their parents from age six and up. They can be in a pub if accompanied by a parent and, at age sixteen, drink beer or wine in a pub with their parents.
›Dr. David Kimball, lead historian at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, found a 1787 farewell party bar tab for George Washington in 1985. The bar tab showed that fifty-five attendees drank sixty bottles of claret, fifty-four bottles of Madeira, eight bottles of whiskey, twenty-two bottles of porter, eight bottles of hard cider, twelve bottles of beer, and seven bowls of alcoholic punch.
›According to Wikipedia, the country that drinks the most alcohol in the world is the Republic of Belarus, which is bordered by Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania. The country that drinks the most spirits is Haiti.
›The youngest drinking age in the world is sixteen and the oldest is twenty-five. There are twenty-three countries whose drinking age is sixteen years old (a couple include Cuba and Switzerland), and there are seven states in India where the drinking age is twenty-five. Alcohol is illegal in thirteen countries.
›The alcohol drinking habits of vervet monkeys were studied on St. Kitts island (where the monkeys stole drinks from sunbathing tourists). They learned that the monkeys’ drinking behaviors were similar to humans’: teetotaler, social drinker (the majority, who only drink with other monkeys), regular drinker, and binge drinkers that will drink themselves into a coma or death.
›Whiteclay, Nebraska, has a population of fourteen. They also have four liquor stores and their yearly beer sales are $3 million (the county next to them is dry).
›All Playboy bunnies working at Playboy Clubs were required to know 143 brands of liquor.
›Make your own flexible ice packs to keep in the freezer with your choice of plain vodka, gin, rum, tequila, or whiskey. Simply pour a cup of water and a cup of spirit into a freezer plastic bag, squeeze out the air, then seal. Seal that bag into another bag, then place in the freezer. Since the spirit will not freeze solid, it will create a flexible, slushy consistency.
›Finding the proof of a spirit dates back to the 1500s. They discovered if you soak a pellet of gunpowder in the spirit and the gunpowder could still burn, the spirits were rated above proof. In the 1800s, the gunpowder test was replaced by a specific-gravity test.
The 18th Amendment: All About Prohibition, Bootlegging, and Speakeasies
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A Brief History of American Prohibition
The nutshell version of the American Prohibition starts with American citizens in the late 1700s who fell into two groups: those who felt drinking alcohol was a sin (religious groups) and families weary of men spending money at saloons drinking while women and children were left at home penniless and starving. They believed that alcohol was a contributing factor in the rise in crime, health issues, relationship issues, and extreme poverty. Thus, the temperance movement was born.
For America, Prohibition officially started at one minute past midnight on January 17, 1920. However, Prohibition can be compared to a hurricane today in that you have plenty of warning before it hits, so large amounts of alcohol had previously been hoarded for years. When the supply ran out, alcohol was smuggled from Canada and Mexico, and bootleggers began making moonshine. People also took booze cruises twelve miles out (the legal distance) to international waters. Hidden secret bars called speakeasies opened, often hiding in a room behind a legal storefront business, or entrances were in alleys or in basements. It is believed that in New York City alone, there were over 100,000 speakeasies.
All of this created a booming business for bootleggers, but it also created a booming business for a new dark world of organized crime called the Mafia, which spread to all the large cities with many gangs and gangsters. The Mafia made and sold “bathtub gin” to speakeasies (and to whoever wanted it) by purchasing moonshine from bootleggers, or legally through medical suppliers by infusing it with juniper berries and other herbs in an effort to get the smell and taste of pre-ban gin. (They used large containers such as barrels—not bathtubs.) After bottling, they would cut the moonshine with water by placing the bottles and jugs under bathtub faucets. (The bottles would not fit under a sink faucet.) Around 1,000 people would die yearly because it is said that sometimes they would obtain cheap (and poisonous) industrial alcohol, which was used for fuels, polishes, etc., and use that in the cutting process as well.
As for cocktails, more mixers and ingredients were added to the Mafia’s bathtub gin to mask the nasty burn, such as the Bee’s Knees, made with lots of lemon juice and honey. Cocktails made with smuggled rum, whiskey, and brandy included the Twelve Mile Limit, Mary Pickford, and Between the Sheets. But the average middle-to-lower-class Americans just mixed—any booze they could get—at home with ingredients as simple as plain juices, herbs, and homemade syrups. These recipes will always remain a mystery.
The Top Ten Things to Know About Prohibition
1.Prohibition (the noble experiment) did not outlaw the drinking of alcohol—it outlawed the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol.
2.Prohibition did not only occur in America. It has happened at different times all over the world and still exists in some countries (and U.S. counties) today.
3.To date, the American Constitution has twenty-seven amendments. The Eighteenth Amendment is when American Prohibition began (Tuesday, January 20, 1920) and the Twenty-First Amendment is when Prohibition ended (Tuesday, December 5, 1933) for a total of thirteen years, ten months, and fifteen days.
4.The Eighteenth Amendment did not happen in one fell swoop. Many states banned alcohol before, starting in 1851. It was the same for the Twenty-First Amendment; many states did not lift the ban for years and, today, there are still counties that have alcohol bans resulting in “dry” counties. The Twenty-First Amendment left the decision up to the states.
5.The fight for nationwide American Prohibition was not something that happened in a few years. It began in the late 1700s with the Temperance Movement (a movement to subdue the widespread drunkenness in America).
6.Legal alcohol during Prohibition included
