Representative as it was of the type of tomfoolery that I don't usually enjoy in bartending contests, there was somehow something endearing about the Cabana Cachaca Olympics, held on Royal St down the block from the Hotel Monteleone.

Thanks to Zach Rose for taking pictures on behalf of Tipsy Texan so that I wouldn't have to walk around with a camera pretending I knew what I was doing

I didn't know many of the folks on the other team, but my colleagues Jeff Boley (Paggi House) and Bill Norris represented our fair city on the Red "Home" team of New Orleans and Texas.

Bill is shouting something very important right here but I don't know what the hell it was. I was drinking cachaca.

Please join us for another culinary cocktail excursion with the final installment of the Tipsy Tech Summer Class series! This week's topic: brunch cocktails. We will be discussing the Ramos Gin Fizz, Irish Coffee made right (ie no Baileys and no, for the love of all things sacred NO creme de menthe), the proper Bloody Mary (ie made with fresh ingredients and GIN), and why the Mimosa is tired and can suck it.

We wrapped up our Summer Series with a brief survey of Brunch Cocktails, a completely un-opinionated selection made by yours truly. The list of drinks that I would have done if left to my own devices could have gone on for days--you will see no Death in the Afternoon, for example, though that seems like a lovely way to wash down some corned beef hash.

We started off with the St Germain Cocktail—The signature cocktail of St. Germain liqueur, created in 2006 by Simon Difford, or at least that's what I read on the internets. This is one of my favorite simple champagne cocktails and I love to show it off when discussing "brunch" drinks because it is so much better than Her Tiredness, the Mimosa. I hate her ass almost as much as I love the St. G. And especially since they started producing the St G carafe, which spells out how to make the cocktail, so anybody can do it. I rounded up a carafe for each of the participants in tonight's class and sent them out into the world to spread the good word.

Irish Coffee—one of the most misunderstood drinks in the book, that I have already elaborated on here, so I will only touch briefly on it. This is a cocktail that is fabulous when made properly, and a truckstop trick nightmare when done improperly, which is how I feel it is most often done. Hot coffee, rich simple syrup, Irish whiskey, and thickened heavy cream. That's all it gets--no Bailey's, no Creme de Menthe, and no Readi Whip.

Ramos Gin Fizz--created in New Orleans in the 1880's and was popular until Prohibition...and never seen on a menu these days because nobody wants to shake that sh!t as long as you have to shake it to make it right. Some colleagues of mine have reportedly devised a plan to help alleviate this: they add a dollar to the price for every subsequent order for the drink after the first one on any given shift. For example, the first Ramos is $10. The 5th one is $16, and so on. I don't know if this is rumor or fact but I sure do like it

Bloody Mary—the history of this drink is debatable and frankly I have never been a huge fan of it. Two things that are important to me when discussing this drink: 1) when the drink was first brought to the US in the early decades of the twentieth century, it was made as a gin drink called the Red Snapper due to the unavailability of vodka in the US at the time--can you imagine such a glorious era when a vodka shortage led to gin drinking? 2) As with all cocktails, the commercial mixes available at the grocery store are not the way to go. Make or buy tomato juice and season it yourself.

Brandy Milk Punch—this is a famous cocktail in New Orleans, where they make it with whole milk, brandy or cognac, and a little sugar, sometimes a little vanilla and/or nutmeg. We decided to replicate the Green Pastures version, because it is basically a boozy milkshake and who wouldn’t want one of those?

What we did not make tonight: The Mimosa, may she rest in peace

NY Times food columnist Amanda Hesser has taken a tipsy time travel through that paper's considerable archives and excavated a whopping 40 pages of drink recipes for her new book, The Essential New York Times Cook Book. If this book is true to the form of the Craig Claiborn-era Times cookbooks, it will have a thousand+ recipes and be approximately the size of a major city's phone book (speaking of time travel). Even in that context, this is an impressive showing.

America has never quite settled the question of whether it’s a wine- or beer-drinking nation, so our liquid preferences have always been a free-for-all. Wine for the erudite. Cocktails for the adventuresome. Beer for the mainstream.

(...And all three if you're a Tipsy Texan.) So begins the chapter on Drinks, Cocktails, Punches and Glög. Hesser notes that the Times began publication a decade before Jerry Thomas's game-changing 1862 manual on cocktails, and has borne witness to the codification and mainstreaming of American mixed beverages.

Apropos of its nickname, "the newspaper of record", the Times has also witnessed other major milestones in American history, like, oh, the Civil War, for example. Which is why it pisses me off when intellectual lightweights attempt to slander the Times as "liberal media", irrespective of the fact that it pre-dates our contemporary understanding of such distinctions, and will hopefully outlive it. When I was a fledging journalism major at the University of Texas, I took the intro class from Dr. Stephen Reese, a legend in his own right. The A Section of the Times was required daily reading, and we had to subscribe to the print edition as part of the course. On the first day of class, a girl asks the professor, "If we live in Austin, TX, why do we have to read a paper from New York?" Dr Reese seemed a little surprised by the question (one would think an aspiring Journalism major would be able to differentiate between the Times and the Statesman, or worse, the East Bumblefcuk Reporter), but responded kindly, "The NY Times is one of the finest journalistic institutions in the world...". The paper still shows up on my doorstep each morning, along with the local rag.

Hesser will be in Austin for the Texas Book Festival, and will be doing a book signing event at Rainlily Farm on October 16, 7-9pm, where the Tipsy Texans will be proudly demonstrating cocktails from the venerable newspaper's past. (And, one may hope, sampling a cocktail or two). Tickets available at the link above. Thanks to Marla Camp of Edible Austin magazine for help with coordinating this event.

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So, Tipsy is trapped at the Gingerman this fine Labor Day afternoon while Tex is off at a meeting for a project in East Texas. I'm sipping on a 512 Two - delicious - and working through the latest Architectural Record. The interesting thing that caught my attention is the crew of three guys, a woman and a little boy. Out of nowhere they began a discussion about cocktails they've had lately, about the ills of HFC in said cocktails and how the scene in Austin is exciting and full of all manner of new craft cocktails. I could not agree more. They ended their discussion talking about the Old Fashioned and how it should just be spirit (whiskey), sugar, water and bitters. This all warms my heart and proves that all of the hard work and evangelization going on in Austin is making inroads into the cultural fabric of the city. People like Bill Norris, Rob Pate, Adam Bryant, Billy Hanke, Lara Nixon, Adam Harris, Moxy Castro, and David Alan are working to continue moving the cocktail revolution forward. They embrace the history and understanding of what was and are adding to the pantheon of new classics with their own creations. Support your craft bartenders in Austin, because they are a treasure.