Seamus Heaney's Sloe Gin

I detest poetry. Shameful for an Irishman to admit, but there it is. From Virgil's soporific arma virumque cano to the contemptible J. Alfred Prufrock, I hate it all. Even as I devoured all the pages of Tolkien when I was young, my eyes went dull when he dredged out those horrible, hoary short lines. Lovecraft, so gifted with language, was at his worst when he set to rhyming. It's not that I haven't been exposed to verse; I've translated Ovid and Beowulf, memorized German poetry (yes, there is such a thing), and had an appreciation for the structure of literature crammed into my head by well-meaning Jesuits.

Poetry, though, springs from some alien mindset I simply do not possess. Perhaps this is something diagnosable ("Patient's psychopathy presents clearly in his inability to appreciate neither iambic pentameter nor dactylic hexameter...") or perhaps it's somehow connected to my weird speech.

But ~ if the lines in question pertain to food or drink, I can put aside my revulsion for the genre long enough to understand that others may enjoy it. The barbecue poems of Jake Adam York, for instance. If my eyes glazed reading them, it was at least a tangy barbecue glaze. Give me barbecue over barbecue poems any day, but the world is big enough for both.

Then there's the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney. His poem Sloe Gin is one of the rare ones that caught my eye, if not my imagination. Sloes are tart, plum-like fruits culled from hedgerow bushes called blackthorn. In rural parts of the British Isles and isolated spots in North America, the berries are pricked (or sometimes frozen to break down cell walls), then immersed in sugar or syrup and gin, vodka, or other spirits for a long maturation. Regardless of the spirit used, the resulting cordial is a stillroom favorite always dubbed sloe gin.

Here's Heaney.

Sloe Gin

The clear weather of juniper
darkened into winter.
She fed gin to sloes
and sealed the glass container.

When I unscrewed it
I smelled the disturbed
tart stillness of a bush
rising through the pantry.

When I poured it
it had a cutting edge
and flamed
like Betelgeuse.

I drink to you
in smoke-mirled, blue-
black sloes, bitter
and dependable.

-- Seamus Heaney (1984) Station Island

If you've made it this far, pour yourself a glass of sweet sloe nectar and listen to the poem in Gaelic.

What is he going on about? Mortality? Sex? Lost love? Don't ask me; I just drink the stuff. 

Bookshelf: Forgotten Skills of Cooking

Every time we go to the supermarket, 

an increasing number of items 

are oven-ready or ready-to-eat: 

cheese is grated, mushrooms sliced, 

fruit segmented — I swear, if they sold toast 

we’d buy it.

~ Darina Allen

A few years ago, I found myself at the home of San Francisco cocktail writer and sometimes bartender, Erik Ellestad. A number of liquor writers had descended on the Bay Area, some to cover meetings of the American Distilling Institute, some just to eat and imbibe. While the rest of us mixed drinks, Pennsylvania blogger Rick Stutz made butter.

Yes, he made butter.

This is both as mundane and amazing as it sounds. Mundane because, well, butter is ubiquitous in America: even if you don’t eat it, you know where to get some. Amazing because almost nobody actually makes the stuff at home. I recognized instantly what Stutz was doing when I heard the mixer beating cream way too long. I was irked with myself because, as simple, straightforward, and easy as is it to make butter at home, it hadn’t even occurred to me as an option — and I’d grown up in a house with a butter churn.

Darina Allen found that over half of the students at her cookery school in Ireland had likewise forgotten how to make butter. Her epiphany came when one who had overwhipped her cream was on the verge of throwing it out. Allen stopped her and took the opportunity to teach the class how to make butter from the failed whipped cream. The students hadn’t necessarily forgotten what they had already known; rather, as a society, the Irish had lost kitchen skills that their grandmothers had known.

Butter bats in ice water

Allen set about correcting that alarming loss that by hosting a series of “forgotten skills” classes at her heralded Ballymaloe Cookery School. Courses included “How to Keep a Few Chickens in the Garden,” “How to Cure a Pig in a Day,” “How to Build a Smoker and Smoke your own Food,” and others on foraging, gardening, dairy, and other topics that spoke to eating what one grew. In her love for game, stillroom crafts, animal husbandry, and making the most of every scrap, she’s a bit like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (with good hair). She still teaches at Ballymaloe and, if you’re so inclined, you can sign up for classes. Most are under €150.

If, however, you cannot quite make it to County Cork — where my mother’s family is from — you are in luck. Mrs. Allen has spun her courses into a book: Forgotten Skills of Cooking. With 700 recipes in 600 pages (and weighing in at just under 5 pounds), it’s one of those books that might — just might — stand in as the sole cookbook for those who want only one. For those drawn by the rustic allure of modern urban homesteading, that goes double.

If you’ve ever thought you’d like to cure your own hams or make marmalade rather than buy it, do yourself a favor and check out the book. A casual flipping of the pages is enough to tell you that an Irish hand is at the stove. You will find recipes for soda bread, salmon, periwinkles, spiced beef, crubeens (i.e., pig’s feet), Irish stew, champ, and colcannon. Overall, though, the recipes strike a balance between hominess and worldly sophistication. You’ll find Moroccan takes on lamb, numerous Italian and French recipes, smoked eggs, duck rillettes, How to Make Crackling, applesauce, sweetbreads, hand-cut potato chips, paneer, porter cake, etc.

There are instructions for raising chickens (“Everyone knows how passionate I am about keeping hens”) and hanging game with extensive notes on preserving and vegetables. The tone that comes across more clearly, regardless of the topic at hand, is one of experience and encouragement, telling us, frankly, that some kinds of forgetting are warranted.

Shaping the butter

What kind? Undoubtedly, it’s the inner voice that tells us, when we see a looming expiration date, automatically to throw out that carton of yogurt or that when we see three moldy berries in a box, it tells us to bin the whole thing rather than discard the fuzzy bits and make a little pot of jam. That’s the voice to forget. Rather, use your own senses to tell when something’s bad or off. Bad berries are bad berries and if they can’t be used, then so be it, but a date of expiry can’t possibly be one’s only guide.

When you understand that electricity came to Mrs. Allen’s home village only when she was only 9 years old, the inherent thriftiness of her approach makes sense. When you’ve lived through the last three years of economic turmoil, you realize her timing could not have been better.

Forgotten Skills of Cooking is a tome I’m glad to have. It jogs my memory of foods and preparations I’ve already forgotten and explains how the old ways once again have become new.

Thank you, Mrs. Allen, for reminding me that I did indeed grow up in a house with a butter churn. I hope you don’t mind if I use my KitchenAid mixer, though, when making my next batch of the yellow stuff.

Note: for the following recipe from Forgotten Skills of Cooking, butter bats (or, as my mother calls them, butter hands) are small wooden paddles used to handle to form fresh butter into manageable cubes, logs, lumps, and balls. They are grooved on one side to allow liquid to stream away and use minimal surface area to shape the butter.

Butter

2.5 quarts/liters of unpasteurized or pasteurized heavy cream at room temperature
2 tsp pickling salt (optional)

Soak the wooden butter bats or hands in iced water for about 30 minutes so they do not stick to the butter.

Pour the heavy cream into a cold, sterilized mixing bowl. If it’s homogenized, it will still whip, but not as well. If you’re using raw cream and want a mor traditional taste, leave ut to ripen in a cool place, where the temperature is about 46F, for up to 48 hours.

Beat the cream at medium speed in a food mixer until it is thick. First, it will be softly whipped, the stiffly whipped. Continue until the whipped cream collapses and separates into butterfat globules. The buttermilk will separate from the butter and slosh around the bowl.

Tip the mixture into a cold, spotlessly clean sieve and drain well. The butter remains in the sieve while the buttermilk drains into a bowl. The buttermilk can be used to make soda bread or as a thirst-quenching drink (it will not taste sour). Put the butter back into a clean bowl and beat for another 30 seconds to 1 minute to expel more buttermilk. Remove and drain as before.

Fill the bowl containing the butter with very cold water. Use the butter bats or your clean hands to knead the butter to force out as much buttermilk as possible. This is important, as any buttermilk left in the butter will sour and the butter will spoil very quickly. If you handle the butter too much with warm hands, it will liquefy.

Drain the water, and wash twice more, until the water is completely clear.

Weigh the butter into 4oz, 8oz, or 1lb slabs. Pat into shape with the wet butter hands or bats. Make sure the butter hands or bats have been soaked in ice-cold water for at least 30 minutes before using to stop the butter sticking to the ridges. Wrap in parchment or waxed paper and keep chilled in a fridge. The butter also freezes well.

Makes about 1 kilo (2.2 lbs) butter and 1 quart/liter buttermilk.

Recipe note: If you prefer salted butter, add ¼ tsp of pickling salt — also called “canning and pickling salt” — for every 4oz of butter before shaping it.

Photo note: Other than the cover image of the book, each of the images here are photos by Peter Cassidy and can be found in Forgotten Skills of Cooking.

Darina Allen (2010)
Forgotten Skills of Cooking: The Time-Honored Ways are the Best — Over 700 Recipes Show You Why
600 pages (hardback)
Kyle Books
ISBN: 1906868069
$40.00

Goes well with:

• Darina Allen is an acclaimed teaching instructor at Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork. Every country, I suppose, could claim it has a local Julia Child — but most agree that Mrs. Allen is undoubtedly Ireland’s.
• Erik Ellestad writes about food and drink at Underhill-Lounge where he famously has been recreating drinks recipes from the the Savoy Cocktail Book “starting at the first, Abbey, and ending at the last, Zed.” At last check, he was one drink away from completion. Mind the anomie, Erik.
• Rick Stutz writes about cocktails, heavy on the homemade ingredients, and with a perceptible tiki bias at Kaiser Penguin.
• Morton’s sells 4lb boxes of canning and pickling salt with no iodine or free-flowing agents. Me? I’d go with some finely ground sea salt.
• Mrs. Allen does not cover making one's own whiskey. I do. 

Stick to the Cratur

It's no secret I'm fond of the cratur. The what? You might recognize it as the creature, short for one of the good creatures of the Lord. Still not ringing any bells? Oh, ok. Whiskey. Irish whiskey and specifically poitin, the homemade liquor still made in the west of Ireland, despite the common notion in both Dublin and Belfast that the stuff is no longer made.

Unless your ears are tuned to Irish dialects, cratur is an odd word. Here with just such a say-what? Irish accent is singer Tom Lenihan from 1967. The lyrics as posted on YouTube are not quite what he's singing, so I corrected them below. I think.



Let your quacks and newspapers be quotin’ their capers
About curing the vapors, the scratch, and the gout.
With their powders and potions, their serums and lotions
Upholding their notions, they're mighty put out.

We don’t know the true physic of all things prophetic
And pitch to the divil, cramp, colic, and spleen.
You'll find it I think if you take a big drink
With your mouth to the brink of a jug of poteen.

Then stick to the cratur the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys.
Oh what moderation or dose in the nation
Can give consolation like whiskey, me boys?

Come guess me this riddle, what beats pipe and fiddles
What's stronger than mustard and milder than cream?
What best wets your whistle, what's clearer than crystal,
Sweeter than honey and stronger than steam?

What will make the dumb talk, what will make the lame walk?
What’s the elixir of life and philosopher's stone?
And what helped Mr. Brunel to dig the Thames Tunnel
Sure, wasn't it whiskey from ould Inishowen?

Then stick to the cratur the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys.
Oh lord, I’d not wonder, if lightning and thunder
Weren't made from the plunder of whiskey, me boys.

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Drinking in Belfast

The Polish bartender flashed a blushing smile. He reached over the bar, pulled my head closer, and planted a surprise kiss. “Tonight,” he beamed over the unce-unce-unce club music, “You drink for free!”

Had we been in Kraków or Gdańsk, this might have played out differently. But in Belfast, where I’d come to hear music, the Polish are a new and growing minority. Poles had immigrated in appreciable numbers only since Poland joined the EU in 2004 but already in Irish towns, business banners in English and Polish—or even Gaelic and Polish—are no longer the discordant signage they once seemed.

Sebastian, the beaming bartender, came after hearing of job opportunities. Before settling on Northern Ireland’s capital, he hadn’t spoken any English. Like many of his compatriots, he began work in the service industry; like many, he was self-conscious of his fluency. He shouldn’t have worried.

During an idle moment, I quizzed him about the North and he, in turn, asked about the United States. After days of exploring the city and slogging through the occasional barely-intelligible Norn Iron way with words, his flawless English—newly acquired yet nearly devoid of accent—was a blessing on my ears. I told him so.

Sebastian, apparently, had a button and I’d just pushed it. After that, he refused any money; true to his word, I drank for free.




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Irish Potatoes Three Ways

It is often asked of me:

“ When did you first begin making candy?”
And I am obliged to say
I cannot honestly remember,
for as children we were allowed
all the candy we wished,
provided we made it ourselves
—and thus made sure of its purity.

~ Mary Elizabeth
My Candy Secrets (1919)

It’s St. Patrick’s Day this week, and—regardless of background—for mid-Atlantic sweet-tooths that means Irish Potatoes.














Though some home confectioners do make mashed-potato candies, there isn’t a spud to be found in this Pennsylvania candy. Turns out, it’s not all that Irish, either. But this time of year, Philadelphia is besotted with little round coconut candies that, once rolled in cinnamon, do look a bit like tiny taters.

For those Philadelphia expats who treasure the faux little tubers but don’t have access to them, I’ve put together two recipes that use common ingredients and one for more professional kitchens. See? It’s not all about beer and whiskey for St. Patrick’s Day (though if you poured a wee drop of spirits while making them, who’s to know?).

Rowley’s Irish Potatoes

A recipe from the days I lived in Philadelphia and worked behind the scenes at the Mütter Museum. How can I tell? Well, two ways: Irish potatoes are a solidly—though not exclusively—a Philadelphia-area confection, probably a relic from the days when the city’s sugar refineries pumped out a third of the sugar used in the US.* Though rum is not strictly a traditional ingredient, it doesn’t make a hateful addition.

8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
4 oz unsalted butter, room temperature (Plugra)
2 lbs confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla extract
14 oz shredded coconut
1 Tbl rum (Mount Gay Eclipse), optional
Powdered cinnamon

Cream the butter and cream cheese in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Add half the sugar, mix, scrape down the bowl, then add the rest and beat until smooth. Add the vanilla extract, coconut, and rum (if using). Mix to blend. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate one hour to stiffen the mass. Roll into small balls about ¾” across. Roll in cinnamon, shake off excess, and store in an airtight container.

Note that these benefit from a day’s rest at room temperature to allow the flavors to merge and the raw taste of the butter to mellow.

* How else can I tell? The Mütter is a museum of medical history and pathological anatomy. I spent a great deal of time analyzing skeletal remains as part of a repatriation program to determine which remains in the collections were Native American and which were not. My original notes for forming the sweetmeats called for rolling them into small balls, “slightly smaller than a defleshed distal thumb phalanx.” Work, clearly, was on my mind.

Irish Potatoes #2

This is a recipe from a Philadelphia friend who uses fresh cream in her version, though she advises storing them in the refrigerator until an hour before serving.

Dusting
1 tsp powdered cocoa
2 Tbl ground cinnamon
2 Tbl confectioners’ sugar

Center
1 ½ cups unsweetened coconut flakes
1 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar
3 Tbl heavy cream
½ tsp vanilla extract

Mix all dusting ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

Finely chop the coconut in a food processor. Add the other ingredients and pulse until it forms a mass. Roll out 1” balls of the mixture and set aside for an hour in the refrigerator to firm. Roll each small white center in the dusting, shake off excess, cover, and store in the fridge.

Candy Irish Potatoes for St. Patrick’s Day

W.O. Rigby has an unusual take. Most recipes and commercial examples call for coconut as de rigeur and the small size is taken for granted. His 1920 recipe calls for almond and bon bon cream and are substantially larger, suggesting something more similar to the Christmastime marzipan confections we see in German and French confection traditions.

Take five pounds of bon bon cream and into knead one pound of almond paste, stiffening it with XXXX powdered sugar while working, if necessary. When thoroughly kneaded, shape into small spuds about the size of an ink bottle, and while moist rub with powdered cinnamon. Use almond paste or pignola nuts pressed in sides to represent eyes or sprouts, or simply make little dents for the eyes. Care must be taken to get the cinnamon to stick good.

Rigby’s Reliable Candy Teacher (13th edition, 1920)

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Bookshelf: The Sovereign People are in a Beastly State

Inishowen swarms with private stills
and an active person is necessary
to suppress them.

~ 1750’s parliamentary report

With St. Patrick’s Day fast approaching, let’s talk about Irish whiskey. For now, the illicit kind.

At almost 300 pages before the index, Aiden Manning’s 2003 account of illicit distilling in Donegal, a single Ulster county perched in the very northwest of Ireland, is a work of love. Or possibly an historian’s obsession with liquor and those who make it in secret. His densely packed and thoroughly annotated pages are underscored by tales familiar to those who follow moonshine narratives in America—killings, beatings, corrupt police, high-minded reformers, and clergy whose sermons railing against local distillers may in fact be fueled by the products of clandestine stills.

If the stories are somehow familiar, it is no doubt because Ulster, that province so rife with strife for hundreds of years, hosted an ingrained culture of smalltime distilling. Many Ulstermen (and women) who migrated to Pennsylvania in the 18th century subsequently migrated south along the Appalachians, where mountain distilling took on a distinctly Irish cast that continues to this day. Even the distilling vocabulary of Irish poitin-makers aligns with that of American moonshiners. Those interested in Appalachian distilling would do well to look to its Irish antecedents and parallel developments: Donegal Poitin fills the role nicely.

Manning looks at the products of private distilling (that is, poitin or Irish moonshine) from its early years through the 1850’s when Ireland’s revenue police disbanded and the aftermath of a series of famines diverted official attention from the matter. He reviews in meticulous detail evolving legislation against poitin as the Irish try to come to grips with the moral, economic, and theological ramifications of endemic private distilling.

For most of the period he covers, illicit distilling truly was endemic and startling, given the number of small stills seized, destroyed, and sometimes put to use by shady revenue agents. To back up his claims about the ubiquity of illegal distilling, Manning taps voluminous records of revenue agents, governmental ministers and magistrates, and court officers as well as old deeds and private accounts from the National Archives of Ireland, Trinity College, the British Library, and other venerable collections. It is, admittedly, sometimes dry reading.

But stick with it and an image emerges of centuries-old battle of wits between those who would uphold revenue laws and seemingly every man, woman, and child in the county hellbent on either making or selling whiskey. Manning’s first words, in fact, are “I am deeply indebted to illicit distilling, as without it, I would probably not exist.” His father, a Garda (or policeman), had been sent to Connemara to suppress poitin-making while his mother was there to teach knitting as an alternate skill. We are fortunate that their efforts to quash the practice led to a damn fine celebration of it.

Despite the charts and facts and figures, Donegal Poitin is indeed a celebration of the Donegal people distilling barley, sometimes oats, and very rarely potatoes into spiritus loci. Distilling kept the Ulsterfolk through all but the hardest of times and, despite crushing poverty, Manning paints many locals as (mostly) honest people beset by corrupt revenue agents spurred on by poorly-planned and special interest-sponsored legislation.

Herein, revenue agents are not villains per se: as in America, local constabulary are often portrayed as sympathetic to distillers’ needs while poorly-paid officers dispatched from other areas widely lacked such sympathy and often turned to bribery, thuggery, and sometimes outright murder to earn what they could. The 1830’s reforms enacted by Colonel William Brereton cut almost 2/3 of the revenue police as incompetent, corrupt, and more of a danger to the populace than the distillers they were charged with to put down. Though the revenue police disbanded officially about twenty years after this, the professional code of conduct Brereton established greatly improved the respect such officers commanded—at least when they were within sight. The light of the moon may have revealed an entirely different story.


Donegal Poitin: A History
Aiden Manning (2003)
Donnegal Printing Company
Letterkenny
€13.95

Goes well with:

A Whiskey Forge review of John McGuffin’s In Praise of Poteen.

Review: In Praise of Poteen

Throughout the book

I have spelt the word ‘poitín.’
This is the correct Irish spelling;
the reason for the emasculated
‘poteen’ on the cover
is my publisher’s idea.

~ John McGuffin
In Praise of Poteen

During the Troubles (Na Trioblóidí), those tragic years not so long ago when Ireland nearly tore itself apart in armed conflict, Irishman John McGuffin penned a lighthearted tribute to that most Irish of spirits, whiskey poitín. In light of the armed and bloody conflict going on, McGuffin’s sly humor comes across as almost subversive in its ability to appeal to audiences on either end of the conflict as he weaves together anecdotes about illicit distilling.

Among Americans, even American distillers, a popular notion holds sway that the illicitly-made poitín is nothing more complex than fermented and distilled potatoes, which Ireland has in great abundance. No doubt, it can be, and has been—I’ve met Irish distillers who related convincing methods for wresting liquor from spuds—but potatoes are not the easiest thing to convert to spirits, and authentic poitín has been made of barley, oats, and other grains for centuries before taters put down rootlets in Irish soil. Barley recipes are particularly venerable. But a lack of grains doesn’t mean it’s not the real McCoy. As with American moonshine, now very old recipes call for sugar, either granulated or as treacle.

McGuffin knows this all too well. In fact, in one “grain bill” he gives us:

At least four stone of oranges
8 pounds of sugar (brown)
1½ ounces yeast
10 gallons of water

“When properly made,” he assured us in 1978, “it doesn’t taste too bad.” Looks like there was at least a gallon of the stuff to go around once all was said and done. As anyone who has made a custom of sampling clandestine liquor since then can tell you, McGuffin admits that some poitín is rubbish, while other examples clearly outshine “parliament” (that is, tax-paid) whiskey.

I had heard while traveling in Ireland that the Troubles were hard on the moonshine trade. McGuffin elaborates. Distributors hauling illicit whiskey in carts, wagons, and—later—cars and trucks have always used subterfuge to slip the product past guards, into towns, in markets, and even courthouses. The Troubles and the violence they entailed changed the way that the Gardaí (the police) looked at suspicious vehicles and behavior. Routine search-and-seizure gambits gave way to more serious investigations into suspicious activities. Autos and lorries on the roads were more likely to be searched, especially near the border with Northern Ireland, since the contraband might just as easily be arms and explosives as a drop of home-distilled whiskey. Hauling a load of empty bottles? Who’s to say they are not for Molotov cocktails rather than homemade liquor? Across the border, local constabulary and the British Army were also on the hunt as vehicles were examined with dogs and mirrors on poles. Under such scrutiny, many haulers decided the time was right to get out of the business.

If it’s straight-up recipes and detailed how-to you’re wanting, this isn’t the book. The few recipes included serve as embellishments to stories about Irish whiskey, its illegal production, its history, and the cat-and-mouse games of diversion and detection between distillers and Gardaí who pursued them. Overall, his rueful tale is one of a craft in retreat except in remote areas long known for an appreciation for “the cratur.” Given the importance of Irish folk distilling in shaping the tenor, methods, and even vocabulary of American moonshiners, however, it’s an important read for understanding the parallel rise of folk distilling on these shores.

Buy it: Appletree Press released a new printing in 2002 that is available from Amazon and Amazon UK. Or, if you're in Dublin, drop by the massive Hodges Figgis (56-58 Dawson Street, Dublin 2) and score a copy.

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Poitin Fails to Induce Rowley Coma

My family is not a whiskey making family, but we are, in large measure, Irish; that is, we are a whiskey drinking family.

After years of tracking down modern American home distillers and old-school moonshiners, I jumped at an unexpected opportunity not long ago to visit Ireland and look into poitíners, transatlantic cousins to our own whiskey-makers.

Making poitín, as homemade whiskey is known in Ireland, is a dead or, at least, a dying craft. Everyone I spoke to about moonshine in Belfast and Dublin confirmed it. Eccentric old men, they allowed, may tend dubious and antiquated mountain stills, but nobody actually drinks the stuff.

Then I went out west.

Within four hours of arriving in Sligo on the island’s western fringe, I had been offered local whiskey by my cab driver, two men in the first pub, a musician in the second, and the owner of the third. By night’s end, two men who initially maintained they knew nothing of poitín shared recipes and revealed a suspiciously savvy knowledge of distilling techniques. In western Ireland, it seemed, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without knocking over a bottle of white mule.

Just as with moonshine, misunderstanding, hearsay, and outright lies regularly obscure truths that a simple round or two of fieldwork would reveal. Much of passes for hard facts is absolute twaddle passed on from one gullible non-distiller to another, neither of them able to tease fact from folklore or just storytelling embellishments. Take, for instance, this from the BBC:

'Oh, my God I Think my Throat is on Fir...' These were the last words of a foolish man after drinking a small tot of poitín. If you ever drink it, which you should not, do not drink more than a thimble full. After drinking a lot of poitín, it is possible to pass out and stay passed out for a few days. Those that do this will have a frightful headache and should not drink anything in the morning, as that will just get them drunk again without doing anything for the headache.

Drivel. Of course you should drink homemade liquor if you trust the source, though, as with any strong alcohol, moderation is key to staying vertical (and, let’s face it, sources are not always to be trusted). But home-distilled spirits are not some magical potions that induce comas. Refusing a drop of whiskey would have been rude. Missing that drop would have been a shame: as clear as water, smooth, with polished notes of barley, the work of an artisan.

If, in your travels, profession, or avocation, you should come across homemade spirits, do try some. Be aware that not all of it is good, but some examples are near nirvana.

Variant spellings

Poitín, which refers to the "little pot" in which clandestine spirits may be made in Ireland, is an Irish word pronounced roughly "put-cheen." In English, you are apt to find it spelled potcheen or poteen (though feisty Irishmen have referred to such spellings as "emasculated"). Commercial examples do exist—though, being made and sold openly, they could hardly be called the real McCoy, whatever merits they might otherwise possess.

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For Us, A Guinness

Kim Murphy writes in today’s Los Angeles Times that younger generations in Ireland are turning away from Guinness, the quintessential Irish pint, to…Budweiser. And, also with an influx of cheaper labor from Eastern Europe, to some formerly unfamiliar brews. I can understand Murphy’s or Smithwick’s, but Budweiser just comes off as out of place.

…Even Guinness, it seems, is not immune to the forces of open markets, suburban sprawl and Ireland's evolution from an impoverished backwater of emigrants to one of Europe's economic powerhouses, a country that imports cheap labor now from Eastern Europe.

Even as sales have boomed elsewhere, Guinness has seen its business decline in Ireland over most of the last seven years, a trend that eased only slightly last year with a growth rate of 3.5%.

One does see a lot of Budweiser drinking going on in Ireland, but the Eastern European influence is undeniable, too; in some places out west, signs switch from English and Irish Gaelic to Irish and Polish. Beer selections reflect the shift as well.

Wherever I go, I try to drink local, so in Ireland I’m not drinking Bud.

While in Sligo on the trail of poitin (that’s Irish moonshine to you and me), I stopped off for a meal and a pint at Andy Donaghy’s pub/restaurant Coach Lane. Unfortunately for my belly, the meal I'd been anticipating was not to be—I’d been delayed by a trio of moonshiners masquerading as musicians and Andy’s kitchen was closed for the night. I did, however, treat myself to a tasty late-night meal substitute of Guinness and Taytos.

Now, dat’s livin’.


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