Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Any idea why it is called a "hurricane" glass?
As far as I know, it's just the shape, which I guess is supposed to be reminiscent of hurricanes or tornadoes in a way.
Hurricane vases and hurricane lamps have a similiar shape, for example.
Oh, hi RedsYNWA, didn't see your post until now.
I'm constantly looking for new drink recipes to add to my collection, so I'm pretty sure I came across that frozen banana daiquiri recipe before. Personally, I'm not a big fan of bananas, but another reason why I never tried making this drink is that I don't own a blender.
I do, however, own one of those retro Hamilton Beach mixers, which I have been using to make one of my milkshakes the other day.
It works well with ice cream based drinks, but it is not capable of crushing ice or cutting fruits. But since all of the blended drinks I currently plan on making are ice cream based anyway, a proper blender is not on my shopping list for the bar at the moment.
Thanks for sharing, though. 
A doctor goes into a bar and orders a daiquiri.
The bartender says, "Would like hickory nuts in that?"
The doctor says, "what a crazy idea! I'll pass"
The bartender says, "You should definitely try a hickory daiquiri doc!"
Drinks remind me of this:
I was a bit younger, and hanged around in local bar at weekend. The bartender was a friend of mine, and I got a little bit bored. She had a book of cocktails and drinks, and I offered her that I give a page number and she makes me that drink. Now here in Finland we have strict alcohol regulation how much alcohol they can sell in one go. No one follows it strictly, but in theory you can't buy two or more shots or proportions of alcohol at the same time.
That didn't bother her, I gave a number and she asked if I was sure. Of course I was.
So she started to do it, and in the end I got a glass full of something clear, with one lemon slice on the edge. She said that the book said there should be sugat coating on the glass but she wasn't going to do it. So I tasted it...
It tasted horrible, and when I asked what was it she said "silver bullet". It had 6cl of gin and 4cl of whiskey. And that's it. I paid for it, and spent some time drinking it. When I was finished, I stood up to hit the bathroom. And at that point the alcohol started to have an effect. When I came back, a friend came by me and asked what's up. I told him that there's a new awesome drink at the bar...
When I looked the silver bullet from the net, it's a bit different there. But in the book it was just gin and whiskey, with a lemon slice and sugared glass. Feel free to try, you won't need many of those to have the party started!
We have pretty much the same rules here in British Columbia.
The total volume of alcohol must not exceed 6cl of hard liquor.
There are different rules for wine and beer, and I no longer remember them.
I was once qualified to be a bartender, but in our bar, it was beer, wine and highballs.
I never was called on to make anything fancier than a Paralyser
Well, the weekend is done. One more day of work and I'll be able to catch a break. And only two weeks remaining in total.
Just a week or so ago, a little kid saw us while we were patrolling the streets, and asked his mum "What are these guys doing, mommy?"
I chimed in: "Yeah... good question. We've been wondering the same thing."
I was half-joking. Throughout the months, my colleague and I have wondered out loud more than once about the point of our job. Obviously, I'm glad I got it, and I'm sure so is he, with both of us being failed freelancers. It earns us some much needed cash, makes our CVs look a lot better, and hopefully opens up some new career doors for the future.
Of course, I will make sure to look for the next step right away, but I also definitely welcome a little time off once I'm done this September - including some time for poker. Aside from the positives mentioned above, my job had some other consequences too, which were less desirable. The disrupted daily schedule thanks to my night shifts recently is one aspect, and it leads to other things too, like a lack of time for other projects or important stuff like cleaning and all.
But most worryingly of all, I feel that it made me adopt a "just punch the clock" mentality, where I only aim to get through my days, rather than actually achieving things. And this kind of attitude seeps through to other areas apart from work too. Getting rid of this might be one of the most important things when I start into September. I must get this desire back to get things done, to improve, to succeed, to have a positive impact.
I'm feeling quite optimistic about all of this, though. And I can get started tomorrow already, step by step.
More chart analysis later. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Originally posted by Harrier88
Just a week or so ago, a little kid saw us while we were patrolling the streets, and asked his mum "What are these guys doing, mommy?"
I chimed in: "Yeah... good question. We've been wondering the same thing."
Nicely done!
You could always make a career-tracking spreadsheet...
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
You could always make a career-tracking spreadsheet...
Let's not go there... 
But speaking of which, I wanted to present some graphs. Let's first take a look at the updated overall profit ones:
Those graphs do come in handy to put things into perspective. The last few weeks have been terrible poker-wise, and it seems like not much is going right at all there. But looking at the graphs - it's just a drop in the bucket, and that's just compared to the rest of this year alone. It becomes especially clear if we check out the weekly candlestick graph:
Sure, some bad three weeks, but does it really matter that much overall? Clearly, though, there has been another "summer slump". In my past two years of playing poker for withdrawals (as opposed to bankroll building), August in particular has always been one of the worst months for some reason, along with November.
Now let's take a look at the graphs for the single games. First is Badugi:
Looks pretty good overall... if we don't consider that the June candle is mostly due to one bink. Ignoring that one, we mostly have a bunch of doji after April. The weekly graph makes it even more clear:
Not a lot going on recently. However, it should be noted that Badugi is usually one of the earliest games in my session's schedules, so it is the most likely to be chopped if I'm late, and I may often have to resort to late regs. Still, a little push is needed, and I'm confident that we're going to see one in September.
Next one is Five Card Draw:
Those losses may look somewhat negligible compared to the overall profit too, but take a closer look at the weekly graph:
A pretty terrible series of results lately, right? Were the successful first few months mostly thanks to quarantine gamblers, maybe? Should those profits be treated as nothing but a welcomed cash windfall then, before they are in greater jeopardy?
I don't know yet, but I haven't given up on this game so far. It is on hiatus right now, but with a little change of tactics, maybe it could become a big earner yet again some time.
Now 2-7 Triple Draw:
Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Well, it has been swingy too. You can kind of tell from the monthly graph already, but the weekly one illustrates it better once again:
A lot of up and down - understandably, it's a pretty variance-heavy game. But as we can see, they are going in the right direction overall, so I believe it's time to keep my cool and take a swing or two if necessary.
So yes, pretty bad month, as expected, but there is still time to turn it around. And even if I don't manage to do that, I'll still be back with a vengeance in September.
Bar Update
I have served some drinks in lowball glasses before, like the Caipirinha which I have posted earlier on this blog. However, while the glasses I have serve their purpose, they look a little plain, don't they?
So I went and got a bunch of new Old-Fashioned glasses from Bavaria, and they arrived today:
I look forward to give them a test drive soon.
Another thing on the list was a set of Double Old-Fashioned glasses, for those drinks that need a bigger volume but which don't look quite right in a highball glass. They tend to be not all that cheap either, so I had a look at what could be found at home first. I found those brandy glasses, which hold about 375-400ml. They may not be as fancy as some proper Double Old-Fashioned glasses I could buy, but they should serve their purpose just fine as well.
Things left on my list:
- Smaller sized hurricane glasses
- Additional jiggers and shakers, to make it easier to prepare multiple drinks at the same time
- Maybe some proper bar spoons
- Possibly some more decorations, though I should take another closer look at what I have so far
We once had a set of the glasses shown front-centre in the "plain" glasses picture.
They were Duralex I think -- not glasses. Duralex isn't supposed to break, but over time all of them did.
And not just break either -- when one went, it would shatter impressively.
Just to make sure I wasn't totally NARFing this, I looked it up and found https://www.debralynndadd.com/q-a/exploding-glassware-and-other-hazards-of-tempered-safety-glass/
From the article
Apparently microscopic imperfections during the manufacturing process eventually grow for days, months and years — long after a customer buys the glass product.
Also, a nick in the glass will create a weakness that can destabilise the glass.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
We once had a set of the glasses shown front-centre in the "plain" glasses picture.
They were Duralex I think -- not glasses. Duralex isn't supposed to break, but over time all of them did.
And not just break either -- when one went, it would shatter impressively.
My mum has a bunch of those, and for some reason, one of them made its way into my cupboard as well somehow. I decided to put it with the other plain lowball glasses, even though I rarely used it. But so far, it has been my "fanciest" lowball glass, before the new ones arrived.
Can't really tell if it's really glass or something else. The new ones I got are made of cristallo.
The Duralex is apparently glass -- but specially treated to withstand ordinary wear-and-tear.
It's the extraordinary wear-and-tear that gets ya...
So let's test those new Old-Fashioned glasses, and what better way to do it than by making the drink that it got its name from - the Old-Fashioned.
As the name implies, this cocktail goes way back, to at least the 19th century. In fact, one of the first mentions of the word "cocktail" dates back to 1806, when it was defined as "a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters". By the mid 1800's, many cocktails went on to become a little more complex, eventually leading some people to ask bartenders for one of those "old-fashioned" drinks instead. It is believed that this cocktail got its official name some time in the 1880's, but clearly it has been around long before that in some form.
And while this drink may have been considered "old-fashioned" by the 1880's already, it still hasn't lost one bit of its charm. We are going to make it today, and just like in the original definition of a cocktail, we won't need anything but sugar, water, bitters and some bourbon whiskey as our spirit of choice. Some people prefer rye, but I wanted to move one step closer to using up my bottle of bourbon.
While it's possible to use some simple syrup, we're going for good old sugar cubes instead. I even happen to have some poker themed ones:
Now as a Badugi player, I'm tempted to use all four of them, but we only need to put a single one into our glass. I chose the clubs this time.
Next, we'll need a few dashes of Angostura bitters.
How much is a dash anyway? Well, I looked it up, and while there is some debate about it, it would be about 1ml, or 1/8th of a teaspoon, or 15-20 drops. A pipette is not usually among a bartender's tools, and it's not like a few drops more would ruin the drink. Much like with a "pinch" in baking or cooking, it's probably best to just eyeball it and in this case give your opened bottle of Angostura bitters a good shake above the glass. What comes out should be about a dash.
The recipes even calls for "a few dashes"... can you get any more vague? I shook it twice, and the glass looked like in the picture below. The goal is to have just enough to saturate the sugar cube, maybe a few drops more.
The most common recipes only call for those dashes of Angostura bitters, but I've been informed that a few additional dashes of orange bitters can really improve this drink. Well, I just happen to have a bottle of orange bitters at home so I added an extra dash of it too.
Next, we would add "a few dashes" of water. How do we do that? I just filled a teaspoon with water and gently tapped it to add some bits to the glass until I felt that everything was well saturated. You may not notice much of a difference in the photo, but it looked like this:
Now we need to muddle all of this. As I described in my Caipirinha instructions, just gently press the muddle (or whatever tool your using) down and twist it around a bit.
Feel free to move that muddler around the glass. In the end, the mixture should look a little like this:
That was the complicated part. All we need to do now is to fill the glass with ice cubes and add 45ml of whiskey.
Now give it a stir and the Old-Fashioned is ready.
And that was my "test drive" for those new Old-Fashioned glasses. Pretty good stuff. 
So here comes another mixed drink.... well that one was actually in my dreams.
I wanted to do Harrier something good and wanted to mix and serve him a Caipirinha. But I couldn´t find the ingredients first. :f_o::f_ugly: Then I at least found a glass. But no ingredients! :f_o::facepalm: I saw Harrier waiting for his drink and I really wanted to serve him his cocktail, but everbody drank and ate all the ingredients away. I got angry and got in panic - how on earth could I serve Harrier now??? :facepalm::rage: Everybody was running around and drinking everything which was there away and eating all the limes and even the sugar!! :rage::rage::rage::rage:
While running around, desperately searching for the ingredients ................ I woke up!
How cool would it have been to wake up next to a bottle of Cachaça then?
Usually, I'm the one serving drinks for Prim, but crazy stuff tends to happen in our dreams...
What would be an example of "rye" in Germany?
What we call rye in Canada, they call Canadian Whiskey in the states and they spell it like that, even though the definitive Rye Canadian Club
spells it without.
In true Canadian Schizophrenic fashion, this website -- claiming to be from Canada -- uses "whiskey" even though all the brands listed use "whisky"
Incidentally, Crown Royal is my favourite of these overall, but any of the Alberta Springs offerings are superb just for sipping -- or with a drop of water or maybe an ice cube or two.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
What would be an example of "rye" in Germany?
Honestly, I don't think most Germans have a clue. And as far as I know, Canadian whisky is just called what it is over here.
For me personally, the terms "Canadian whisky" and "rye" are usually interchangeable, even though not all rye whiskey is Canadian, and not all Canadian whisky includes rye.
A for the whisky/whiskey thing, I have heard in countries with an 'e' in it like Ireland and United States, whiskey is spelled with an 'e' as well, while in countries without an 'e' like Canada or Scotland, whisky is spelled without it.
Not sure if that means that whiskey from those countries needs to be spelled in the regionally preferred way, but that's what I did in this post anyway. I personally tend to prefer the version with the 'e', but I'll drink either one.
In the states there is (or was) a rule that said if was called rye, it had to be made from rye.
In Canada, if it has sufficient alcohol we don't care what you call it or how you spell it either, for that matter.
Cheap rye is also called "rotgut" which doesn't mean red good, though it looks like it should 
