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Would this work with all cheap booze, or just vodka? Are they on to something here?

I'm searching for an answer, monkeys. Could the invention of cheap, filtered booze console us through the next four years?

Wonder what would happen if I did this to moonshine?

This works very well with vile vodka (the filter should be new) as it's exactly what a lot of producers do to produce smooth, tasteless vodka.

The problem is that the best vodkas do have taste and character, the cheapest and best, imho, being the Polish Wyborowa, made from rye.

Spring water is so cheap here there's really no reason to use Brita filters, except for cooking. But they do make an enormous difference to tea and coffee and drinking water; a filter lasts 3 months easy and every home should have one.

I keep one in the fridge and one on the counter but the price difference between nasty vodka and good vodka is small and the nasty nowadays isn't as bad as it used to be - or so I'm told!

Ahh, the Wyborowa! Hubby thinks its wonderful, but it gives me a dreadful headache.

If you're looking for solace, may I recommend (with all the enthusiasm of the brand new convert) Cranial Sacral Therapy. It's like smoking pot (not that I would know what that's like, of course;) without the cavity searches and the criminal record. A nice, long lasting sense of relaxation and well-being (plus relief from back pain and headaches).

I could do without the criminal record, but the cavity searches are kinda fun.

I was a true Brita convert, but then I moved to New York, which has the best tap water I've ever tasted.

I'll have to check out Wyborowa. I've heard good things about it. My usual vodka is Stoli, but lately I've been working on a bottle of 3 Vodka, which is made from soy. Surprisingly good and smooth.

This is fascinating. But at what point does it stop being cost-effective? Doesn't a Brita filter cost around 7 bucks?

And vidiot, I too drink the tap water, mostly because of the fact that drinking filtered water isn't going to mitigate the fact that I'm living in a Superfund site. Sorta like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Oh, and yeah: Wyborowa. Good stuff. It's owned by Pernod-Ricard now, I was surprised to discover.

Also? Zubrowka. It's all about the bison grass.

I've always been more of a brown liquor guy, but when it comes to vodka, Glacier has always served me well.

In my old age I'm developing some sort of weird phobia about drinking water. I only drink spring water, but I have a Brita pitcher...for the cats.

Please, kill me now.

Lupo: does it have something to do with the factoid that every gulp of tap water has been through the drains at least 70 times? Do you too imagine every glass has been chemically divested of all toilet paper residues for your enjoyment? Can you envisage a CSI-like time when DNA techniques will be applied to tap water and it will be possible to detect excretae traces from the times of "Gangs of New York"?

Hey, welcome aboard! :)

Tizzie, my love, Wyborowa is indeed less than pure - all that unreconstructed rye - and hence the headache, though I've never had one. What gives it taste - the congeners or whatever - is what provides the hangover. If you want a hangover-free vodka, purposefully made for sensitive constitutions (invented by the French, of course) Grey Goose is impeccable.

The trick to avoiding hangovers is to drink a lot of water (as ice, soda or juice) and eat a lot of salted nuts along with every shot of booze. Then, before going to bed after really excessive over-indulgence, a strong sleeping pill and about 600 migs of ipobrufen. Pure water is best but I can never face it after a good night's boozing - it's such an anti-climax!

Love,

Miguel

Every home should have a bottle of Grey Goose in the freezer. When I run for office some day, that will be my platform.

A chicken in every pot and a bottle of expensive vodka in the freezer!

Plain Grey Goose is fine, but that Mandarin flavor tastes less like oranges and more like peel. Wretched stuff. I know, nobody has a right to drink flavored vodka anyhow, but I tried it once, okay?

For my (limited) money, I'll usually stick with either Monopolova, Polar Ice, or Svedka. All are pretty smooth and middle-tier (when Grey Goose, et al. are top tier).

I've never found a flavored vodka that was worth drinking. (Stoli's coffee vodka is marginally good, but only if I'm desperate.)

And Grey Goose is v. v. good, but I'd like to note that I've never had a hangover with Stoli. Plus the label is cooler.

Ketel One is actually my fave, as it has the more hardcore name.

(N.B. - All these judgements are made based on a half a swig here and there, as my meds don't allow me more than that. I defer to the connosieurship of the other monkeys for a more authoritative review of the spirits.)

The trick to avoiding hangovers is to drink a lot of water (as ice, soda or juice) and eat a lot of salted nuts along with every shot of booze.

Really, Miguel? Salted nuts prevent hangovers? That is news to me! The water part makes sense - but I always thought you had to eat something absorbent, like toast, or a sponge.

Tiz, the sponge goes in the other end.

Back in high school, one of the girls in our side of the lunchroom courtyard brought one of those sponge dealies in. We unwrapped it. It looked like a lifesaver, which is ironic, kinda.

The Fes Hangover Cure: 1. Stick with booze you can handle, and eat a good dinner. 2. When you get back, four ibuprofens, a multivitamin, and a big glass of water. 3. Get up about 45 minutes earlier than you would normally have to (this is the hardest part). 4. Take a long shower, as hot as you can stand it - breathe in that steam, infuse yourself with water. 5. Coffee. 6. Two to three more aspirin. 7. Breath strip. 8. Another breath strip. 9. Double up on your Secret antiperspirant. 10. Roll!

Also, if you have the time, some quick self-abuse floods the brain with natural endorphins. Or so I, uh, heard.

Drink too much ... the other end .... oh, right!

No wonder those headaches lasted so damn long.

Really, Miguel? Salted nuts prevent hangovers?

Oh no, Tizzie! What they do is allow you to drink more, as their fat content "makes the alcohol slip" and their carbs are very absorbent.

There are two different cultures. Here in Portugal we want to drink more and longer without getting drunk (which is shameful and adolescent) so we make a point of filling our stomachs with spongey stuff to soak up the alcohol or prevent it from being absorbed : mashed potatoes in the first case, olive oil in the second. Hence the nuts, which go so well with drinks.

I don't think you can get drunk without a hangover. In any case, the memory of you when drunk never goes away - however fascinating you are, you become boring, repetitive and stupid to those who aren't drunk with you. And you forget!

The trick is to be merry and maintain that level - all it means is that, every two drinks, you have something non-alcoholic and give your marvellous liver time to process the booze. It's all about time: you can get drunk by swallowing two tiny gin Martinis in five minutes.

Being a drunkard, I hate being drunk. I'm silly enough as it is. It's best to drink steadily - only the most delicious drinks - observing the rules one follows for good food. With drinking, the danger is that over-drinking is easy, whereas over-eating is automatically regulated by one's organism. Love this word, organism.

It helps to think of our liver as our favourite drinking partner: he's cool but old-fashioned and set in his ways. He's a Puritan. You want him to be kinky? You've got to fool him into thinking you're just having dinner. Livers aren't intelligent - they see fresh fruit juice and, despite the Grey Goose, they think "Oh goody. breakfast!" or "Hey, I'm in an orchard in California!"

My father was a heavy drinker but, just before he died, the doctors, looking at the results of the latest analysis, doubted he'd ever had a whisky, such was the pristine state of his liver. I only saw him tipsy once - he came into the room I then shared with my little brother at two in the morning (while my mother was still dancing in the corridor) woke us up and, depositing 200 dollars on a bedside table (a lot of money in 1962 or whatever) declared we didn't have enough toys and would we please both go into Lisbon the next day to buy whatever took our fancy?

Next morning, he couldn't remember but pretended to - "Of course, of course - long overdue...be off with you, then!") - and Paulo and I went berserk in the best toyshops, arriving home with an electric racecourse (Scalextric) which, when assembled, went from the kitchen to the living room and ruined family life for a month.

:)

"I don't think you can get drunk without a hangover."

You Europeans are fucking weird, man.

I keep thinking that if I filter my brain through a brita filter maybe I wouldn't be so bloody hungover today.

You can most assuredly get drunk without a hangover. Not raving-three-sheets drunk, but you can certainly get to feeling-no-pain stage.

Stay hydrated. And have greasy food. (This is precisely why Waffle House has stayed solvent for so long.)

Funniest story that mentions drinking at work that I've read, ever.

It has been ages since I've had a praying-for-a-swift-merciful-death hangover. I guess because I drink less more often, rather than more less often.

It has nothing to do with Waffle House - I'm absolutely certain about that.

I had greasy rice in a Waffle House once.

I mean... it's fuckn' rice.

To make rice greasy requires a special kind of bad.

Back in High School because we were A) too young to do anything fun and B) stuck in Oklahoma, some friends of mine and I used to frequent a Waffle House all too often. Kind of a young hick's version of your hole in the wall drunkard hangout.

The cook during the graveyard shift was an odd, greasy (um, yeah, that should be obvious, I guess) dude named Rocky that we talked with quite a bit. He used to give us paper hats and perform fancy grill tricks to entertain us.

Eventually, Rocky confided in us that he had made some payments towards getting one of those mail-order Central American wives. After finally prodding him for more information, it became the major topic of discussion for us. He'd get so riled up about it that he'd swipe quarters from the cash register and play love songs on the jukebox all night.

One night we stumbled in and Rocky was absolutely beaming. Errantly assuming that Sra. Rocky had finally arrived, we began to congratulate him. He quickly corrected us and told us that it was simply his birthday. We toasted our cokes and coffees and he said:

"No, no, that's not all of it. Here's the best part. She called me today."

Apparently the betrothed women of El Salvador are permitted to call their future benefactors on said benefactors birthdays. The entire conversation was, reportedly:

"Meester Rokki. Haypee beerfday!" *click*

Rocky was all: "Man, I could just feel the love. Love!"

I don't know if Consuela or Hilda or whatever her name was ever came to the states as upon HS graduation, I promptly got the fuck out of Tulsa, but I'm really curious as to what happened to Rocky.

I've also got a co-worker who has a mail order bride from the Ukraine, but that's a story for another day, I guess.

I've said this before, but the single best thing about the Waffle House (and there's a lot to love) is the small selection of custom Waffle House-centric songs on their jukeboxes.

"Special Lady" is my favorite.

"She's not my special lady friend, man. I'm just helping her conceive."

Damn, Tizzie, I watched BL last night, and damn if htat didn't come to my mind, too.

Alcohol plus ibuprofen can make your stomach bleed if you're a daily boozer. Just sayin'.

Stav is right: Ibuprofen plus other drugs (including alcohol) is generally a bad combination. Make sure your stomach's full.

My mother found this out the hard way a few years ago when she had a bleeding ulcer after taking ibuprofen on an empty stomach for too long.

I've co-opted the smoothie in the name of all boozehounds. Sure, those health freaks in front of me are adding wheat grass boosters to their Broogenberry-soy-cheese smoothie in front of me and sure, they look down their low carb noses at my wrinkled, lumpen and hungover form. But you know I think they're all losers, so it doesn't matter. I just get the biggest strawberry-banana bastard known to mankind and suck that bad boy back.

Strawberry margarita mix, sans tequila, also does the job. I keep the mix in the house at all times. Advantage of the mix - make some up to create the problem, hold some back to later solve the problem.

Wow. Amazing how much incohole the body can absorb, even on an empty stomach. You dallas-ites are in trouble.

Kafkaesque was 33 on Friday! Happy belated birthday, Mr. K., with all sincerity.

However, I must tell you - the crucifying year was not among my personal best. I think it is a jinxed year, in fact, filled with fender benders, firings, sprained extremities, hell fire and brimstone.

Run, do not walk, towards 34. You can take it easy after that.

Wait till you're 33 1/3.

Happy birthday!

This vodka stuff, it gets in the way of my gin.

Machaus, it is good to see you back in the blogosphere.

Really, that's not just the vodka talking.

Why thanks! My writing really went to shit after having been tuned to nothing but corporate email for 6 months. Feels good to stretch the legs again, just as long as there aren't any strange re-initiation rights including kaf, a zucchini and a fifth of goldschlager.

And a digital video camera! No, of course not!

*whistling innocently*

These monkeys have been hard at work for our benefit. Sounds somewhat promising too!

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