It’s a very personal choice, and alcohol is ingrained into a lot of our society. Do you drink and if so how much?
I don’t drink at all. I never picked up a taste for it and I don’t want to spend my money that way. I am 62.
Perfectly valid. I teetotalled for a decade and can understand the appeal without question.
Wine! Wine is wonderful! Grapes are a special fruit that are incredibly variable. There are so many possibilities, so many different flavors and aromas. There is always something new to find in wines. Tasting wine is a literal academic discipline.
I usually have a glass or two with one meal a day some days. Wine interacts and pairs with foods, and you can even put it in the food!
I’ve grown as a person in the past few years. I’ve suffered many pints of beer trying to fit in with those around me, to not stand out. Beer is their thing, it’s not my thing. I know this now. I know myself now. I know who I am and what I like, and what I like is wine. Also I’m trans. These two things might be related.
I have the same thing happening here with baijiu and huangjiu culture. There is so much variety. Even within the broader styles (like “strong scented”) you can take five bottles from five different distillers in neighbouring villages and have five entirely different experiences. The terroir of the base starch (usually sorghum, but can be almost anything including mixed grains and even sweet potatoes or the like), the precise composition of the “qu” (hard to explain, but basically the part that causes saccharification to occur simultaneously with fermentation), and the nature of the aging process (which again, bizarrely, includes a form of terroir) leads to more diversity than seems plausible for hard liquors.
I’m currently working through this bottle:
It’s a small-distillery (let’s be honest: farmhouse distillery) rustic baijiu from Shandong made of the aforementioned sweet potato with a bit of sorghum to round out its flavour profile a bit, using a primarily wheat-based “big qu”. (Again, hard to explain. If you know what “koji” is for sake, you’ve got the idea, only it’s far, far, far, far, far more convoluted in China.) When I say “rustic” here I mean it. It compares (favourably) to some of the better moonshines I had back in the days when I would go to the USA. When you drink it there’s a pretaste that’s just a little bit sweet and fruity before the main body of it punches you in the palate for a knockout blow of fiercely terroir-driven ethanol and sweet potato. When your palate recovers there’s an interesting, pleasant nutty aftertaste that comes straight from that little bit of sorghum they add. This is a powerful little firebrand (the style is amusingly called “coal gas” in local patois: literally called this on the label!; sort of the Shandong local version of calling something “firewater” or “white lightning”) that you drink neat and chilled, ideally with spicy foods both to help counter the spice (ethanol is great for flushing capsicum from your tongue), and for the spice to help rein in that right hook the main body of the flavour brings.
(Most Chinese liquors are not “sipping” liquors. They’re meal accompaniments and you get truly rewarded if you drink them communally at meals, not alone sipping.)
That sounds lovely. I’ve never tried any Chinese liquors, but I have enjoyed sake on the occasions I’ve tried it. Its probably mostly convenience. Its much easier to find good wine bars and wineries where I tend to be.
Well as the old saying goes: if you’ve tried a Chinese liquor, you’ve tried … ah … that specific … Chinese liquor.
It’s crazy how much diversity there is here. I mean there’s 12 official styles of baijiu alone. And that doesn’t even begin to rein in the craziness of classification. Thousands of years of booze culture with a society that is VERY strict on tradition leads to fractal complexity.
(Irrelevant side note: I brought a dear friend in Canada some “Luzhou” style—more properly termed “strong scented” in modern classification, but this was from Luzhou proper—hooch. This friend, like me, has a long history of trying different liquors from different places and has an equally broad palate as a result, but by virtue of my location I have access to stuff he’s never heard of. His description of the Luzhou style stuff was “it tastes exactly like I would imagine diesel would taste like if diesel tasted really good”.)
I’m going to try some… specific… Chinese liquors some day. I always enjoy trying new things!
Do you have a recommendation for an entry level baijiu available in the US?
I don’t know what’s available in the US, unfortunately. :(
I do not drink. It smells sour and bad to me. Intoxicated behavior really bothers me. So in sum, nope.
I don’t, at all. I find the blindspot society has for alcohol to be alarming and stupid. Far too many people outright require it to enjoy themselves at an event like a wedding, will decline an invitation if its not going to be present, and somehow don’t see how that’s an addiction. There’s serious cognitive dissonance about how its somehow different than “needing” any other drug; if anything its worse, as alcohol withdrawal can actually kill you.
I never really picked up a taste for it and I’m glad for that, drunk people concern me. I’ll cook with it, but i don’t drink any beyond maybe a thimbleful to know the flavor I’m adding to a meal. Anything more than that and the only thing i can taste is straight alcohol.
I don’t drink at all. Me and alcohol don’t mix, so I don’t drink. Personally I don’t like being round drunk people so I avoid activities where that’ll happen
I’ll drink at get togethers, whether it’s a house party or a wedding, a pool day or a birthday. Once in a rare while my husband and I will have a couple of glasses of wine on a date, but usually it’s a group activity for me.
I see a lot of people saying they don’t like to feel out of control or that they don’t like being around drunk people. I like both! I think it’s very fun to be a little less inhibited, I think it’s fun to feel a little wobbly, I think it’s fun to get a little grabby and goofy with my husband. I also like being around drunk people! Idk, all the people in my life who drink all just get more fun to be around, not less. More likely to play a game, or do something spontaneous, or spill a secret. It’s all fun! It’s like the difference between going for a walk and going to a carnival! I guess carnivals aren’t for everyone. There have been years of my life where I couldn’t drink (medications, pregnancies, breastfeeding) and I still liked being around people who drink. I have friends who don’t drink, and they can be fun too, but idk. My buddies playing music or seeing who can cartwheel best or playing truth or dare drunk is more fun.
I drink at home occasionally, less than a few units a week and not every night. Usually g&ts or similar and, whilst im not really ‘into’ wine like some people are, i do have my moments where all I want in life is a whole bar of chocolate and most of a bottle of red wine.
Social drinking i have a few drinks with friends but i rarely go all out any more.
Yes only one drink, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and sometimes half a glass of wine on Wednesday. So overall maybe 5-7 “units” of alcohol a week? I take months off in July and October though.
I quite like having a drink, and it’s part of food culture to me, but as others have said, don’t like being very drunk, or not often, and never go to bed with any level of inebriation because that is a migraine trigger.
I drink. About on average, say, three “servings” (a shot, a glass of wine, or a mug of beer) per week. On special occasions I’ll drink more. I avoid being actively drunk, however, because while I enjoy the sensation of having a drink inside of me, I can’t stand the feeling of being drunk.
Personally, however, I don’t care if or how much you drink as long as it isn’t leading to destruction (yours or someone else’s). What I do care about is people moralizing. If you don’t drink, that’s fine. We can get along great. If, however, you start lecturing one of is is on the way out the door. (Same rule for vegans.)
I ferment my own ‘wine’ (fancy hooch) that i enjoy a bit of every couple weeks. Yesterday I had some strong stuff I made from organic strawberry lemonade and it’s really the best batch I have ever made. Nobody else I know really likes to drink and I feel weird drinking alone in my house so the one gallon batches I make last a long time.
I’m investigating the possibility of buying a home still and making my own baijiu. It’s actually legal where I live, and I have connections all over the production side of things so I can source some fascinating ingredients and “qu” styles.
Of course I have no experience in distilling so … ah … my first few attempts are going to be dire.
oh that would be so neat making actual liquor! One thing that has surprised me is how much cleaner home brew is, at moderate levels it gives me very few ill effects compared to store bought alcohols even the nicer ones.
Good luck on your baijiu!!
A lot of commercial alcohols add stuff that … ugh. Really shouldn’t be there. Making up for lost craftsmanship when producing in bulk by chemical means.
I drink almost exclusively from small distilleries here. Ironically, unlike the same thing being done in Canada, it’s cheaper this way. People go for brands, so the big name distilleries have a huge price premium. In the meantime the small producers are putting out stuff that’s just spiffy and keen!
I drink everything lol beer, wine, cocktails, whiskey neat. Not everyday ofc. But yeah it’s nice to keep stocked for when I’m winding down after my workweek ends, for movie nights, for pairing with a nice steak or pasta, etc etc. I treat drink like I treat food lol they are some of the finer things in life that I intend to enjoy😁
According to my medical charts, I’m a social drinker.
Which just means I drink a glass of something like once a month.
I really shouldn’t drink for medical reasons (even though I really enjoy it) - but I recently have gotten into mocktails. They satisfy my need for extreme garnishes in my drink and are delicious.
If you are willing to take some hands-off time with making it, the Friend Zone non alcoholic cocktail is amazing and complex and satisfying.
https://imbibemagazine.com/recipe/friend-zone-a-zero-proof-strawberry-drink/
do I drink? used to.
how much? too much. hence my answer to question one.
it seems like more people are becoming aware of the idea that alcohol can be really harmful even when there’s not a physical addiction. It seems like increasing use of terms like alcohol abuser, alcohol use disorder, etc. helps change the idea that there’s this one type of alcoholic, they wake up and start drinking to function and they get the shakes if they don’t. regular binge drinking doesn’t look like that at all, but it’s still really physically and mentally harmful. I feel like we have really normalized unhealthy alcohol use in a way that is dangerous to society.
there are of course people who use alcohol responsibly and like it for loosening up a little, the taste, the process, whatever. I don’t think everyone should be sober or anything. but man for a lot of people it can be real bad and it’s easy to be in denial by telling yourself it’s like like you’re addicted, you could stop if you really wanted to, you hold down a good job, you never drink before 5, etc.
I drink beer most days, I stay away from hard alcohol, and while I would like to drink more wine, the sulfites give me headaches.
hi friend, just wanted to make you aware of the women-only rule in this community (only women are supposed to comment or post)
I’m aware of that
so you’re a woman?
Yeah
