Every once in a while, some bright bulb gets the idea to pursue a “new” drink, which is in actuality only an old drink waiting to be rediscovered. So it is with me: I wanted to know how to make a Stinger, and this is all it is: cognac/brandy and white creme de menthe. Proportions vary.

Oh, and cold. Shake it with ice, serve it on ice, make it as frigid as possible. Once you choke down enough of these, you may be ready for a genuine mint julep (advanced course).

All right, what are we looking at here? In the first picture are the Bavarian candi sugar crystals. Don’t they look just like beveled gems? It’s astonishing, and I tasted one and it tastes just like regular sugar! Imagine that. Second picture: prime ingredients for the wort, bourbon and sugar. The sugar will contribute to the malt extract (which I did not know I was making until I did) and the bourbon is ‘cos this is a Belgian bourbon dubbel. Or it’s supposed to be, until I prove how badly I’ve screwed this up in two weeks.

In the third picture, I’m sanitizing all the equipment in my bathtub. StarSan is awesome: you soak everything in it for a couple minutes and you don’t even need to rinse it off, just start using it. It’s organic! And the fourth picture reveals how I decided that, if I don’t want to ruin the wort by having it sit in its own gases in a 5 gallon carboy, I had to transfer the mix to a (hastily sanitized) 1 gallon carboy instead. The tube is leading to a small tub of sanitizing liquid, as well, just in case the yeast activates too enthusiastically and foams up and creates a mess. In three days I can place a normal airlock on the lil’ jug and then wait eleven whole days to start bottling. This is the boring part.

OH KIDS! You think you’re so cool with raping indigenous cultures to wear your fancy little male-only Native American headdresses to go out and get drunk, because you’re stupid hipsters who consume everything wrong, but what are you missing? You can’t even perceive it because to you, nothing is cooler than Irony 095 (prereq.).

As for me, I’m making beer. I made an English brown ale, and tonight I’m making a bourbon dubbel. As seen in the photos, I grind my own malt and have a batch of French dark oak chips steeping in Woodford Reserve (you won’t recognize the name because it’s not that shitty PBR you insist on repeating, because “get it?”, but it’s one of the three best Kentucky bourbons available). I’m in the process of steeping the hops even as I write this, and in a couple weeks I will have made, with my own hands, a better beer than anything you have spent your parents’ money on.

I hate hipsters, if that’s not clear. They are stupid and dumb, and they suck.

Also, I love making my own beer.