http://drinkdogma.com Cocktails, Beer, Wine Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:19:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I know; I’ve been a bad blogger. It’s not my fault though. You see, uhm, this thing called Anvil Bar & Refuge happened and everything else in my life stopped happening for a while. I’ve stopped telling people that I own a bar; instead I tell them that a bar ... http://drinkdogma.com/drink-dogma-is-back/ Anvil has draft beer - finally. When we ordered the walk-in cooler almost 300 days ago, we never thought that the beer would be the thing we waited on, but after weeks of delays and setbacks, we have finally been running draft beer successfully for several weeks. The thought behind Anvil ... http://drinkdogma.com/draft-beer-the-right-way/ Now that we have successfully tapped our first keg of draft beer at Anvil my thoughts have shifted to the next addition we will make to the Anvil beer program, cask ale. It is my hope that in the next 6 months we can find the money to buy ourselves ... http://drinkdogma.com/cask-beer-101-full-moon-pale-rye-cask-at-anvil/ Drink Dogma and Anvil Bar & Refuge are now on Twitter. Keep up with bar updates, new posts, and other news with Bobby Heugel, co-owner and bartender at Anvil Bar & Refuge. I hope to use Twitter to stay in touch with our local regulars and other cocktail friends online ... http://drinkdogma.com/were-on-twitter-a-new-video-feature/ There is a new website online called Blockcast.TV, which is visiting Houston bars and posting video tours.  Blockcast is touring a wide spectrum of Houston bars, and recently, they came to see us at Anvil.  I spent some time talking with them during a recent shift, and now the video ... http://drinkdogma.com/anvil-video-online/ Since my return to Houston a couple of years ago, I have anxiously monitored the Texas spirits market. In Chicago, I had the great small-batch spirits from North Shore Distillers, including Distiller’s Gin No.6 and their Aquavit. But, despite the boom of Tito’s Vodka years before, the Texas market remained ... http://drinkdogma.com/the-texas-micro-distillation-market/ To say that my life has changed over the last three weeks would be an extreme understatement. Anvil’s dramatic transformation from a vacant construction site to a functioning bar has similarly changed me from a dusty, unshaven, demolishing, drywalling, painting, quasi-electrician to the clean, fresh juicing, firm shaking, vodka abolitionist ... http://drinkdogma.com/the-making-of-anvil-bar-refuge/ We finally did it.  We are open - it took forever right?  I know; I know.  We started some "soft" opening procedures the last two nights (which really didn't work out in the "soft" manner), but we would like everyone in Houston who has kept up with us thus far ... http://drinkdogma.com/anvil-is-open/ Old Overholt is arguably the most enduring staple of the American whiskey landscape.  The next time you find yourself near a bottle, do me a favor.  Grab that dusty bottle of rye and look Mr. Overholt right in the eyes.  Now, you have to do this for at least a ... http://drinkdogma.com/old-overholt-rye-the-thirty-second-staredown/ With construction work on Anvil moving ahead at a feverish pace, I have found it next to impossible to sit down and string together a post for months. The blog updating which Robert and I hoped would continue with one or two posts a week has been traded for refining ... http://drinkdogma.com/the-evolution-of-american-whiskey/