Creative Limitations in Intoxicants
May 25, 2016 6:59 PM   Subscribe

Salt Lake Spirit: How Utah's Liquor Laws Foster Creativity Behind the Bar (Serious Eats) "Let's take the classic Manhattan. It's actually perfect for Utah's liquor laws. The typical Manhattan would have two ounces of whiskey to one ounce sweet vermouth. But a three-ounce cocktail is illegal here, right? So now you have to get your base liquor back to one and a half ounces and then bring everything else in line to match," Walton explains, noting that the sweet vermouth would now be cut to three-quarters of an ounce.

Liquor is not the only place where creativity-in-intoxicants flourishes, either. Utah is also becoming well-known for beer beyond the famous 3.2%-by-weight restriction. Utah Beer Blog
  • Epic Brewing - Most famous for their Big Bad Baptist Cocoa-coffee Imperial Stout
  • Uinta Brewing - Most famous for their Labyrinth Licorice Imperial Stout
  • Wasatch Brewing - Most famous for their Polygamy Porter
posted by CrystalDave (26 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Beer still costs a god damn arm and a leg. If you can get to a liquor store, which are all moved to the outskirts of town if possible. Both Cedar City and St. George (far south west utah) had their liquor stores moved from in town to the very edge of towns where they were less accessible. At least from those towns it's only a few hours drive through the corner of AZ to get some reasonably priced beer in NV.
posted by Ferreous at 7:04 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I make Manhattans at work, and I go 4 oz bourbon and just a wee less than an oz vermouth. Maybe a few drops simple syrup and bitters. Point is the vermouth is really not needed, if a drink is what you want. I bet I could do a nice micro-painkiller in under three oz though!
posted by vrakatar at 7:14 PM on May 25, 2016


Used to be a lot worse. Used to be that bars couldn't serve alcohol at all.

Yes, there were still bars. You'd go in and order and they'd bring you a glass full of mixer, or straight ice if that's what you wanted. And then you'd add alcohol from the bottle of liquor you brought with you. You didn't have to sneak it in; that was perfectly legal.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:17 PM on May 25, 2016 [6 favorites]


Also, please don't leave out Squatters brewery from the brewery list. Their hop rising ipa got me through some dark lonely times.
posted by Ferreous at 7:17 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


I dunno chocolate pickle, that sounds fun. Bottle self service. Like a house party.
posted by vrakatar at 7:20 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


I haven't lived there in years (thank god), have they dropped the Zion Curtain bs yet?
posted by Ferreous at 7:21 PM on May 25, 2016


there were some localities where the joint would sell you a glass with ice, but you'd have to leave your bottle there, in a locker - you couldn't carry it in with you for a drinking session.
posted by thelonius at 7:22 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


They tried to kill the Zion Curtain this year but it failed. Try again next year.
posted by msbutah at 7:24 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Funny thing though, I moved out of Utah in the state with the second most confusing liquor laws in the US, Pennsylvania.

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT DISTRIBUTORS VS RESTAURANT CARRY OUT FOR BEER
posted by Ferreous at 7:24 PM on May 25, 2016 [23 favorites]


there were some localities where the joint would sell you a glass with ice, but you'd have to leave your bottle there, in a locker - you couldn't carry it in with you for a drinking session.

I've heard of that and it is making a comeback, I think- there are high-end bars in NYC and Miami and Vegas where you can pay a yearly fee, become a member, and store your wine or single malt or what have you and enjoy it whenever you pop in.
posted by vrakatar at 7:26 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also, on tfa, I love the creative concoctions people have to come up with. Whiskey Street downtown is pretty new and creative. I also love Bayou for their sheer size of their menu.

If you can make it to Beer Festival, you can sample a wide array from a burgeoning brew scene. My favorite oddity there was a salt water beer "Lake Effect" made at Avenues Proper. It was so unlike anything I had ever had before. Jack Mormon coffee will also bust out a coffee on nitro that is an amazing cross between nitro beer creamy head and deep espresso flavor. Anyways, lots of fun things happen even with our repressive laws.
posted by msbutah at 7:30 PM on May 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Let me tell you of the legend of the PA wine vending machine boondoggle: WINE TIME
posted by Ferreous at 7:33 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Dallas used to have weird rules, too. Alcohol could only be served in private clubs, to members or friends of members. I was there on a business trip and when I checked into my hotel, they gave me a card that said I was a friend of the hotel manager (who, I might mention, I never saw). I needed it if I wanted to visit the bar in the hotel.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:42 PM on May 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Back during the Blue Law years in Massachusetts, it was against the law for any store to sell alcohol on Sunday.

On I-93 just north (like about 50 feet north) of the Mass/NH border there was an exit that led to the parking lot of the biggest liquor store I've ever seen. It did a lot of business on Sundays.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:45 PM on May 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


Wine vending machines, eh?

I once spent a little time in a Boston bike courier office (NSS, in the alley by the Commons). They had dragged a battered old soda machine down to their basement hideaway and filled it with cans of the cheapest beer available. But hidden among the gross, warm stuff were also a few cans of Heinieken!

Then they tore off a page from the trashy Boston Herald newspaper announcing results of a bingo-like promotion, called Wingo, and named their device the BEER WINGO machine. Between runs the couriers would come downstairs, slap one of the buttons to get a can, and grimace when it turned out to be swill. I never actually saw a green-and-white can come out, come to think of it...

OMFG, here they are!!!!

(They also offered garbage bags of nitrous oxide at a party one night. Weird.)
posted by wenestvedt at 7:48 PM on May 25, 2016


When I've gone to see friends in Utah, the alcohol I bring over has always been deeply appreciated. Just remember, when you go fishing, take two Mormons along... if you only bring one he'll drink all your beer.
posted by azpenguin at 7:53 PM on May 25, 2016 [15 favorites]


My favorite alcohol in Utah story was told by a friend who had served his mission in Switzerland. He was in SLC one conference weekend to attend a mission reunion and was deputized by buy the wine for the cheese fondue. Somehow he ended up trying earnestly to explain to the cashier at the liquor store that he and his fellow returned missionaries weren't going to drink the six bottles of white wine, they were cooking with it.

I've also heard it reported that liquor consumption in SLC goes up on conference weekends, but I don't have a citation for that.

It just occurred to me that not everyone may know that the Mormons have a general conference the first Sunday in April and October, when many thousands of people from all over the world travel to SLC for conference.
posted by Bruce H. at 9:20 PM on May 25, 2016


Let us not forget Brewvies Cinema Pub, where you can drink, eat great food, sit in comfy seats, and watch new movies, and they host the Slamdance Film Festival that runs concurrently with Sundance. I love that place, they have some pool tables too. They are currently in a war with the DABC over serving drinks at Deadpool, because it is against the law to serve booze as an accompaniment to nudity. This in Utah, where the folks are the largest per capita consumers of porn in the US. I had a white IPA with a hint of grapefruit, to go with The Hateful 8, delicious.
posted by Oyéah at 9:35 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


According to a more recent Pornhub study, Utah ranks 40th in per capita pageviews of Pornhub. Utah's drug overdose rates, especially by opioid, are worrisome. I remember when the biggest health concern was urologists worrying about everyone carrying around 64 oz. refillable Big Gulp mugs. They have passed a bill allowing third party Naxalone administration and prescription.
posted by mecran01 at 9:48 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


My father belongs to the Vancouver Club, which used to be the premier gentleman's club in town. When he would treat me with a visit there, we would go to a nice lounge and he would open his locker (unlocked), retrieve the required bottles of rye, gin, or whatever, and ask the barman for ice and mixers.

He told me that this was a holdover from the Canadian temperance laws, which were our parallel to prohibition in America. So, in those days you couldn't go to a bar or even a private club and be served liquor. But if the liquor was your own, no problem!

The downside of this was that whereas the US repealed the Volstead act completely, as it was so onerous, these milder Canadian temperance laws lingered, with minor allowances, for decades. So that, for example, when I started drinking in bars in the seventies, one was not allowed to carry one's glass to a neighbouring table. You were supposed to signal a waitress to transport the glass in a tray.

Among other pointless and annoying indignities.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 10:07 PM on May 25, 2016


Spent a summer working in Zion National Park back in, geez... must be 1988? I wasn't even 21 at the time, but I spent quite a bit of time drinking at the Bit & Spur in Hurricane, UT. I got the feeling that, during those days, that corner of UT was a bit of a lawless space. St George was a tiny sleepy town, Hurricane barely existed except for the B&S and the polygamous household that made Chums sunglass straps.

The t-shirt I got from the B&S had local petroglyphs on it, all of which had prominent phalluses as part of the design. I still have that t-shirt someplace, actually. I should wear it out and about sometime again.

(It's interesting that people never comment on phallus designs on petroglyph designs. Like they assume the artist's carving of the rock had a "slip of the pen" or something. Like anything carved into rock was ever done by accident.)
posted by hippybear at 1:37 AM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


"'Let's take the classic Manhattan. It's actually perfect for Utah's liquor laws. The typical Manhattan would have two ounces of whiskey to one ounce sweet vermouth. But a three-ounce cocktail is illegal here, right? So now you have to get your base liquor back to one and a half ounces and then bring everything else in line to match,' Walton explains, noting that the sweet vermouth would now be cut to three-quarters of an ounce."

That's not creativity; it's elementary school-level math.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:48 AM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]


I don't live there, but I've spent a fair bit of time in Utah, and the cocktails are always charmingly tiny (like, child-sized, though that isn't quite the right phrase for alcohol sizes), or they are regular sized but terribly weak.

There are also quirks with the beer laws, like beer from a tap has to be weak, but beer from a bottle can be full-strength, that take getting used to. The weak beer is actually kind of nice if you just want to have a beer or two with lunch and not stumble around after, but the overall feel of the laws is very patronizing.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:39 AM on May 26, 2016


That's not creativity; it's elementary school-level math.

Exactly. The pull-quote should have been the old fashioned: 1 1/2 oz rye, 1 oz bourbon.
posted by mr vino at 9:12 AM on May 26, 2016


Pity the poor PR person who got the assignment to write this puff piece. "I want 2,000 words re-packaging the absurd liquor laws in Utah as fun and creatively inspiring. Stat." Also, this:

"Utah Dept. Of Alcoholic Beverage Control Tells Snowbird Ski Resort They May Not Serve Beer At Octoberfest"

A local SLC congressman (sorry I can't find the quote right now) said about the Octoberfest brew-ha-ha, "you do know this makes us look crazy to the rest of the country?" Yup.
posted by Dean358 at 9:30 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


One interesting aspect of the unique drinking situation in Utah is that it creates a sense of community for those outside of the dominant religion. Even as strangers we start out with something in common.
posted by ShakeyJake at 1:12 PM on May 26, 2016


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