Drinks!

Craig. You're not large. Scottish, sure, but not large.

I'll have one for you and Nick, Craig. 

Russ, what should I drink in your honor? I'll make a list of proxy drinks for my friends who cannot be there--I'll need something British for Anna as well.

Iced tea, half-sweet, for me. (Teetotalar of half-Southern extraction.)

Mine's almost always hard liquor, with taste far less dicerning (or expensive ) than Christopher and Craig. Fireball Whiskey mixed with a hard cider has been my most recent drink, with the usual default of a Long Island Iced Tea on stand-by.

I like a nice dry cider, preferably from oak barrels, but I do also like proper beer as well. I'll pretty much drink anything that's not too sweet.

Good luck getting those in the states, sadly.

I'd say someone have a drink for me, but the gaming club I'm part of (so a large number of the Sentinels fans in Sydney :P ) will be having our own event. And Sentinels will be played.

Alas, my sense of taste is not very good; I can't actually distinguish much of what you would describe in tasting something.

Which I'm kinda okay with. Means it costs less for me to drink.

Actually, that is totally doable in St. Louis! There are several places that have Strongbow on tap (which is at least semi-legit cider), but a few local microbrewries periodically make good dry cider.

Also, I have 20 gallons of dry cider in my basement that I made last fall :D

I'll be hosting an event here... and there will be plenty of booze. We'll throw one back for your birthday as well, Evan. 

Plenty of dry cider on this side of the states as well. 

I was hoping you'd rise to that challenge, Paul. So, uh, need any help drinking that cider?

@arenson9 Actually, if you remind me, I can probably bring some to Gen Con!

Strongbow is my usual fallback I'm-in-a-pub-that-doesn't-have-anything-interesting drink. It's okay. Not my favourite, but I'll drink it.

It seems that since cider got suddenly way more popular a few years back, everywhere you look there's some hideously sweet monstrosity in a bottle pretending to be a sensible drink. Cider for people who don't really like drinking, I guess. Most of the draught stuff I see is that way too, like apple flavoured soda, which is pretty annoying.

And don't get me started on pear cider. Impossible! Cider is made from apples. A fermented pear beverage is called perry.

 This. All of this. Every single word of it. A++, would agree again.

Im glad people on this forum are very open about their alcohol prefrences. I'm actualy currently working on a sentinels drinking game. I have most of the rules hammered out, and a mixed drink for each hero. but i havent actually made most of the drinks. I was worried to talk about it here because i didnt know how well it would be received, but now that i feel more confident ill post the rough draft here soon

Yeah, I feel about the same with Strongbow, though I don't mind some of the bottled fruit ones. The Kopparberg Cloudberry one is frankly weird though!

That reminds me, my brother is having a barbecue on Saturday, I really must grab some Wyld Wood or Aspalls...

When I lived in Michigan we still made our own cider.  I can't drink most bottled stuff.

Someone drink some good Tequilla for me.

I noticed this past Fall that cider popularity sky rocketed in Philadelphia. Bars started dedicating 2-3 taps of just ciders which was very unusual. People like their lagers here. A lot.

I'm with Nick on Hefewizen, but I love most German beers. I have a friend who makes his own cider with local apples, so I will be getting some in the fall. Also, bourbon. Always bourbon.

I am disappointed that everyone is suggesting 'ordinary' drinks here, they may be alright for us common plebs but this is the leader of Team Fancy! His drinks should be as fancy as him.

I would tell you drink some sort of Lager for me, as that is usually my prefered tipple but I shall be responsible, be sure to drink a glass of water before you set out on this almighty celebration for me, so I know you're not going to swear off alcohol after the first night you are legally allowed to drink, you have many years of fine drinking to come! (yes, I know it's not fancy but someone has to think of the children legal adults)

Good point. Then for me I suggest some kind of cocktail without caffeine (I sleep badly enough without stimulants) - anything sharp (say raspberry mojito), or floral (something with creme de violette) but not too sweet.

I reckon a coloured drink in an interesting glass is pretty fancy. 

Have some mead for me as well.

One of my favorite drinks may contain one or more of the following:

• Kerosene
• Propylene Glycol
• Artificial Sweeteners
• Sulphuric Acid
• Rum
• Acetone
• Red dye no. 2
• Scumm
• Axle grease
• Battery acid
• Pepperoni

I'm reminded of a scene from Bottom. 

Urgh. Can't seem to get line breaks to work. 

http://www.miwiki.net/Grog

Although it seems to have been ignored so far, I'd like to thank everybody for not explicitly ragging on me for not drinking. I've got reasons, among which are that I don't want to find out what kind of drunk I might be, 'cause I'm unpleasant enough when I'm angry and sober.

Makes sense, and fair enough, jff.

Personally, although I do like the occasional drink of a Saturday night, I very rarely get drunk. And when I do, I'm either an earnest drunk or a slightly sad drunk which is not so bad. 

People who don't drink are awesome, esp. if they are willing to give me a ride home.  

I guess I've caught enough flak from people (especially family) over the years over not drinking nearly at all, ever, that I'm a bit sensitive to it.

My wife doesn't drink. She simply has never liked the taste of alcohol. In high school I was a teetotaller for a while. This was in Hong Kong where despite a drinking age of 17, it was common for minors to drink.

I don't drink.  Technically, it wouldn't be legal if I wanted to, but I'm at college.

Anyone who gives someone else flak for choosing to not drink is an asshat.

It's usually in the form of "You need to lighten up..."

And I know there are more non-drinkers out there, but when I did grad school in Wisconsin, it often seemed like I was the only one. I guess I've just gotten pre-emptively sensitive on this topic.

I know a lot more people who drink that I feel shouldn't than the other way around... and I know plenty of recovering alcoholics, so I never push the issue once someone says they don't want a drink. 

I sort of know how it is, since I don't drink anything with caffeine and many people can't seem to understand that at all, choosing instead to take pride in telling me exactly how much they can't function without that particular drug. (Not judging anyone, it's just not an effect I enjoy myself).

I guess a lot of people need others to validate their own life choices, and feel attacked and threatened and get defensive when someone doesn't make the same choices they did.

Vegetarians get it a lot too. It sucks.

Personally, I don't care in the slightest what people do as long as it doesn't adversely affect others. Someone not having a drink has basically no effect on me at all. 

In a similar vein, my aunt has given up smoking several times and each time she's been persuaded to start again during drinking sessions with "friends" who obviously didn't like the fact that she quit when they didn't.

She's only in her 50s and she has hypertension, she's had a stroke and now has stroke-induced dementia. She's still smoking. 

Yeah... People are scary.

I can understand harassing Vegetarians.

They are killing the planet.

I am the only one in my circle of friends who doesn't drink. Never been properly drunk either. A lot of my friends and family are weirded out by it, but are cool with it on the whole, because I don't interfere with their drinking (unless it's a life threatening situation- which has happened). Now, when I'm hanging out with my friends late at night at a convention, some of them have a habit of breaking out the whiskey and then I'll drink about 5mm of Single Malt in a shotglass (provided it is peaty as heck) which happens only about twice a year. And I'll try a tiny sip of any drink once, because I am curious like that with food as well.

What is really, really rubbish though is that when I go to conventions, there are some people who 'not drinking' is a curable condition. You would not believe how many times I had my non-alcoholic drinks spiked with booze.The clumsiest attempt of which was a quarter of a bottle of aquavit in my cup of tea, which was ridiculously obvious, but there have been more subtle attempts and some of those by people were actually sort of 'friends'. 

So, yeah, that's how you get paranoid.

Wait, your family harrasses you for NOT drinking?

... want to trade?

I'm a vegetarian who doesn't drink much.  It can suck, but it isn't terrible.  I associate with some pretty solid people, and I generally can avoid idiot conversations.  "I already ate at home," "I'm the DD tonight," "I've got work in the morning," "I'm not that hungry, so I'll just snack."

I've just never developed a taste for meat, and the strongest drink I've seen my parents consume is O'Doul's (non-alcoholic beer that actually tastes pretty good).  It's just something I've not been around much.  My dad's family is part of drinking culture, and a couple of my relatives are in bad.  My uncle drank himself to death two Christmases ago, but thankfully he was able to hold his newborn grandson at least once before he passed.

Do forgive me for bringing the mood down.  I don't have anything against alcohol (or meat) and I know my limits on those rare occasions that I drink.  I'm fond of a number of alcoholic apple ales and ciders, Blue Moon, and have recently discovered the majesty that is Rum Chata.

The point is: drink responsibly, have a good time, and remember that your vegetarian friends will never, ever steal your bacon.

That's love, friends.

I just want to be clear that I don't actually care if people eat plants or animals or not.

I had some horribly obnoxious Vegetarian friends, who were also big into carbon footprints, who tried to make eating meat a huge moral debate, so I started talking about how eating plants was destroying the planet and increasing carbon in the atmosphere, while eating animals was the environmentally conscious thing to do.

Now it's become a running gag.