Professor of Cocktail Studies

Today the OSU Buckeyes will play--or more precisely, maul--the Maryland Terrapins. And I'll be knocking back a Nuts for You Stout made by Zaftig Brewing Co., located about three miles from my house. According to the Untapped beer app, Nuts for You is “a rich, dark stout—heavy on the peanut and accented with dark chocolate.” In other words, as close to Buckeye candy in liquid form as one can get. Based on the evaluations of 3.2K users of Untapped, Nuts for You rates a 3.94 on a scale of 5. Personally I gave it a rating a 4.25, but I’ve been partial to stouts since I began drinking craft beer and partial to peanut butter since my mom began making me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches some decades earlier. And I like the sheer joie de vivre this inventive kind of beer embodies.

The Moscow Mule is not quite the simplest cocktail to make--that distinction goes to the Screwdriver (vodka + orange juice) and similar two-ingredient drinks that you just pour into a tall glass filled with ice, period. But it's pretty damn simple. As cocktail historian David Wondrich maintains, with only slight exaggeration, "your dog could make one." The charm of the Moscow Mule is twofold. First, simple or not, it's delicious and refreshing. Second, it has a good origin story. Nearly every cocktail has the same origin story: "Necessity is the mother of invention" combined with a brilliant flash of genius that invents the recipe on the spot. Mostly this is just folklore, but in the case of the Moscow Mule it's pretty much straight reporting. Here's how it goes. Although ubiquitous nowadays, in 1941 vodka was still relatively little-known in the United States. So when John G. Martin, the senior executive of G.F. Heublin, an alcoholic beverage f...