Via Dead Rabbit

The Financial District's Dead Rabbit, where we recently enjoyed tiny teacups of "welcome punch" and a few rounds of excellent cocktails, is launching an events series this weekend.

The evenings will focus on Ernest Hemingway's contributions to both literary and liquor culture, with a 90-minute discussion led by Philip Greene, one of the founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail and author of To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion. Dale DeGroff will guest star behind the bar, mixing four kinds of cocktails each night.

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One of the best things about The Dead Rabbit, a delightful little pub and cocktail bar tucked away in the Financial District, is that a swallow of punch arrives a few moments after you're seated in the parlor upstairs.

It's like the liquor world's version of an amuse bouche--a few sips from the evening's punch bowl, served in a little porcelain teacup. Much like an amuse sent from the kitchen, the "welcome punch" is the bar's greeting and a taste of what's to come.

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Legal (except in New Jersey schools) tranquilizers?

Peeking out from among the Malta cans and bottles of kola champagne and ginger beer in bodega refrigerator cases in neighborhoods like Flatbush, Bed-Stuy, and Clinton Hill, beverages bearing a likeness of Wailers lead singer (and prodigious pothead) Bob Marley have been appearing. (And what college student doesn't have his dreads-framed visage plastered somewhere in the dorm room?) That likeness has been pressed into service in Bob Marley-branded beverages, alliteratively called Marley's Mellow Mood. FitR picked up a couple on Church Avenue, on an evening when squad cars went screaming by, heading into East Flatbush. We certainly needed some nerve-calming.

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Bitter pink Campari with soda water is one of my favorite retro aperitifs, but no one seems to get the proportions right. I find it's always diluted with too much soda, like a watery dive-bar highball.

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A cool frothy glass of Sheiss Weiss Dunkel

Brooklyn breweries pumping out craft beers are now common enough, so it takes a new approach to cause a splash, and that is just what Sanford O'Sheiss, founder of fledgling Olde Gowanus Brewery, has done. This Stevens Institute graduate began his project (How else?) with a Kickstarter campaign early last year that eventually netted him $75,000. He plowed that money - quite literally - into a property on Brooklyn's Second Avenue, in the shadow of the F tracks on the lip of one of the Gowanus Canal's tentacle-like arms. Sheiss partly bulldozed, partly rehabbed the three- story brick structure dating from the 1880s that was there already. It had been a chemical factory for most of its life, then was converted to a day-care facility during the '90s. FiTR caught up with O'Sheiss in the brewery office, which is in the newer half of the building - a soaring, international-style atrium that's all glass and reflective surfaces.

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Goodman

Guinness and a pale ale in harmony

A standard Black-and-Tan is made in a pint glass, filled halfway with a pale ale, then layered with Guinness. In bars that take extra care in the draw of the draught, like Swift Hibernian Lounge, a small silver spoon, provided by Guinness, hangs from the tap. After drawing the pale ale, a bartender will place the spoon over the glass, and pour Guinness over the spoon to disperse the beer -- a direct pour over the ale would ruin a clean flow.

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Rao

Suspend a beautiful raw oyster in liquor and it looks more like the formaldehyde-preserved brain of a tiny mammal than a delicious bivalve. Sure, it's traditional, but you can't taste a thing as it slides down your gullet, cushioned in booze.

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Anders Goldfarb/Brooklyn Historical Society

Every week, the Brooklyn Historical Society sends round a historic photo of Brooklyn. This weeks it's a shot from Ruby's Bar in Coney Island, taken during the 1985 World Series, a nail biter in which the Kansas City Royals edged out the St. Louis Cardinals four games to three. Ruby's has been a favorite Coney Island hang since 1975, and Fork in the Road included it among our 10 favorite Brooklyn Bars in 2009, and reported when it was in danger of being shut down by rising rents in 2010. Later in 2010, the city had plans to relocate the iconic bar. Their website reports they just signed a new lease at the same location.

Here is what the Brooklyn Historical Society had to say about Ruby's:

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via Instagram / dkproprietors

Six-figure book deals are getting harder to come by, especially for food and drink projects. But the East Village cocktail den Death & Co. scored a $250,000 deal with Ten Speed Press last year.

Today, some interesting news comes from the bar's founder David Kaplan: He plans to share the hefty advance with the bar's employees.

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This glass of aquavit, from Danish restaurant Aamanns-Copenhagen, is flavored with toasted rye bread.

Aquavit (or akvavit) is a flavored liquor beloved of Scandinavians, and served in funny little glasses. Derived from the Latin aqua vitae, it means "water of life."

[See More Drink Up: Reinventing the Pocket Flask: Boozie Bear | Why Not Mate?]

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