This is wheat ale weather, people. This evening from 6-9 p.m. at West Lakeview Liquors, Kalamazoo Brewing Company (popularly known as Bell's) will be tasting out the amber, wheat and hop solution brands. The Lincoln Park Young Professionals will do their best to tie status symbols together this evening with their summer wine festival at Howard Orloff Imports (1924 N. Paulina). Cost for the $35 per person event will grant you access to samples......

This week, we're doing this in "Extra Extra" format: Another study released this week shows that what gave absinthe its reputation wasn't thujone, but its high alcohol content. New York magazine food critic Adam Platt travels to Japan to eat some fugu, the toxic fish that can kill a diner if not prepared properly. Here's a list of places in the States that serve fugu. Talk about ungrateful: an obese man in an Arkansas......

With four different brands authorized for sale in the States, absinthe is poised to be the big spirit of the year. We've written about Lucid absinthe before, and we were able to get our hands on a bottle of Kübler, a Swiss absinthe now being sold locally. In addition to being a neutral nation during both world wars and making one hell of a pocket tool, Switzerland also originated absinthe. We figured that, for interested......

There's a new absinthe on the market called Lucid that's catching on at places like the Violet Hour, Lumen, and Delilah's, namely because Lucid is the first Grande wormwood-based absinthe available in the States since before Prohibition. Now, we've tried the "green fairy" and it was an experience we'll never forget, so we researched Lucid for details on how much thujone (the active ingredient from wormwood) it carries. Turns out, not much at all: under......