Whether you are moving into your first home, trying to jump into the craft cocktail craze or just looking to improve your home mixing, choosing bottles for your home bar can be confusing and expensive. To help you out, Chicagoist will sit down with some of Chicago's best booze experts and get their opinions about what to stock, what brands are worth trying, and how to make your home bar complete. For the first entry, we chose vodkas with The Boozehound, Kyle McHugh. more ›

Not that we're going to be spending any time lounging at the new Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago anytime soon. Especially seeing as how they have a $25 bottle of water in their minibar. more ›

Having dealt with liquor wholesalers and spirits marketing companies for as long as we have, the past few years have been an interesting time frame. We've seen companies throw insane amounts of money (in some cases overpaying) to acquire high-profile spirits brands for their portfolios. No amount of money spent so far may come close to what Deerfield-based Fortune Brands Inc. may have to shell out in order to maintain the distribution rights to Absolut... more ›

We find Donald Trump to be a tragic figure, what with the ceaseless self-promotion, the infantile manner in which he responds to criticism, his unsolicited advice to politicians, the way he adopts the facial gestures of his succubi consorts, all those skyscrapers rising to the heavens like modern-day Towers of Babel, and the general bad behavior that stems from his misogyny. What next for a man who lives by the motto that if you paint... more ›

If you've been reading Chicagoist's "Beer of the Week" series from its inception, you'll remember that one of our primary rules of alcohol consumption is if you're old enough to legally order something like Sparks, Long Island iced teas, vodka and Red Bull, frozen cocktails, any drink that ends with the word "bomb," or any cocktail containing Southern Comfort, you're old enough to know better. So where does that leave all you folks who... more ›

In a developing story that brings out our inner Nelson Muntz, the Illinois Liquor Commission has sent out violation notices to 13 clubs regarding their practice of bottle service, among them "Susanna's Night Out" staples Le Passage, Jet Vodka Lounge, Stone Lotus, Enclave, and Four. Everybody ready? Now. "Ha HA!!" For those of you who aren't familiar with the practice, bottle service is a VIP treatment in which customers buy a bottle of liquor, then... more ›

Chicagoist never passes up an opportunity to write a lame double entendre as a headline, but the coffee hasn't fully entered our system yet, so please forgive us. As a beer slinger and beer drinker we have to say that we're cautiously optimistic about this new gadget called the Turbo Tap. Chicago-based Laminar Technologies, LLC developed the Turbo Tap with an eye towards increasing beer yield and cutting down pouring time. The key, as... more ›