Drinks

If all goes according to plan, Atlanta’s first distillery since Prohibition will open next May. Brothers Jeff and Craig Moore—who own a technology company, as well as several real estate properties—have secured a twenty-year lease on a 2,500-square-foot building, 487 Edgewood Avenue, in the Old Fourth Ward. There, they plan to distill vodka, gin, and, eventually, whiskey.

Next week, Atlanta's Batdorf & Bronson and St. Louis' Kaldi's Coffee Roasting Company will launch a new blend of coffees from Guatemala San Pedro and Guatemala Finca El Valle. This collaboration or, as they're calling it, "Collabrewation" seems to be an innovative new step in coffee culture, bringing two roasters together to create a new kind of specialty roasting partnership.

Orpheus Brewing is easily one of Atlanta’s most anticipated new breweries, set to open next their taproom overlooking Piedmont Park next weekend. The founders credit The Porter Beer Bar for helping bring their idea to life, so it’s no surprise that the latest member of the Orpheus family is Rebecca Royster, a familiar face to anyone who frequented The Porter over the past five-and-a-half years.

Great things happen in the General Muir kitchen—our former critic Bill Addison named it the Best Restaurant of 2013—but fun things go down at the bar as well, even when you skip the booze. My cravings take me to Emory Point for lunch, seeking out that warm Reuben oozing with Russian dressing and gruyere. But I realized that once I’m at the counter, it’s the daily soda that gets things moving in the right direction.

Atlanta’s zest for nonalcoholic beer has created a bit of a conundrum: The process to create the beer is so complicated that local breweries have struggled to meet the demand.

Local beer drinkers have fallen for Monday Night Brewing’s trifecta: the Eye Patch Ale IPA, the Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale, and the Fu Manbrew Belgian-style Wit, and the same is true of the brewery itself. Located off Howell Mill Road on the Westside, the company founded by Jeff Heck, Joel Iverson, and Jonathan Baker is a great post-work hangout, just as it was when the trio began brewing beer about seven years ago in the garage. A self-described group of white-collar guys with ties, they eventually followed their hearts (and palates), trading in the buttoned-up collars for the business of brew.

I was happy when I walked into the bar at Livingston last week and couldn’t find a seat right away. Granted, it was around 7 p.m. during a show night at the Fox, but it pleased me to see the place full. What a makeover this space in the Georgian Terrace hotel has been given: all glittery, silvery, clean-lined deco and celestial ceilings. A little bit LA, a little bit Grand Central Terminal. (Forgive the limited shot: I was trying not to be too obvious.)

The essential libations of childhood are summertime mainstays for a reason, but local bars and restaurants have stepped up the game with drunken spins on retro favorites like milkshakes and slushies. The thinking is simple—if a refreshing, icy confection is delicious as it is, a shot or two of something stronger can only make it better.

It was the pairing I had been waiting for. In recent months I had explored pairing wine with juicy steaks, cheeses, Latin food, and Thanksgiving spreads, but Nick Windler, Local Three’s beverage director, was about to answer one question I’ve had all along: What goes with Cheetos?