So what do you do when your neighbors hog the washer and dryer for nearly a week? Write a note, you might say, asking them to take their clothes out of the machines so that you can have some clean socks and underwear. And what if, when finally the clothes are removed, the washer goes on the fritz?

The rational decision is to let the annoyance subside and go to a Laundromat. The romantic one is to hop in the car, go someplace (relatively) far-flung, regroup and forget about the laundry.

Which is what brought me to Portland, Maine, a couple of weeks ago to wander about the Old Harbor and cast off the lingering winter chill in some homey seaside pubs. And what beverage can impart as much warmth as it can good feelings about careless neighbors and temperamental appliances? Why, bourbon, of course.

(Ah, yes. You may be wondering how I could go to Maine without clean boxers or socks. At the risk of stealing the thunder of Fashion Cents guru Vanessa, let’s just say it’s a good thing outlet mecca Kittery, Maine, is on the way.)

Now, you might think, like a co-worker of mine, that bourbons are “little too rednecky.” There’s cause for this. After Prohibition ended in 1933, distillers of bourbon, an American corn-based whiskey aged in charred wood barrels, had to start from scratch and found themselves overwhelmed by competition from high-quality whiskies from Ireland and Scotland. Their solution? Cut corners and get the product to the market fast. The end result was a rushed, lower-quality spirit. The boorish stigma followed and, sadly, stuck.

Today, with high-end bourbons sharing the shelf with the likes of Glenlivet and Chivas, things are different. Exquisite, complex and potent, bourbon is the drink of the cerebral cowboy, the drinker unafraid of power and flavor.

So once in Portland, I mounted my horse, rode into the Old Harbor’s cobblestone streets and swaggered through the doors of Bull Feeney’s. (OK, I walked from my comfortable guesthouse on Congress and St. John and had my ID examined by a bouncer, but who’s counting?)

This Irish pub, on the corner of Fore and Exchange streets, is a charming place, with slate floors, velvet cushions and a potbelly stove. The barman, wearing a crisp, white shirt and tie, approached, and I asked one of my favorite questions.

“What do you have for bourbon?”

Such music. And the answer was just as sweet. On the shelf was good, classic family of small-batch bourbons. This means the distiller chooses the best barrels of whiskey and mixes them. I started with Baker’s, a smooth, 7-year-old whiskey name for Baker Beam, the grand-nephew of distiller Jim Beam.

The legacy of this old bourbon-making family first comes through in Baker’s rich, amber hue, then through the flavor—mellow and floral, with a touch of vanilla.

Next in the collection was Basil Hayden’s. This mild whiskey is caramel in color with hints of orange and a distinct peppery kick. There is a lot of rye in here, lending an overall softness.

In most bars, the eye can’t help skipping over the spindly necks of the various flavored vodkas to the rough-hewn elegance of a bottle of Knob Creek. This bourbon sings of the white oak barrel that was its home for a long nine year. The nose is fruity, the character is bold and a soft berry sweetness rounds the taste off nicely.

And then there was Booker’s. Oh, Booker’s.

“I would order it with some water,” said the barman. His warning is best heeded. Bottled at 121 and 127 proof and uncut with water, Booker’s is straight from the barrel and decidedly not for the faint-hearted. Its deep, rich hue promises big flavor and boy, does it deliver. The tastes range from a touch of smoke to tones of chocolate and vanilla. To really open up the flavors of this whiskey (and help ensure you leave the bar on your feet rather than your hands), add a little water.

I did. Then I had another and let the water stay in the tap. I would have finished the night off with a scotch, but as that’s the subject of another blog, I went back out into the cold, Maine night, fortified with a pleasant bourbon buzz. At the guesthouse, I got into bed, comfortable in my brand-new boxers and went easily to sleep. Laundry never entered my mind.

Note: You don’t have to go to Portland to taste these excellent bourbons. Peddler’s Daughter on Main Street in Nashua has the whole collection. 

If you needed yet another reason to love Wisconsin, I’ve found one.

Last year, I had the good fortune of trying Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat. It’s a wheat beer that tastes of orange and coriander and is great for a hot summer day. It became my favorite beer of last summer, and I got most of my friends hooked on it as well.

I immediately did some research on the family-owned brewery based in Chippewa, Wisconsin, hoping that I could find out if they sold other varieties of their beer here. But I didn’t have any luck, that is, until now.

This past weekend on a "beer-finding" mission in Massachusetts, I literally stumbled across Leinenkugel’s Berry Weiss and Honey Weiss. Both are wheat beers sold year-round.

The Berry version includes loganberries, elderberries and blackberries. If you aren’t a big beer drinker and instead lean toward wine coolers, you may dig this. It is very sweet and fruity. If you are used to a porter or stout, or are an ale drinker, this may not be up your alley. Try it with some frozen berries at the bottom of the glass like I did for a sweet treat.

The Honey Weiss is what you think it is. It’s a Wheat Ale with Honey added. As opposed to the Berry, this is not very sweet and is close in profile to the Sunset Wheat.

And I haven’t tried this yet but I found out if you can’t decide, you can mix the Berry with the Honey to make a "Honey Bear" or mix the Sunset Wheat with the Berry for a "Sunny Bear."

The brewery makes several other beers including a seasonal, Summer Shandy, which the company bills as a lemonade flavored beer and Big Butt Dopplebock, a dark beer made with dark chocolate malt and sold January through March.

You know when you get a bartender that’s ignoring you, and you think, "I could just stick my glass under that tap and get it myself"?

Well, if you live in Georgia, it’s very possible that you can do that.

According to an Associated Press story that crossed the wire today, a guy in the Southern state found a loophole within the law that is now allowing bars to set up taps to a variety of beers at individual tables.

It saves the servers time; they don’t have to take orders, but they do have to occasionally check up on the table, so there are still a few rules that go along with the system that weren’t in place before.

So, would something like this fly in New Hampshire? Is it a good idea, or a bad idea? You decide.

AOL release it’s top ten brewery tours in the U.S. this week.

Coming in at No. 7 is the Harpoon Brewery in Boston. The brewery was picked for its tastings.

Anheuser-Busch topped the list, but it wasn’t the brewery in Merrimack, instead it was the St. Louis brewery. But remember you can see the Clydesdales at the Merrimack brewery as well.

There will be a Clydesdale Camera Day on April 5 from 1-3 p.m. 

Here is the full list of the AOL list.

You know spring is right around the corner when you see spring ales springing up (sorry) at the supermarket and in breweries.

I’m already a big fan of Blue Moon Belgian White Ale. And while it is a summery brew, I drink it year round. Sometimes you want something light as opposed to the heavy winter brews like porters and stouts.

But I’ve found a new love in the Blue Moon family called Rising Moon Spring Ale. This is one of Blue Moon’s 4 seasonal beers and it incorporates one of my favorite flavors, lime. I’m used to putting a lime in Mexican beers and oranges and lemons in summer brews, but this is even better. The beer, an amber wheat ale, is brewed with kieffer lime leaves and lime peel.

In the last days of winter (hopefully), this beer is a great way to welcome in spring. Grab it while you can.

The Nashua store has a much wider wine selection than the Dover outlet, where I normally would shop. Rows and rows were filled with almost every region you could think of. It was great because it also had this section in back with clearance wines. I found a wine from South Africa there, called Lindemans South Africa Chardonnay vintage 2006. The bottle says it’s best served well-chilled and the wine style is “rich mellon, grapefruit and tropical aromas with a rounded finish.” I could definitely taste mellon; the grapefruit, not really. If I thought intently about it, maybe. It was a sweet wine, but not too sickly sweet and did have a “rounded finish”. The “tropical aroma”? I don’t know how to match that up with food.

Sam Adams has announced its 2008 Longshot American Homebrew Contest.

If your friends are constantly complimenting you on the brews you make, or even if they’re not, you may want to consider entering.

The winning beer will be featured in 2009 Longshot 6-pack.

Go to the Samuel Adam’s Web site for contest rules.

Ever have one of Pepperidge Farm’s Milano cookies?

Growing up, it was an occasional treat my mom would bring home from the grocery store — occasional only because we would snack through the package so quickly. For store-bought, they are pretty yummy treats. You wonder if it could get any better.

And then a college friend told me about the Mint Milano. He said, "Once you have a Mint Milano, you won’t want to go back."

"Yeah, right," I said. We went right out to the grocery store for the official taste test.

Wow. How right he was.

I thought about these cookies last night when I was at The Puritan Backroom in Manchester. When you’re at this restaurant, it’s almost law that you have to order one of its famouse mudslides. (And the Backroom’s law of mudslides is that there is a two-drink maximum — that’s how strong they are.)

And up until this point, I had always ordered The Original Mudslide ($8.95). It’s a frozen drink made up of Bailey’s Irish Cream, Kahlua and vodka. (I always order it with chocolate, too!)

But last night, I took a look at the drink menu and looked more closely at its list of mudslides. (There’s 10!) And the last one caught my eye.

It was called the After Fiveslide ($9.25), and it mixed Kahlua and Bailey’s with Rumpleminze for a peppermint blend. And, yes, I ordered it with chocolate, hoping for that York Peppermint Patty taste.

Yum.

It was quite a minty drink, a perfect concoction for the end of the night. Next time, I might ask for a bit more chocolate next time, to get the right balance with the peppermint.

I’m not sure it’s a drink that will keep me completely away from The Original, but it will be fun to alternate them.

So here’s a question for you. The Backroom’s mudslides are by far the best I’ve ever had. I haven’t found any that compare. If you’re a mudslide-drinker, where do you get yours? Leave your suggestions below!

On Friday, I headed over to the Wine Society in Tyngsborough for its Wild & Wacky brews tasting. We tasted a dozen different beers, which were from faraway locations such as Belgium, Germany and Japan, and ones closer to home, such as Colorado, Delaware and even Pennichuck in Milford.

Some of these beers were, by far, the strongest ones I’ve ever tasted.

For a $5 event, this was a fantastic deal. Not only did I get to taste a bunch of beers that, for the most part, I’d never heard of, but you can even apply that $5 toward a purchase. And it’s not like you’re going to leave without buying something, which makes the event FREE.

So what did I bring home? I bought five of the 12 we tasted:

- Fraoch (Williams Bros. Brewing Co., Scotland). A castle-shaped four pack of 11.2 fl oz bottles was $12.99. This was one of the lighter ones, at 5% alcohol. It’s brewed with heather, flowers and Scottish malt. It tasted slightly more like a wine, and it was one of the beers I tasted that I could drink more regularly than the others.

- Hitachino Nest Beer, Ginger Brew (Kiuchi Brewery, Ibaraki, Japan). A 24.3 fl oz bottle cost $7.99, and it’s 7% alcohol. This was another lighter one that I liked. Other tasters could detect the ginger in the ale, but I couldn’t. It was still one of the more likable beers. Plus, I thought the bottle design was cute! (Side note: If you want to find out more about Japanese beers, the Wine Society is doing a tasting of ales and sake later this month. Check out Feast’s Events calendar for more details.)

- The Reverend, Belgian-style Quadrupel Ale (Avery Brewing Co., Boulder, Colo.). This bottle is 1 pint, 6 fl oz, and cost $8.99. This is where my double-digit alcohol purchases began, with this one containing 10% alcohol. It’s brewed with imported Belgian malted barley, dark Belgian candy sugar, Syrian Goldings hops and authentic Belgian yeast.

- Jewbelation Eleven, 11th Anniversary Ale (Shmaltz Brewing Co., Saratoga Springs, N.Y.). This 1 pint, 6 fl oz, bottle cost $5.50 and contains 11% alcohol. I have to admit that I bought this beer for the humor factor — after all, this He’Brew beer says it’s "The Chosen One." It’s a limited edition, brewed with 11 malts and 11 hops. There’s even fun facts on the bottle about the number 11. Our server said he preferred the 10th anniversary, but I’m unable to compare. I still liked it!

- Raison D’Extra (Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Milton, Del.). This 12 fl oz bottle was $8.99, and at 18% alcohol, it was one of the last few we tasted, all of them from this brewery. It’s brewed with malt, brown sugar and raisins, and according to its Web site, it’s on "hiatus" from being made. It surprised me that I liked something made from raisins, but it was another beer that had more of a wine feel.

One beer I didn’t like at all was a smoky German beer, which I can’t recall the name of, because, well, it was long and in German. It was the smokiest of the few smoky brews we tried, but it honestly just tasted like a fireplace.

One beer we didn’t get to taste that they had hoped to have was the Sam Adams Utopia. This is supposed to be the strongest beer in the world — with 25 PERCENT ALCOHOL. But when they got their hands on one of these bottles, someone came into the store and bought it. A spur-of-the-moment $200 buy. Maybe next time!

With St. Patrick’s Day around the corner, visions of Guinness are in most die-hard drinkers’ dreams. But what about it’s black and tan counterpart?

Bass has come up with a marketing tool just in time for the Irish holiday to make sure you don’t forget about them on this day.

The brolly is designed to pour the perfect glass of black and tan and with a little practice, I found it was much easier than using a warped spoon. (I know this pour isn’t perfect, but see how nicely separated the beers are.)

Then I started wondering what else I could make using Bass. Traditionally, Guinness gets all the glory. A quick search at drinkmixer.com turns up 58 recipes with Guinness while only three recipes had Bass in them (and two of those recipes also had Guinness in them). I decided to try the brown Betty punch (below) although I was a little weary of the contents, especially the warm beer part.

I enlisted the help of my roommate Sarah. The ingredients of the punch are more her style, especially the use of spices.

Needless to say, the drink wasn’t a hit with either one of us. I couldn’t really taste anything for the first few sips and after that it went downhill. Sarah said it had too much alcohol from the start, probably the result of the brandy, and even tried chilling the drink to see if it would make a difference. It didn’t.

At least it was worth the experiment, and I’m thinking that if you are a big brandy drinker, it might be worth a try.

If you’re a fan of Bass, two other drinks that might be worth trying, and can be found on the menu at Strange Brew in Manchester, are the radler, which is half ale or larger and half Sprite, or the snakebite, which is half ale or lager and half cider.

If anyone knows of any other good recipes using Bass feel free to post them below.