Portal:Drink

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D r i n k

A portal dedicated to all beverages

The Drink Portal

A drink, in this case a glass of port wine.

Drinks, or beverages, are liquids specifically prepared for human consumption. In addition to basic needs, beverages form part of the culture of human society.

Despite the fact that most beverages, including juice, soft drinks, and carbonated drinks, have some form of water in them; water itself is often not classified as a beverage, and the word beverage has been recurrently defined as not referring to water.

Essential to the survival of all organisms, water has historically been an important and life-sustaining drink to humans. Excluding fat, water composes approximately 70% of the human body by mass. It is a crucial component of metabolic processes and serves as a solvent for many bodily solutes. Health authorities have historically suggested at least eight glasses, eight fluid ounces each, of water per day (64 fluid ounces, or 1.89 litres), and the British Dietetic Association recommends 1.8 litres. The United States Environmental Protection Agency has determined that the average adult actually ingests 2.0 litres per day.

Distilled (pure) water is rarely found in nature. Spring water, a natural resource from which much bottled water comes, is generally imbued with minerals. Tap water, delivered by domestic water systems in developed nations, refers to water piped to homes through a tap. All of these forms of water are commonly drunk, often purified through filtration.

An alcoholic beverage is a drink containing ethanol, commonly known as alcohol, although in chemistry the definition of an alcohol includes many other compounds. Alcoholic beverages, such as wine, beer, and liquor have been part of human culture and development for 8,000 years.

Non-alcoholic beverages often signify drinks that would normally contain alcohol, such as beer and wine but are made with less than .5 percent alcohol by volume. The category includes drinks that have undergone an alcohol removal process such as non-alcoholic beers and de-alcoholized wines.

Drink and Beverage WikiProjects

Goblet Glass (Banquet).svg

WikiProject Food & Drink is an association of Wikipedians with an interest in culinary-related subjects. They have come together to co-ordinate the development of food and drink articles here on Wikipedia as well as the many subjects related to food such as foodservice, catering and restaurants. If you wish to learn more about these subject as well as get involved, please visit the Food & Drink Wikiproject page to see how you can help!

Beyond the general culinary interests, several groups of Wikipedians have banded together for beverage-specific projects covering their favorite types of drinks. If any of these subjects pique your interest, please feel free to visit their projects. These groups would love you to have you participate!

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WikiProject
Bartending
WikiProject
Beer
Pubs
Taskforce
Beverages
Task Force
WikiProject
Spirits
WikiProject
Wine

Selected article

Weizenbier.jpg
A wheat beer glass is a glass that is used to serve wheat beer, known also as Weizenbier or Weißbier. The German glass generally holds 0.5 litres with room for foam or "head". It is much taller than a pint glass, and is considerably wider at the top than at the base, with a slight hourglass taper toward the bottom. This design purportedly allows greater production of foam, as well as increased exposure to air when the glass is tilted back. In other countries such as Belgium, the glass may be 0.25 litres or 0.33 litres.

Because of its unique shape, extra care must be taken when pouring a beer into a wheat beer glass to produce the desired head volume. The traditional method of pouring Weißbier is to first rinse the glass with cold water, then, without drying the glass, hold the bottle and glass almost horizontally while slowly pouring the beer. When the level of the beer touches the lip of the bottle, slowly bring the glass upright. When there is less than one inch (or a few centimeters) of beer left in the bottle, swirl the bottle vigorously to pick up the sediment and create foam, which is poured on top.[1] If done correctly, the foam should just crest the lip of the glass without pouring over.

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Selected person

John Stith Pemberton, inventor of Coca-Cola
John Stith Pemberton
B. January 8, 1831 – d. August 16, 1888

John Stith Pemberton was an American druggist and the inventor of Coca-Cola. When Pemberton was a druggist and chemist in Atlanta, Georgia, he began work on a cocawine, an alcoholic beverage mixed with coca, kola nut and damiana called Pemberton's French Wine Coca. It was intended to stop headaches and calm nervousness, but others insist he was attempting to create a pain reliever for himself and other wounded Confederate veterans.

In 1885, when Atlanta and Fulton County enacted temperance legislation, Pemberton produced a nonalcoholic alternative to his French Wine Coca. Frank Mason Robinson came up with the name "Coca-Cola" for the alliterative sound, which was popular among other wine medicines of the time. Although the name quite clearly refers to the two main ingredients, the controversy over cocaine content would later prompt The Coca-Cola Company to state that it is "meaningless but fanciful." Robinson also hand wrote the Spencerian script on the bottles and ads. Pemberton also made many health claims for his product and marketed it as 'delicious, refreshing, exhilarating, invigorating' and touted as a 'valuable brain tonic' that would cure headaches, relieve exhaustion and calm nerves.

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Selected ingredient

hybrid skeletal structure of the caffeine molecule
Caffeine is a bitter white crystalline xanthine that acts as a psychoactive stimulant drug and a mild diuretic (speeds up urine production) in humans and other animals. Caffeine was discovered by a German chemist, Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge, in 1819. He coined the term "kaffein", a chemical compound in coffee, which in English became caffeine. Caffeine is also called guaranine when found in guarana, mateine when found in mate, and theine when found in tea; all of these names are synonyms for the same chemical compound.

Caffeine is found in varying quantities in the beans, leaves, and fruit of some plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plants. It is most commonly consumed by humans in infusions extracted from the cherries of the coffee plant and the leaves of the tea bush, as well as from various foods and drinks containing products derived from the kola nut. Other sources include yerba mate, guarana berries, and the Yaupon Holly.

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Drink news

Selected quote

Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things,—old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
— Francis Bacon
 Apothegms No. 97,
reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).


Did you know...

...that the first written record of whiskey comes from 1405 in Ireland and it is also mentioned in Scotland in 1496?
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Selected picture

A cocktail featuring the three gems of alcohol, diamond (gin), ruby (vermouth), and emerald (chartreuse)
Credit: Chris Palmer

A Bijou cocktail featuring the three "gems" of alcohol, diamond (gin), ruby (vermouth), and emerald (chartreuse)

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Things you can do


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Categories

Category puzzle

The following entries are categories relating to drinks:


Drink lists

Topics related to Beverages

The following are topics relating to drinks:

General topics: Bartending  • Bottling • Refrigeration
Alcoholic beverages: Beer • Brandy • Brewing • Caffeinated alcoholic drinks • Cocktails • Distillation • Fermentation • Liqueur • Proof • Schnapps • Vodka • Whiskey • Wine
Soft Drinks: Carbonation • Coffee • Cola • Juice • Root beer • Soda water • Lithia water • Steeping • Tea


  1. ^ Weihenstephan Brauerei, The Right Way to Pour... For Normal Mortals