If last week's post about cocktail making has you in the mood to run up some Christmas beverages, then check out the recently redesigned Absolut Drinks. Despite the vodka-company branding, it's a pretty comprehensive archive of drinks with comprehensive instructions including equipment needed, and you can search on names, ingredients, and drink types.

If you've been serving cocktails at your Christmas parties recently, you might be wondering why they seem to lack the sparkle of the high-priced ones you can get in fancy establishments. I attended a cocktail-making class at the Zeta Bar in Sydney's Hilton yesterday (along with some other IT writers, and courtesy of the nice guys at Blue Coat Systems), where bartenders Nelson and Thales were happy to pass on a few quick tips between watching us make fools of ourselves in the cocktail-making competition. The most important element, it turns out, is precision: measure your shots carefully, follow the steps exactly, and learn the specific mixing requirements for different cocktails. Don't skimp on the ingredients, including the garnishes. Also, you can't cheat by using tricks like pre-chilling glasses to make martinis. Mixing the alcohol with ice enhances the flavour and kills off the ethanol-like fumes, which won't happen if you just pour vodka into a glass straight from the freezer. And if you want the ice in your drinks to look clearer, triple-freeze it (half-freeze, thaw, half-freeze, thaw, freeze), which removes the impurities and excess air.

If you like drinking fortified wines, you're going to be in for a rude shock at the bottleshop soon. Under a newly-signed export deal with Europe, Australian producers will no longer be able to sell drinks described as "port" or "sherry", since those descriptions are now reserved for the originals from the relevant European regions. A similar change has been taking place with champagne for some years, but that's relatively easily recognised when described as "sparkling wine". There are also bans on the use of the descriptors "burgundy", "moselle" and "chablis", though these have been enforced for some years and I can't recall seeing moselle anywhere except on tap at the local leagues club. The two fortified drinks on the hit list pose the biggest challenge; as the Australian points out, port might be described as "vintage" (though I'd be asking "vintage what?"), while sherry has no really obvious alternate label, which might explain why a consultant has been hired to develop a new branding within the next year. (There's a 10-year period to change the labelling for tokay, which would concern me more if I'd ever drunk the stuff.)

Don't let a misplaced bottle opener stand between you and a delicious beverage. If you find yourself with well-chilled bottle of beer but painfully without a proper bottle opener, don't despair. Bottled beverage-lovers at wikiHow have put together a detailed guide for getting that cap off with nothing more than a ring and your gritty determination. Check out the following video to see the magic in action:

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Noisy wine expert Gary Vaynerchuck offers a quick but smart tip for removing the foil sleeve from a bottle of wine without the tedious cover trimmers. His simple secret: Just pull it off. This may not be mind-blowing if you already knew this seemingly obvious trick, but if you didn't, it's a real time-saver.

The closing keynote at Cisco's video-chat heavy Networkers Conference was given by innovation expert Charles Leadbeater. Along with covering how innovation and collaboration need to work hand in hand -- the theme of his recent book We Think -- Leadbeater also made an interesting point regarding how Japanese business, often regarded as particularly convention-driven, ensures a productive workplace environment:

I went to Japan in the early 1990s to discover how Japanese companies collaborate and I met a guy who told me: 'Once every three months we got away to a hot springs hotel, we get completely naked and we get completely drunk. If we didn't go away get naked and get drunk, we'd never come up with any ideas.'

Lest you think that's a wildly unprofessional concept, Leadbetter pointed out that extreme ideas are often the only way to implement radical change: "If people don't think you're completely bonkers, then actually you're not challenging the status quo." In Australia, heading off to a hot spring is probably a tad unlikely, but the Friday-night post-work drink is well-established. Do you find that helps in keeping the office humming, or does it just lead to needing a Bloody Mary the next morning? Share your thoughts in the comments.

While nobody is running around extolling the virtues of cola as a replacement for water for daily hydration, researchers at Kings College London want to make sure you don't think every non-water drink is a poor substitute for water. After reviewing numerous studies on the benefits of drinking tea, they've concluded that tea is a superior drink.

Dr Ruxton said: "Drinking tea is actually better for you than drinking water. Water is essentially replacing fluid. Tea replaces fluids and contains antioxidants so it's got two things going for it."

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Woe to the dinner guest who drips red wine upon their host's white tablecloth for lack of a napkin and a quickly executed fold or two. In the following photo tutorial, see how to wrap a wine bottle to catch drips, make the bottle easier to grasp, and increase your points in the presentation category.

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The problem with Saturday night is Sunday morning. Yes, I'm talking about the hangover. I'm talking about fuzz in your mouth and ringing in your ears. I'm talking about that "did I really say that?" feeling and that "OMFG, I did" reaction. The solution to Sunday morning (or at least those Sunday mornings that start like this) is the perfect Bloody Mary. Photo by cote.

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Wired's How-To Wiki offers a wine-opening tip for moments when you're facing a bottle of the good stuff with no corkscrew in sight—pull out the toolbox. By gently putting a screw about three-fourths of the way into the cork, and using the nail-removal lever of a clawed hammer, you should be able to make short work of that cork. It's definitely a trick that requires some finesse, lest you crack the cork or knock the bottle over, so practicing on cheaper stuff is not a bad idea. Hit the link for tips and details on this clever DIY drink-prepping trick.

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