Day 66: Sorry Your Mom Blew Up, Ricky

Doesn't look Irish to me

Continuing our mini-run of Irish drinks we bring you the Irish Rickey. I had never heard of an Irish Rickey before, putting it in the same company as 97% of the drinks we have tried up to this point.  I had heard of a Gin Rickey, though, so I suspected that a Rickey is a drink that meets certain criteria.  Not only is that correct, but it turns out that there is a entire Rickey wiki which details that a Rickey contains a spirit, juice from half a lime (with the peel dropped in), and carbonated water. I also learned that Rachel Maddow likes Rickeys, which was a bit of surprise.  I bet she uses a liberal interpretation of the recipe, though.

We take a conservative approach and our Mr. Boston book makes no reference to dropping the lime peel in the glass. That is fortunate, since we tend to use the green plastic lime and I didn’t want to drop half the bottle into our glass.  It also specified club soda as our carbonated water.  For our whiskey, we went with Jameson, the preferred whiskey of Jimmy McNulty.  I’d like to say that we bought the Jameson because of that, but it was mostly because it was the only Irish whiskey we could find in a 375ml bottle and we had to get out of the store fast because Omar comin’.

 

The drink itself was not great. I think we must be getting used to the whiskey, though, because it was really the club soda that caused the problem. The bubbles are nice, but there is just something about it that doesn’t taste right to me.  The whiskey and lime went together nicely, though, preventing it from being a total loss. Ultimately, we both thought that the Irish Rickey was drinkable, but only given a lack of other choices.  Unlike Maddow, I might have preferred the whiskey straight. I also wonder if there is something about Irish whiskey that I just like better than other whiskies.  This may mean that it is almost time for another TBIAW taste test.  Try to contain your excitement.

A whiskey taste test you say? Intriguing
Image: HBO.com

Overall Rating for the Irish Rickey

 

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Irish Whiskey

.5 oz Lime Juice

Club Soda