The Bottle is a Wonderland

Drink 197: What's Good for the Gosling

2012-02-20T10:19:00.000-08:00

I’m back! Yes, it’s Mrs. Bottle here to share a story about the drink Mr. Bottle and I recently discovered. In honor of Chocolate Mint Day this past Sunday, we tried the Chocolate Mint Martini. We strayed from Mr. Boston and found this drink in another bar book I picked up during the Borders (RIP) liquidation sale. I think it was cheaper on Amazon but I was caught up in the frenzied moment of the sanctioned looting of a store.

Instagram classes things up, don't ya think?

The Chocolate Mint Martini has Vodka, Crème de Cacao, and Crème de Menthe. The recipe was unclear on whether the Crème de Cacao should be the clear or brown so I chose brown. It is a little richer in flavor and earthier in color (thank you Top Chef). Also recipes mostly seem to call for the clear version so I wanted to use up more of the brown stuff. It was quite mint-y, refreshing and very tasty.

Which leads me to another observation. It’s been a Ryan Gosling film fest at TBIAW estate over the past couple weekends. First we watched Drive. Then we caught a bit of Lars and the Real Girl (which we had previously viewed). Next came The Ides of March. Then Crazy Stupid Love. Well, we saw this in the theater (a real rarity for us) but we really want to watch it again so I’m counting it. And finally Blue Valentine. Technically we haven’t watched this yet because it’s supposed to be a real downer but it’s been on our DVR for about two months so I’m counting it as well. So what’s my observation you may ask? That Mr. Gosling is also quite mint-y, refreshing and very tasty. Now I have to go because Mr. Bottle is asking if we can start watching The Notebook.

Mrs. Bottle is thinking of starting

a new blog called

"The Gosling is a Wonderland"

By AlBBie905 (Own work)

[CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Overall Rating for the Chocolate Mint Martini

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 – 34% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka

0.75 oz Crème de Cacao

0.75 oz Crème de Menthe

Drink 196: Fourget About It

2012-02-18T05:43:00.001-08:00

Today is National Drink Wine Day so it seems appropriate that we temporarily awaken from our hibernation and bring forth on this blog a fresh post. Today is also National Battery Day and I am excited to see what the battery blog has planned. I’m sure it will be electrifying. Heh.

The can is hard to see because
of the camo. It is right in the
center of this photograph

In order to celebrate Drink Wine Day, we bring you Four Loko, the Champagne of flavored malt beverages. “Four Loko? You said that stuff was banned!” is probably what you are thinking right now. I had been under that impression for months. That all ended the other day when I was at the local mini mart buying my daily supply of lottery tickets, washer fluid, Twinkies, tree-shaped air fresheners, and Mountain Dew. It was when I was deciding on the best flavor of Mountain Dew to match my mood that I noticed just one cooler over was a shelf filled with Four Loko. “Four Loko?” I thought, “I said that stuff was banned”.

I instantly forgot about buying any of that other crap, grabbed a forbidden Four Loko, and sprinted towards the counter. My excitement level only increased when the cashier accepted my $2.60 and handed me the 23.5 oz can in a brown paper bag. I immediately took my bag-swaddled can out side, popped it open took a big swig, and began pestering people at the gas pumps to lend me $20 so I could fill my tank.

Okay, that last part only happened in my mind. What really happened is that I brought it home and waited for Mrs. Bottle so she could also enjoy the caffeine and alcohol fueled party I was going to have. While I was waiting for her to get home, I did a little research on Four Loko. What I learned was that it has been unbanned because they removed all the caffeine, taurine, guarana, and all the other stuff that made it cool. I hadn’t been this disappointed since I learned that Ryan Gosling was snubbed for Sexiest Man Alive.

Seriously? He didn't win?
img: gcdgraphics

At this point, there is very little difference between a Four Loko and a Zima. I’ve tried to enumerate the differences here:

Zima	Four Loko
Slightly Effeminate Clear Glass Bottle	Badass Faux-Camouflage Can
Not available since 2008	Once banned for being too cool
Between 4-6% alcohol content	12% alcohol content
Loved by young girls	Loved by young bros

The key difference appears to be the alcohol content. As a frame of reference, drinking one can of Four Loko is the equivalent to drinking 3.85245901639344 Colt 45s.

But how does it taste? In a word: terrible. We had the lemonade flavor, which I had judged to have the best chance of being refreshing and delicious. Clearly I choose poorly. Mrs. Bottle said, “when I first put it in my mouth it wasn’t bad, but then it tasted horrible.” Insert your own joke here.

A plastic cup is the ideal vessel for an ice cold Loko

I tried to finish it, because I hate to see $2.60 go to waste, but I just couldn’t do it. I got through about half the can (or 1.926229508 Colt 45’s worth) before I threw in the towel and threw away the can. All I was left with were regrets and a slight buzz.

Overall Rating for Four Loko Lemonade

Taste: 1

Presentation: 1

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 Cans (11.55737705 Colt 45s)

Ingredients

23.5 oz Four Loko

1 Solo Cup

Drink 195: The 24 Days of Christmas

2012-01-17T17:17:00.000-08:00

Greetings and welcome to the 2011 TBIAW Holiday Gift Guide! Some poor misguided souls might think that mid-January 2012 is too late for a 2011 holiday gift guide. Those people do not work for the US Postal Service. Here in the cosmopolitan Charlotte Metroplex, home of such landmarks as the Bottle is a Wonderland Estate, South Carolina, and the NASCAR Hall of Fame, people are still receiving mail from November. This is why I always use FedEx to deliver transplant organs.

Sadly, Mrs. Bottle and I were victims of this horrible tragedy of delayed mail. I did not receive my December 16^th issue of Forbes magazine until January 7^th. This was an important one, too, for it contained the annual ForbesLife Gift Guide. I rely on this each year to help me figure out what luxury items to purchase for Mrs. Bottle. Had this issue arrived on time I would have known that the Burgundy Persian-lamb Wulling jacket by the Row ($12,000 – Barneys) should be under the tree. Instead Mrs. Bottle received a White Chinese-polyester jacket by the Wal-Mart ($43.99 – Wal-Mart). In fact, my issue was so late that Barneys no longer has the clearly superior jacket. Maybe I can find a different one for next year.

The tree is made from bumble bones
image: Forbes.com

I don’t have time to cover everything. It is January after all. I have time to mention a few, though. For men I was going to recommend the Halston Velvet slippers until I saw that they are “price upon request”. Something tells me that they will be more than these superior ones. Alternately you could get this $7,000 ping pong table. It is actually a good deal because it doubles as a ~~beer pong table~~ dining room table so you are getting two pieces of furniture for the price of one. Its 900 pounds of concrete could also be useful if you ever need to make sure a body never floats to the surface. You are practically losing money by not owning one.

For the audiophile in your life they suggest the Basis Inspiration Turntable. A turntable? Seriously? People who insist on vinyl can be kind of annoying. I’m guessing that people who insist on vinyl and own a $54,000 turntable are probably not an exception. For the same price as that turntable you could buy a USB turntable to convert your precious records to MP3 and 215 160GB iPods so you can listen to them.

Finally, for those of you with precious darling children, they bring you $1,200 ladybug earrings. I say go for it. If you think you can't afford it go ahead and use the college fund money. It will pay off. When you have to get a doctor to remove thousands of dollars of jewelry from your little angel’s nose it will create a fun story for years to come. College can’t teach you those kind of life experiences.

Vampire Eric really
wishes he had legs
so he could get a sip

In honor of these high-falutin’ gifts we decided to have the Grand Mimosa, a mix of Champagne, Grand Marnier, and orange juice. Since we just spent all that money on gifts, we used cava instead of champagne. We are not made of money after all. The drink was okay, but both Mrs. Bottle and I thought that it was not as good as a classic Mimosa which excludes the Grand Marnier. Even better is plain cava, which excludes the orange juice as well.

Overall Rating for Grand Mimosa

Taste: 3

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: ??? – The recipe did not give champagne proportions

Ingredients

0.5 oz Grand Marnier

1 oz Orange Juice

Champagne

Drink 194: Malibu's Least Wanted

2012-01-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

If you are like me you spend most of your time studying Kanye West lyrics. I was recently analyzing his song Monster (with guest vocalists Bon Iver, Rick Ross, Jay-Z, and Nicki Minaj – I’m a little disappointed I wasn’t asked to drop a few rhymes, too) and couldn’t help but notice this line:

Garnish with pâté

Mix the Goose and Malibu and call it Malibooya

A drink recipe! Since Kanye likes it we figured it must be good. The die was cast. We had to try out this Malibooya (or is it Malibu-ja?). Unfortunately Kanye left the rest of the recipe as an exercise for the listener. Therefore we had to make some educated guesses about the proportions, serving vessel, and preparation techniques. Would it have killed him to add some details?

Mix the Goose and Malibu and call it Malibooya

One ounce of each in a chilled shot glass’ll do ya

There, was that so hard? Maybe he was too busy lining up 13 additional artists to feature on his next track to think about the predicament of the mixologist MC.

We had to assume that by “Goose”, Mr. West is talking about Grey Goose, although with his high end tastes, there is a reasonable chance he meant pâté de foie gras. I don’t believe in force feeding most fowl, so we’ll stick with the vodka. I don’t know if Kanye is aware that Grey Goose is only the third best tasting vodka in the world. Maybe I will send him a tweet.

The only Grey Goose currently on hand at the Estate is Grey Goose L’Orange so that is what we used. Since we aren’t allowed to keep Malibu in the house, we had to run to the local ABC store and pick up a mini-bottle. They only had Malibu Black which has higher proof and less sweetness than regular Malibu but we figured that would be okay.

Tom Brady added for scale

Before we get to the drink, we have to address something about Malibu Rum. When I say “rum” what country do you think of? Jamaica? Puerto Rico? (not a country, BTW)

Cuba

? What about Malibu? That one is easy: California (also not a country). When you see palm trees on a bottle you probably think of someplace tropical. Well, if you are drinking Malibu Rum, you should be thinking only one thing: “Canada”. That’s right; Malibu Rum is a product of Canada. Wait, what? Just another in the long line of products exposed by the TBIAW iTeam.

It also appears the Canucks want to buy New York

If you zoom way in
on the "palm" trees
on the bottle, this is
what you'll find

We put that troubling piece of info out of our minds and prepared the drink. We decided to go with even proportions of Goose and Malibu and treat it as a shooter. Mrs. Bottle thought it was like drinking suntan lotion with an SPF rating of gross. She said it was slightly better if you drink it quickly because you only got the suntan lotion taste at the end. I agreed that it was bad. The coconut and orange flavors did not make a good combination, and it was kind of ugly, too. A more appropriate name for the drink would be the Malibutthole. Which would be worth a minimum of 23 points in Words With Friends.

Mrs. Bottle after trying the Malibooya
(Artist's Rendition)

Maybe we made a mistake with the proportions. Maybe it would be better with regular Malibu. It is possible the problem was the orange-flavored vodka. Perhaps we were supposed to use pâté after all. I guess we'll never know. I can leave you with these words from Kanye, though:

I'm trippin', this drink got me sayin' a lot

Overall Rating for the Malibooya

Taste: 1

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 – 38% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Goose

1 oz Malibu

Drink 193: A Little Dog'll Do Ya

2011-12-31T06:30:00.000-08:00

We still got it

Today we have the Salty Dog, a combination of gin and grapefruit juice. It is essentially a Greyhound with a salted glass. The Greyhound earned a coveted four glass rating, but the Salty Dog scores a perfect five. Why the difference? I'm glad I asked. Let's quickly examine the three key differences between our Greyhound and our Salty Dog:

1. The salted rim. Surprisingly, this made the drink a bit saltier than it would have been otherwise. It actually did seem to complement the tartness of the grapefruit juice, though. At least until the salt was all licked away.

2. The recipe. The recipe we used for the Greyhound called for 5 ounces of grapefruit juice and 1.5 ounces of gin. The recipe we used for the Salty Dog used 4 ounces of grapefruit juice and 2 ounces of gin. Maybe more gin=more deliciousness? You are probably thinking that it is odd that Mr. Boston would use different proportions for what is essentially the same drink. That’s because you forgot that this is the rebooted alternate universe TBIAW where we are throwing off the self-imposed shackles of our prior incarnation. So instead of Mr. Boston, we used a recipe we found on the liquor bottle. This brings us to…

Calls for lime wedge,
picture has lime wheel

3. The gin. I’m not sure what gin we used when we tried the Greyhound, but it was probably Seagram’s, our standard "mixed drink" gin. For the Salty Dog we used Bluecoat American Dry Gin since that is where we got the recipe. The Bluecoat is a step up in price, flavor, and alcohol content (94 proof vs. 80 proof) from Seagram’s. Maybe one of those factors enhanced the drink. If I had to chose, it would probably be the price difference.

Since the Bluecoat is a new addition to the Estate’s liquor collection it deserves closer examination. It was acquired as Christmas gift from Mrs. Bottle to me (she really does know me well). I’m pretty sure she chose it based on its pretty blue bottle and the fact that it uses a cork instead of a screw-top. Everyone knows cork=delicious.

Pretty!

Regardless of her selection methodology, the choice was a good one. It has its own distinct and yummy flavor. Out of our high-end gins of Bombay Sapphire, Tanqueray 10, and Hendrick’s it reminded me the most of the Bombay Sapphire. Mrs. Bottle and I are planning a blind gin taste test in the near future so we can really determine which is best. I will have more to say about Bluecoat then. Potential topics include web sites that don’t work properly in the world’s most popular browser, whether copper pots make better gin or just attract copper thieves, and the pros and cons of using water from the Schuylkill River in distilled spirits.

Overall Rating for the Salty Dog

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4 – A salted rim away from a 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 16% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Gin

4 oz Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice

Drink 192: Nog Day Afternoon

2011-12-24T04:48:00.000-08:00

As a special holiday gift, today’s post comes in poem form.

Twas the day before Xmas and I read through our blog,

It’s been nigh a year since we first tried eggnog.

Not only that, as some did point out,

With less frequency come the drinks that we tout.

Screw this, it will take me all day to make a bunch of rhymes. Our content can stand on its own without resorting to gimmicks. These so-called parodies are often forced and awkwardly worded anyway. It is sort of like the grammatical gyrations you have to go through to avoid ending a sentence in a preposition. This is an example of the type of sentence to which I refer. A friend once taught me a simple solution to this non-problem: Just add the word “a-hole” to the end of your sentence and it no longer causes heartache to any nearby wannabe English teachers.

Wrong: These aren't the droids you're looking for.

Right: These aren't the droids you're looking for, a-hole.

These aren't the grammar rules for which you are looking

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the real issue: Why do we use so many colons in our posts? No, that isn’t it, although it is a legitimate issue. The real issue is the seeming abandonment of TBIAW. While it might appear that Mrs. Bottle and I had given up, we haven’t. We are just extremely lazy. It turned out we were no longer willing to take the time to do a bunch of work without remuneration. It also turned out that we are tired of our legions of fans clamoring for fresh posts so here we are.

We are rebooting TBIAW and expect it to be a smashing success. Who among us hasn’t appreciated the recent reboots of Star Trek, Batman, James Bond, and Superman? Well maybe not Superman, but you get the idea. Reboots are so popular that they are rebooting Spiderman only 5 years after the last film from the previous incarnation. I am looking forward to the reboot of the yet to be released Hunger Games. We rebooting up in here so much you’d think we’re running Windows ME. We aren’t quite sure what rebooting our blog entails, but I can tell you that it will be spectacular.

The rebooted TBIAW includes
low-resolution poor color balanced
photos taken with an iPod

In order to get into the reboot (and holiday) spirit, today we once again review eggnog. This time instead of the Southern Comfort nog, we had Organic Valley Organic Eggnong. At first I thought the carton said that it was “orgasmic” eggnog. I didn’t know if an orgasm was the cause or the effect of the cartoned cream and it wasn’t something I was willing to find out (although Orgasmic Valley sounds like a fun place to live). Fortunately I soon realized my mistake and poured myself a glass of eggy goodness. And then I poured a ton of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum in there. Maybe a bit too much in my over-excitement about our reboot. It was a bit like drinking creamed gasoline. I added a bit more of the nog after I made some room in the glass and then it was quite delicious. After I realized that a puny 10% alcohol content had me crying like a little girl I understood just out of practice I had become.

Overall Rating for Eggnog

Taste: 4

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 10% Alcohol

Ingredients

5.25 oz Eggnog

2 oz Captain Morgan Spiced Rum

Drink 191: I Did Not Dealt It

2011-10-10T15:16:00.000-07:00

At least it was free.

I can smell your fart. Fast Five is playing on the tiny screen in front of me and I can smell your fart. I was beginning to doze off to the dulcet tones of Vin Diesel delivering lines as he tears towards a cliff in his 1966 Corvette Grand Sport but thanks to your malodorous cloud I am still awake. We are somewhere over the North Atlantic and I am in the type of haze caused by two free beers and an Advil PM. It is either 3:30 AM or 9:30 PM depending on whether you have adjusted your watch yet. And you farted. And I smelt it.

View of Paris? from the window.
Might have missed this
without the fart

What the hell is wrong with you? Are you lazy or vindictive? I already know the answer: “Yes.” There is a bathroom no more than 10 feet from your seat unless you managed to throw your fart from the back of the cabin. Go down the stairs and fart up a storm. Please. On this plane the bathrooms are even downstairs so you can rip away without detection. Instead, you decided to release your intestinal gas right in your seat and now I, along with the rest of the passengers in the vicinity, am breathing your micropoopballs. Gross. Luckily for Mrs. Bottle she slept through it. Actually, there are times in the middle of the night when I’m glad she has that ability.

On the bright side I will now get to see more of Paul Walker and ~~The Rock~~ Dwayne Johnson driving fast and blowing crap up. That really translates well on a 320x240 screen with headphones with one ear intermittently cutting out. All the while smelling your fart. Did you eat a cabbage and broccoli salad before the flight? Next time, please try some of these tips. I recommend asking the flight attendant to move you to an empty corner of the plane. That should also enhance you chances of getting a date with her later. They love honesty.

Yep, that's what happened.

Not purple.

Since we are discussing honesty I feel obligated to let you know that today’s drink the Purple Pancho has a misleading name. It is not purple at all. It is kind of teal which is pretty far from purple unless you are talking about proximity on the Charlotte Hornets’ uniforms. The drink is a combination of tequila, blue Curaçao, sloe gin, lime juice, simple syrup, and lemon juice. Once you get over the confusion about the name, the taste is pretty good. It is essentially a slightly sweeter Margarita. I couldn’t really detect the sloe gin other than a slight prune-y bouquet which would have been extremely welcome on my flight. Mrs. Bottle found the drink a little too sweet but I had no problem with it other than the name. I am going to rename it the Teal-a Tequila though.

Overall Rating for the Purple Pancho

Taste: 4

Presentation: 0

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Tequila

0.5 oz Blue Curaçao

0.5 oz Sloe Gin

2 oz Lime Juice

1 oz Lemon Juice

1 oz Simple Syrup

Drink 190: Meet the New Blog, Same as the Old Blog

2011-10-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

Why does Mrs. Bottle hate me? It has been almost a month since we have posted a drink and yesterday she suggested we fire things up again. “Sure” I said, not knowing what drink she had chosen. It turns out she had selected the Caruso, a mixture of gin, dry vermouth, and crème de menthe. It was not good. The combination of mint and vermouth is the worst pairing since Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

David Caruso does not approve

Honestly, I would have never agreed to resume blogging if I’d known she would make me drink this crap. The Caruso is bad enough that the Wall Street Journal has an entire article about the perplexing nature of the drink’s origins and longevity. The freaking Wall Street Journal! You’d think they would be too busy writing about the collapse of the world economy instead. I guess in 2009 things didn’t look so dire. Maybe if they had been a little more focused we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Here’s what they wrote:

A Caruso cocktail survives, dusty from disuse, in the pages of the average bartender’s guide. That drink is compounded of equal parts gin, dry vermouth and crème de menthe [Ed Note: slightly different than ours], and it’s not very good. If no one drinks it, and it’s not very good, what’s it doing in the books? Perhaps the Caruso has persisted for the same reason as most of the cocktails in such compendia—to fill space. If a bad recipe gets printed in one bar guide—especially a prominent one like the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, in which the less than palatable Caruso was listed—it soon finds its way into all the others.

Coincidentally, “filling space” is also the same reason most of NBC’s fall lineup exists. Unfortunately for me, the Caruso is now filling space in my belly, on our blog and in your brainpan. Space that could be better filled by other things. Well, at least the space in my belly.

Overall Rating for the Caruso

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 – 30% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Gin

1 oz Dry Vermouth

0.5 oz Crème de Menthe

Drink 189: Just Like Riding a Bicycle

2011-09-12T17:04:00.000-07:00

If your urine looks like this
call your doctor immediately

Bonjour Mesdames et Messieurs. We are back with a new drink, the Moulin Rouge. It is made from sloe gin, sweet vermouth, and bitters. This drink was fantastic if you like horrible cocktails. It was extremely sweet and almost glue-like in consistency. At least it had a healthy dose of awful sweet vermouth to counter the almost drinkable sloe gin.

Mrs. Bottle really hated it and she practically did a spit take when she tried it. I, on the other hand, found it merely terribly unpleasant. If I were trapped in a crevasse with my arm pinned by a boulder I could probably choke it down after a day or two. Mrs. Bottle would rather drink her own pee. I have heard it is pretty good.

You are probably expecting some tie-in to the movie Moulin Rouge or at the bare minimum some kind of send-up of Lady Marmalade. Unfortunately I haven’t seen the film and I would never criticize such a masterpiece of a song. Also, I have lost my mojo. After not having written anything for a week I kind of forgot how to do it. I mean I remember how to write words on a page as is evidenced by the thing you are reading. What I have forgotten is how to bolg. Or is it blog? Either way, it doesn’t take long to get out of the groove. Don’t fret, though, or bolg isn’t dead. I’m sure I’ll get my mojo back soon enough. Until then, if we go too long between posts make sure to check you local crevasses and make sure I’m not stuck. I need both my arms.

"OoooooOOoooOOoo"

Overall Rating for the Moulin Rouge

Taste: 1.5

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Sloe Gin

0.75 oz Sweet Vermouth

1 dash Bitters

Christina Aguilera photo: By Julian from Germany (PC134194) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Drink 188: Is This Post Beeper Friendly?

2011-09-05T05:13:00.000-07:00

Brown Russian

Mrs. Bottle here and I’d like to…I’d like to say something…something I prepared. This morning… Hello, how about that click to get here? I guess that’s why they call it the World Wide Web (hahaha).

You guys may not know this, but I consider myself…a bit of a drinker. I tend to think of myself as a one woman six pack. But when I met Vodka, I knew it was one of my own. And my six pack, it grew by one. So were two…so there were two of us in the six pack. I…I was alone first in the pack, and then Vodka joined in later.

And last night, when Vodka introduced me to equal amounts of Kahlua and Cream, I thought…wait a second, could it be. And now I know for sure, I just added two more ingredients to my six pack. Four of us drink parts running around TBIAW estate together, in TBIAW resident city, looking for a shaker and ice. So tonight, we make a toast!

This is what Mrs. Bottle is wearing right now
img

You may have guessed it, but today’s drink is the Cappuccino Cocktail. It is made with coffee-flavored brandy, vodka, and light cream. And yes, this drink is basically a White Russian all dressed up in a pretty cocktail glass. So it was like a win-win-win for me. The White Russian is one of my favorite drinks, I got to use up more of the cream, and it tasted just like a slightly stronger White Russian. Can’t go wrong with that. Even Mr. Bottle agrees.

Overall Rating for the Cappuccino Cocktail

Taste: 5

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

0.75 oz Vodka

0.75 oz Coffee-flavored Brandy

0.75 oz Light Cream

Drink 187: Aye, Crème Man

2011-09-01T04:27:00.000-07:00

More like shorts
than capris

In the early days of TBIAW, we would often provide some history on a cocktail’s origins. I realized today that it has been a while since we’ve done that and the oversight must be rectified immediately. It is important to return to one’s root and today we are going to dig deep. So without further ado, we present the Capri, a shooter made from crème de cacao, crème de banana, and cream.

It was invented by famous mixologist Hobie Flehr in 1952. He called it the Capri because he hated to wear full length pants and was trying to eradicate them through awareness-raising cocktails. The Capri was his most famous one, outshining his previous efforts Clam Digger, Pedal Pusher, and the disastrous Knickerbocker. Unfortunately for Flehr, the success of the Capri was short lived and his bartending career petered out. He was briefly homeless which was hard on him since his ankles got extremely cold at night. He bounced back professionally, though, when he created a line of pouched juice drinks. ^{[citation needed]}

Rare photo of Flehr in plus-eights ^{[citation needed]}
Img

As far as flavor, the Capri was pretty tasty. On my first sip I mostly tasted the chocolate flavor of the crème de cacao. I commented to Mrs. Bottle that I didn’t taste much banana. She has the opposite reaction and said that when she sipped it that it tasted like a banana exploded in her mouth. I’ve never experienced that personally so I couldn’t relate. Regardless, I gave the drink another sip and this time I could taste the banana as well. The two crèmes complemented the cream completely. As an added benefit, we are that much closer to polishing off that carton of half and half.

Overall Rating for the Capri

Taste: 4

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 8 – 15% Alcohol

Ingredients

0.75 oz Crème de Cacao

0.75 oz Crème de Banana

0.75 oz Light Cream

Drink 186: Big Lizard In My Back Yard, Can't Afford to Feed It Anymore

2011-08-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

Have a Coke
and a blank
stare

Today we will not be talking about baby scat commercials even though we remain emotionally scarred after yesterday's post. Instead we will discuss the Lounge Lizard, a mix of dark rum, amaretto, and cola. This is the second best drink we’ve ever had with cola out of the two we’ve tried. Don't you think it was so cute back then when I had given up drinking soda? That dark period of my life is over now and hopefully soon forgotten.

The Lounge Lizard’s rating may have been adversely impacted as a result of my soda relapse, since drinking a cola is a normal occurrence instead of a treat.

For our cola we used Coke Zero, which we thought would work better than our other option, Diet Pepsi. Why? Because Coke Zero >>>> Diet Pepsi. Also, the Coke Zero was in the pantry and the Diet Pepsi was way downstairs. It turns out the Diet Pepsi may have been a better choice even with the required trek to the dank basement of the Estate. because the drink ended up being a bit too sweet for either of our liking. The Coke Zero is already pretty sweet and adding the amaretto pushed it over the top. If I were to make it again I would definitely leave out the amaretto. And maybe the rum, too.

Overall Rating for the Lounge Lizard

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 11 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Dark Rum

.5 oz Amaretto

Cola

Drink 185: Poop, There it Is!

2011-08-29T16:24:00.000-07:00

Today we have the Chocolate-Covered Strawberry, which is a mix of strawberry schnapps, crème de cacao, and cream. In our case we used delicious Fragoli wild strawberry liqueur (which we are not being paid to promote, but we could easily be persuaded to given the right incentive) instead of boring old schnapps. We also used half and half instead of cream. We are not being paid to use half and half either (are you listening dairy council?), but we happen to have a carton of it that is about to expire so we need to use that stuff up. Reader tip: expect more cream-based drinks in the next few days. Mrs. Bottle was also eager to open the half and half because she will now be forced to drink White Russians daily (Final parenthetical – the White Russian post is our most viewed because of that picture of Superman with his shirt off. The one of the Penguin with his shirt off was less successful).

Yes, this is all there was

This Chocolate-Covered Strawberry was pretty tasty, but you really had to search for the chocolate flavor. It was almost overwhelmed by the Fragoli ultimately leaving it tasting more like a strawberry-covered strawberry. In all seriousness, the Fragoli has a pretty pronounced flavor. Another strawberry schnapps may reveal more of the crème de cacao but I guess we'll never know.

This drink is served in a red wine glass over ice. I am not opposed to using ice in a red wine glass since that is how I usually drink my Almaden Blush. This drink is only 1¾ ounces so it looks kind of ridiculous in a wine glass, though. On the upside, it looks like a Strawberry Yoo-Hoo so you could mix up a batch, pour it in an empty Yoo-hoo bottle, and drink it while you are at the mall. Or you could pack it in your kid’s lunch for a hilarious although legally and ethically questionable prank!

Now is the part where I usually seamlessly segue into some tangentially related pop-culture or current-events based commentary. What I need to talk about now is too shocking and upsetting to treat it with that type of frivolity, though. Last night I saw a commercial for Luvs Diapers that may be the most disturbing advertisement of our times. I guess this thing has been out for a while but it hasn’t yet caused a national stir. Maybe the rest of America is like me and they haven’t seen it yet. Now that I have seen it, I wish I could un-see it.

Why is it so disturbing? I shall now break it down for you in a photo essay.

It starts off pretty normal. We have three babies in the “Heavy Dooty Championship”. At this point I figure it is some kind of beauty pageant spoof where we will see horrible mothers spend hundreds of dollars to pimp out their children in the hopes one will become Grand Supreme Heavy Dooty and win a cheap-ass bedazzled crown.

We now meet our first contestant. So far… nothing disturbing. She appears to be warming up for the talent portion of the contest. I wonder what her talent is?

Oh she is showing her butt. Maybe her talent is interpretive dance.

Oh my god, she crapped her pants. Well, that’s what babies do I guess, but that is going to hurt her chances of winning Grand Supreme Heavy Dooty.

My, what a racially diverse and gender neutral judges panel. I wonder what they will think?

Baby Randy Jackson clearly thinks the poop is a problem, dawg.

Okay, now I am getting upset. Contestant #14 also pooped himself and the people in the audience are recording it on their phones so they can re-watch it later. The authorities may be interested in those two.

Wait, what? The judges are giving him better scores than the first contestant. It is starting to dawn on me that the Heavy Dooty contest has something to do with poop volume.

Now there is no mistaking what is going on here. This is just like looking into the mirror for me when I am headed to the loo.

Holy crap! This kid should probably be rushed to the emergency room, stat.

The judges love it. Sick bastards.

The kid on the left is thinking, “where are my parents and why are they making me stand on stage with a poop-filled diaper?” She probably also wants to get out of there before the champion goes for an encore.

The crowd goes wild!!! I am beside myself.

Watch the whole thing here if you dare.

Overall Rating for the Chocolate-Covered Strawberry

Taste: 4

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 18% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Strawberry Schnapps

0.25 oz Crème de Cacao

0.5 oz Cream

Drink 184: Uh Oh, It's Magic

2011-08-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

Today’s drink is the Black Magic and Mrs. Bottle is here to report on its wonders. It’s made with vodka, coffee liqueur and a dash of lemon juice. It’s almost identical to the Brave Bull we’ve already reviewed, except the Black Magic called for vodka instead of tequila. And that lemon juice is new too. It was a pretty tasty beverage and Mr. Bottle and I essentially chugged the thing. The only complaint I have is that the “dash” of lemon juice seems pointless because you can’t really taste it. Here’s the official definition (according to http://www.epicurious.com/): “a very small amount of seasoning added to food with a quick, downward stroke of the hand, such as "a dash of Tabasco." In general, a dash can be considered to be somewhere between 1/16 and a scant 1/8 teaspoon.” Now that I know exactly what a dash amounts to, I think I probably added two dashes of lemon juice. And I still didn’t taste the lemon. Pointless has definitely been proven.

I know you're gettin' twisted
and you can't come down

So you may have noticed that this is our first post in almost a week. That’s because I was working very late last week so I didn’t really feel like making a drink for the blog. Your next thought may be something along the lines of “Wow- they went a whole week without a drink? That must have been hard for them.” Just to set the record straight, I didn’t say I didn’t feel like having a drink. Sure, we could rhapsodize about the wondrous notes of our favorite blended red or the significant watery flavor in our normal low calorie beer. But nobody wants to read about me and Mr. Bottle drinking wine or beer all week.

You may also have thought to yourself, “I didn’t know Mrs. Bottle had to work so hard.” Neither did Mrs. Bottle. I’m definitely going to explore a future career as a wine pourer in some Napa winery. I’m really great at pouring the same amount of wine in identical wine glasses. It’s like I’m some sort of pouring genius. I know this is definitely something I can eventually capitalize on to make my millions. But in the meantime, I’ll just have another Black Magic.

Overall Rating for the Black Magic

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 2 – I was out of practice on that lemon twist

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 – 34% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka

0.75 oz Coffee Liqueur

1 dash Lemon Juice

Drink 183: Whoa, Did You Feel That?

2011-08-23T15:16:00.000-07:00

Earthquake
damage!

In case you live under a rock, you probably heard about today’s earthquake. Actually, if you live under a rock, you probably felt the earthquake more than most people did. I hope your rock hole was undamaged! We felt the earthquake here at the Bottle Wonderland Estate, too, but it was just a little shake. It was like if a large truck was driving nearby or if someone had set off a sonic blaster but we were not forced to evacuate. We also didn’t have to leave the house.

Today’s drink also happens to be the Sonic Blaster but Mrs. Bottle can assure you I had nothing to do with making the earth move. Instead, I daintily sipped its combination of vodka, rum, banana liqueur, pineapple juice, orange juice, and cranberry juice. The name Sonic Blaster seems wildly inappropriate for a drink that is 2/3 juice and only 11% alcohol. Something called Sonic Blaster should have a little more oomph. I’m thinking it definitely would have Red Bull instead of juice and it should probably have some kind of whiskey and/or sambuca.

That was quite a coincidence that the earthquake
was centered right where that star was on the map

The name might not be great, but t least it wasn’t called the Sonic Banana Blaster. I bring this up because prior to this we have had eight drinks featuring banana liqueur and five of them have had “banana” in the name (Banana Di Amore, Banana Foster, Top Banana, Banana Slip, Banana Bomber). We have awarded the Sonic Blaster one point for creativity. It is possible it does not have “banana” in the name because of the simple reason that you cannot taste any banana in the drink. I guess it is overwhelmed by the other juices. We could taste the rum but only ever so slightly. All in all it was a tasty drink but nothing earth shattering.

Overall Rating for the Sonic Blaster

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

0.5 oz Vodka

0.5 oz Light Rum

0.5 oz Crème de Banana

1 oz Pineapple Juice

1 oz Orange Juice

1 oz Cranberry Juice

Drink 182: I'm Your Lover, I'm Your Zero

2011-08-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

We are not going to fall for
the "banana in the tailpipe" trick
but we did fall for the "banana in
the garnish" trick.

Today’s drink is the Banana Di Amore, which translates from Italian roughly to “Banana Love”. I have a number of hilarious jokes to make about this name, but since this a family-friendly blog you will have to insert your own banana [joke] instead. The reason it is called the Banana Di Amore is because in addition to its crème de banana liqueur it is made with amaretto. A popular brand of amaretto is Amaretto Di Amore. Put them together and what do you get? Banana love. We used a different brand of ameretto, though, so our drink would more rightly be called the Banana De Kuyper. That translates from Italian to "Banana Cheapskates".

In addition to the two liqueurs, this drink also contains orange juice, simple syrup, and lemon juice. Since it is frozen, it also contains freeze-water, more commonly known as ice. I’m not a huge fan of frozen drinks in general (except for Beergaritas) because you tend not to get much alcohol, and this one was no exception. Between the juice, ice, and low octane liqueurs, it was only 3% alcohol. Even if we had used 99 Bananas instead of regular crème de banana it would have only bumped it to 5%. It hardly seems worth it for the amount of effort involved what with the blending and the fancy garnishes and the ice and all.

The drink did taste good at least, although it was a little sweet. Despite the freeze-water, you could taste all of the ingredients and they complemented each other well. The problem is really only the lack of alcohol. Luckily there is a solution and that solution is to have 2.5 servings instead of one. That will bump it from 3% alcohol to ∞%. “Say what?” is what your inner monologue should be saying right now. You may even whip out your calculator to try to prove me wrong. If you have an Apple, it would probably look something like this (in video!!):

If you have a windows PC it will probably look something like this:

Oh silly reader, you clearly do not understood maths. I have a math minor and a PhD in Diet Mountain Dew consumption. Those things combine to let me prove that 2.5 servings of a beverage multiplies things in an unexpected way. Behold:

Do not drink if you are looking
for significant source of other nutrients.
"Other" nutrients?

See? 0 Calories per serving. 2.5 servings per container. 10 calories per bottle. If that doesn’t prove the magic of 2.5 servings, I don’t know what will. Maybe a Coke Zero?

Overall Rating for the Banana Di Amore

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 200 – 3% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Amaretto

1 oz Crème de Banana

2 oz Orange Juice

0.5 oz Simple Syrup

0.5 oz Lemon Juice

Drink 181: Son, You Got a Panty on Your Head

2011-08-20T07:46:00.000-07:00

Sheer Elegance looks like silk, feels like silk, and even comes in a control-top style, too. Sheer Elegance looks and feels like silk. From the Orient!

Sheer Elegance, the cocktail.
From the Bottle Wonderland Estate!

The above quote is the first thing I thought of when I saw that today’s drink was called the Sheer Elegance. In case you weren’t raised by a television or you are not yet middle-aged, here is a YouTube clip that might help give you some context. That commercial is a classic, and I especially like the serendipitous use of an Asian to deliver the message. It really brings it home when she says “From the Orient!” Everyone might not remember a 30 year old commercial, but surely everyone understands that silk “from the Orient!” is the best kind. Those pantyhose must be good, but I wouldn’t know since I’ve ~~only worn pantyhose a few times~~ never worn pantyhose. Mrs. Bottle assures me that pantyhose do not feel like silk, though. From the Orient!

Also from the Orient!
img

The Sheer Elegance cocktail does not look like silk, feel like silk, and it surely does not come in a control-top style so I'm not sure why it is named after pantyhose. It doesn't even taste like it comes from the Orient. Instead, its combination of amaretto, black raspberry liqueur, and vodka tasted like it came from the Karo Corn Syrup factory. It was horribly sweet and it left my tongue coated in a viscous membrane. That is not something I look for in a drink. Or in a control-top undergarment for that matter. The flavor was also a bit strange. I’m not convinced that almonds and black raspberries are a great combination, although Mrs. Bottle thought it would have been decent had the taste been less cloying.

Part of the problem may be attributable to our 10+ year old bottle of Chateau Monet Liqueur Framboise. We recently learned that 10+ year old Bailey’s Irish Cream doesn’t taste as good as fresh stuff so there is a tiny possibility that our black raspberry liqueur may not be at its peak flavor capacity. I am unwilling to put the blame completely on it, though, because we have had plenty of drinks with this stuff and some of them have been not horrible. For example, the French Martini is quite similar to our latest drink, only it was good. Maybe because it had more vodka. Coincidentally, Mrs. Bottle suggested the real problem with the Sheer Elegance was the lack of vodka. Of course that is her answer to a lot of things.

Overall Rating for the Sheer Elegance

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Amaretto

1.5 oz Black Raspberry Liqueur

0.5 oz Vodka

Drink 180: Bang Bang Bang on the Door, Baby

2011-08-17T18:11:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Bottle is here on another non-Sunday to amaze and surprise you with today’s drink review. I was actually supposed to write this up for yesterday but I had to watch Breaking Bad and The Big C instead. I also had to sit and stare for hours in wonder at the amazing cuteness of our baby kittens, Little Lord Johnny Walker and Little Lady Crème de Cacao. And why are there no liquors with female names? It’s as if no women have ever created their own brand of tasty alcohol. If any of our nine readers know of any liquor products with female namesakes, please drop us a line so we may stimulate the economy more than we already have. Ed Note: Tia Maria?

Strat-o-fied
In metric for our European Friends

So today’s drink is the popular shooter, the B-52, made with coffee liqueur, Irish cream liqueur, and Mandarine Napoleon. We used Kahlua, Bailey’s and Grand Marnier, although Mr. Bottle wanted me to use Blue Curacao again. You may have picked up on the fact that he’s become obsessed with drinking blue beverages. However, this drink is layered so the color of the ingredients is actually an important feature. Unbelievably, the layering actually worked this time. However, we discovered that it’s difficult to share a taste test with a layered shot. Mr. Bottle suggested stirring it up but I couldn’t bear to destroy the integrity of my creation. So I took a big swig and tasted… orange. Mr. Bottle took a medium swig and tasted… Bailey’s. I took another tiny swig and tasted… some Bailey’s and some Kahula. Mr. Bottle took the final swig and tasted… mostly Kahlua and some Bailey’s. I think we were mostly satisfied with each part but we still don’t really know what this drink tastes like as designed. Probably good, but who knows.

For a bit of trivia, the B-52 is also referred to as the “Bifi” and according to Wikipedia (so you know it’s true), is named for the US B-52 Stratofortress long range bomber used in the Vietnam War. Apparently there’s also a flaming version which I believe is called the Flaming B-52. Clever. This probably makes more sense being named after a bomb. You know, because it’s incendiary. I also learned that Grand Marnier is hard to ignite unless warmed. There’s your useful info for today. It’s your job to figure out how to use it.

Overall Rating for the B-52

Taste: 4 – The average of 4,3,4,4 from our tasting

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 – 28% Alcohol

Ingredients

0.5 oz Coffee Liqueur

0.5 oz Irish Cream Liqueur

0.5 oz Mandarine Napoleon

Drink 179: Do Youngsters Understand the Phrase "Mailing It In"?

2011-08-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

Normally it takes me about an hour to write a TBIAW entry. That includes the photograph, research (those Google searches don’t run by themselves), proofreeding, and about 20-45 minutes of checking Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Renren, Myspace, Orkut, Badoo, Cougarlife, and Frühstückstreff. Tonight I am in a bit of a hurry so I am going to try to keep it quick, which isn’t a problem for me.

No time for a caption

Our drink is the Blue Maragarita and it is composed of tequila, blue Curaçao and lime juice. I was excited because Mrs. Bottle let us use the blue Curaçao instead of sending us on a Wumpus hunt like she did for our previous drink. It is a good thing, too, because the blue Curaçao is the only difference between this drink and the regular Margarita, which we have already reviewed. Since we have already reviewed it, there isn’t much point in talking about this one. It is left as an exercise for the reader to figure why this one gets a five while the other one only got a four even though they tasted the same.

Overall Rating for the Blue Margarita

Taste: 5

Presentation: 4 – Needed a garnish

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Had to salt a rim

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 24% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Tequila

0.5 oz blue Curaçao

1 oz Lime Juice

Drink 178: Marmalade? Dead! Niedermeyer? Dead!

2011-08-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

Today we have the Marmalade, a drink made from Curaçao and tonic water. We didn’t use our blue Curaçao because Mrs. Bottle didn’t want to use it. I’m not quite sure why she didn’t want to use Curaçao in a drink that called for Curaçao but sometimes it is better to just let these things go. Trust me on this.

Does not look like marmalade

We’ve discussed a bit in the past that Curaçao tastes like oranges even though genuine Curaçao is made with larahas instead of oranges. The only reason I bring this up now is because I am trying to set the world record for the most mentions of Curaçao in one blog post. Curaçao. Since we didn’t have any non-blue Curaçao we had to decide what to use as a substitute. Our choices were triple sec, Cointreau, and Grand Marnier. I wanted to go with Cointreau since its pronunciation is an inscrutable as Curaçao’s (here’s how not to say it) but Mrs. Bottle insisted we research to find the best option. It was at this point when I really wanted to suggest we just use our actual bottle of Curaçao but thought better of it. The only reason I feel safe even writing that is because Mrs. Bottle is in a different state right now.

According to Wikipedia, the original name for Cointreau was "Curaçao Blanco Triple Sec" so it was looking promising as a substitute. Then I found this guy who says “Cointreau is probably the most recognized brand of orange liqueur in the triple sec style, and Grand Marnier, despite being French, is more in line with the Dutch curacao style”. As you probably know, a random web site carries almost as much weight as a Wikipedia article so I was now confused about the viability of Cointreau as compared to Grand Marnier as a Curaçao substitute. Mrs. Bottle then consulted our Ultimate Encyclopedia of Wine, Beer, Spirits, and Liqueurs which said that Grand Marnier was the closest to a genuine Curaçao but that it was a “finer” product. We immediately ruled out the Grand Marnier. Not because it is too fine, but because that stuff is spendy.

Does look like marmalade
Clearly did not use blue Curaçao either
Img

At this point we just threw up our hands and decided to go with our el-cheapo triple sec. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a whole lot of difference in any of these liqueurs other than marketing anyway. Maybe we need to do an orange liqueur taste-test. Regardless, the drink was decent but nothing special. Mrs. Bottle kept saying she only tasted the tonic water, but I thought it tasted like an orange soda that was way past its expiration date. I think it may have tasted better if it has been blue.

Overall Rating for the Marmalade

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Had to slice an orange

Drinks Until Blackout: 12 – 6.5% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Curaçao

4 oz Tonic Water

* Please no e-mails, we know it is Marmalard in Animal House

Drink 177: Some Of Our Best Friends Are Turkish

2011-08-10T04:55:00.000-07:00

Today’s drink the Midnight Express is made from dark rum, triple sec, hashish, lime juice, simple syrup, and lemon juice*. Whatever you do, do not smuggle this drink out of Turkey. You will be tempted to try, though, if you happen to be in Turkey when you first have one. That’s because this drink was very good and you will want to have it again when you get back to the States. The primary taste was citrus with a hint of dark rum. It was a more complex taste than I was expecting and it was a pleasant surprise. Mrs. Bottle and I both thought it reminded us of another drink. Sadly neither of us could think of what it was. You are probably happy I shared that little tidbit.

We used the giant version of the image
to mask the lack of content today

I was planning on writing some other stuff about the movie Midnight Express, which is one of my favorites (“Oh, Billy!”). Then I read that a lot of the stuff in the movie wasn’t even true. In fact, director Oliver Stone even apologized to the Turkish people for their portrayal in the film. C’mon Ollie, stand behind your work even if it unfairly stereotyped an entire country. You don’t see George Lucas apologizing for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace even though he should. You certainly won’t catch us apologizing for anything we write on TBIAW. Unless, of course, someone were to ask us to.

*Does not contain hashish

Overall Rating for the Midnight Express

Taste: 5

Presentation: 3 – It ain’t pretty

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 – 26% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Dark Rum

.5 oz Triple Sec

.75 oz Lime Juice

1 splash Simple Syrup

1 splash Lemon Juice

Drink 176: Don't Panic, That's What Everyone Else is Doing

2011-08-08T15:32:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have noticed a recent drop in the stock market over the last week. On August 1 the Dow closed at 12,132.49. On August 8 it closed at 10,809.85. That is a drop of something like a billion points. I’m not a financial wiz, though, so I’m not sure about the figures. I do know if your strategy is to “sell low” you are kicking butt.

No where to go but up or further down

There is a lot of speculation around the cause(s) of this drop. Most people think it has to do with the debt ceiling compromise, the possibility of a double-dip recession (I would go for one scoop chocolate and one scoop vanilla), the European debt crisis, or Standard & Poor lowering the sovereign debt rating of the US from AAA to AA+. Side note: You can definitely trust the S&P when it comes to bond ratings.

One aspect that has been overlooked is the slowdown in TBIAW postings. We normally post daily but last week we barely mustered four posts. We never would have slacked off had we known the global economic impact. We might not have many readers but I guess they are extremely influential. I can’t promise we will return to our old frequency any time soon as we will be busy selling what stock we have remaining and burying the money in mason jars around the Estate.

Fear not, though, because Michelle Bachmann has already figured out how to solve our economic woes without involving TBIAW. All we need to do is to send “signals to the marketplace” and it “won’t take long” for the improvements to manifest themselves. I, for one, find that exciting. I think we should start with the Bat Signal. That is a good one. Next, I would try a Facebook Poke if I knew what signal that actually sent. Until then we will send a signal to the marketplace right now: Stop selling! It is making me upset. Also, TBIAW is not a bond rating agency or qualified in any way, but if we were, we would rate the

USA

as AAAAAAAA++++*. Was that so hard? The ball is in your court, Obama.

The cherry sank faster than my portfolio.
You can see the traces of it, though.

If you are upset about the economic state, one thing that will probably make you feel better is the Chi-Chi, a drink made with vodka, cream of coconut, and pineapple juice. It was creamy and delicious and makes it impossible to be down while you are drinking it. It might make you a little sad when you run out, though. It is very similar to a Piña Colada made with vodka instead of rum. Note that we are talking about a real Piña Colada, not the abomination of a recipe we tried a few weeks ago. As with the Piña Colada, the secret is the cream of coconut. That stuff is fantastic. Mrs. Bottle said that could just drink a big bowl of that and be happy. Maybe we should send some to everyone in America. That would send a signal to the marketplace.

* Rating scale undetermined. Rating refers to nothing. This rating is unofficial and non-binding. Actually, it indicates less than nothing. Seriously. TBIAW is not a licensed financial advisor. Parody website. Your mileage may vary. Past performance is not an indicator of future value. This product is meant for educational purposes only. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. Some assembly required. List each check separately by bank number. Batteries not included. Contents may settle during shipment. Use only as directed. No other warranty expressed or implied. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Postage will be paid by addressee. Subject to approval. This is not an offer to sell securities. Apply only to affected area. May be too intense for some viewers. Do not stamp. Use other side for additional listings. For recreational use only. Do not disturb. All models over 18 years of age. If condition persists, consult your physician. No user-serviceable parts inside. Freshest if eaten before date on carton. Subject to change without notice. Times approximate. Simulated picture. Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement. For off-road use only. As seen on TV. One size fits all. Many suitcases look alike. Contains a substantial amount of non-tobacco ingredients. Colors may, in time, fade. We have sent the forms which seem to be right for you. Slippery when wet. For office use only. Not affiliated with the American Red Cross. Drop in any mailbox. Edited for television. Keep cool; process promptly. Post office will not deliver without postage. List was current at time of printing. Not responsible for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect, error or failure to perform. At participating locations only. Penalty for private use. Substantial penalty for early withdrawal. Do not write below this line. Falling rock. Lost ticket pays maximum rate. Your cancelled check is your receipt. Avoid contact with skin. Sanitized for your protection. Be sure each item is properly endorsed. Slightly higher west of the Mississippi. Employees and their families are not eligible. Beware of dog. Contestants have been briefed on some questions before the show. You must be present to win. No passes accepted for this engagement. No purchase necessary. Processed at location stamped in code at top of carton. Shading within a garment may occur. Use only in well-ventilated area. Keep away from fire or flame. Replace with same type. Approved for veterans. Booths for two or more.. Some equipment shown is optional. Price does not include taxes. No Canadian coins. Not recommended for children. Prerecorded for this time zone. Reproduction strictly prohibited. No solicitors. No alcohol, dogs, or horses. No anchovies unless otherwise specified. Restaurant package, not for resale. List at least two alternate dates. First pull up, then pull down. Call toll free before digging. Driver does not carry cash. Some of the trademarks mentioned in this product appear for identification purposes only. Record additional transactions on back of previous stub. Decision of judges is final.

This supersedes all previous notices.

Overall Rating for the Chi-Chi

Taste: 5

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 23 – 5% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka

1 oz Cream of Coconut

4 oz Pineapple Juice

Drink 175: Are You Effen Kidding Me?

2011-08-07T07:27:00.000-07:00

Beauty is only skin deep

If I told you we had a drink made from vodka, blue Curaçao, and lemonade, you would probably think that it would be tasty. We certainly did. How could a drink with those ingredients possibly be bad? Well, somehow the Blue Lemonade managed to pull it off. It didn’t really taste like lemonade even though it had four ounces of the stuff. It didn’t taste much like blue Curaçao either. It pretty much tasted like vodka. Nothing against vodka, but when I have a drink with “lemonade” right in the name I think that it should taste like lemonade. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first drink that failed to hurdle that seemingly low bar.

We suspected the problem might lie in our choice of ingredients. We immediately ruled out the blue Curaçao since it is the same stuff we’ve been using for our other blue drinks and it hasn’t yet caused any problems. Our next suspect was the lemonade. Mrs. Bottle makes all of our pitchers of lemonade and she thought maybe she had made a bad batch. I found that unlikely since she hand-squeezes three dozen fresh lemons for each batch and sweetens it with sugar cane grown right in the back yard. Ed Note: I have just been informed that Mrs. Bottle actually just uses Crystal Light. She tasted the lemonade and proclaimed it lemonadey so we crossed it off the list.

That left us with the vodka. In this case we used Happy Vodka. Since it was the winner of our vodka taste test we were confident it was fine. We then double checked the recipe and saw that it specifically called for Effen vodka. We aren't sure why Mr. Boston would brand-whore and we found it hard to believe that using Effen vodka would make that much difference in the drink flavor. We headed over to the Effen web site to learn more. The first thing I learned is that EFFEN loves using capital letters. The second thing I learned was that when you use EFFEN, “you tell those around you that you prefer products that emphasize design and balance form and function.” These people are also known as Apple fanbois. Also, that sentence could use some work.

Also emphasizes design

It is obvious from our photographs and the overall beauty of TBIAW that design is a priority in our lives. Anyone who has seen me shirtless knows that I also balance form and function. That said, I don’t really know what design and form have to do with vodka. Function, sure. It is obvious that the function of vodka is to get you buzzed. Do you really need EFFEN to do that? Probably not. I've never tried it though so maybe it is just that good. I just don't EFFEN know.

Overall Rating for the Blue Lemonade

Taste: 2

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackouts: 9 – 12% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka – Use EFFEN only. It is written.

0.75 oz Blue Curaçao

4 oz Lemonade

Drink 174: The Return of Buddy Love

2011-08-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

Myspace Angle

Sound the horns, hit the lights, and then behold! Mrs. Bottle is back!! I know all eighteen of our readers have been on the edge of their seats wondering where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing, or even if I’m alive or dead. I’ve been here, at the wondrous TBIAW estate. I’ve been reading a lot and watching True Blood and Happy Days reruns. And I’m still alive. Also, Mr. Bottle and I have been quite social for the past several Saturday nights resulting in no drink for me to critique. Sure, I could have written a blog on another day but I wanted to keep the mystery alive. And yes, this is a different day but Mr. Bottle didn’t feel like reviewing today’s beverage, ultimately forcing my return.

Speaking of today’s drink, it is a shooter called the Nutty Professor. And not the kind featuring Jerry Lewis. No, this is a shooter calling for equal parts of Mandarine Napoleon, Irish cream liqueur, and hazelnut liqueur. For our version, we used Grand Marnier, Bailey’s, and Frangelico. The drink smelled and tasted pretty nutty, possibly from the hazelnut liqueur. It was also pretty creamy with a hint of orange and I thought that overall it had a pleasant flavor. Mr. Bottle however was not a fan, possibly because of the cold feelings he has for Bailey’s. But since the drink was small and tasty, I didn’t mind finishing it off by myself.

In case you were wondering how big a hazelnut is in centimeters
img

Now is the part of the blog where I teach you about the newly acquired item in our bar stock: Frangelico. Putting aside the ever annoying birth date request on the home page, this might possibly be the most informative alcohol website I’ve ever visited. You might be surprised to learn that Frangelico is made with hazelnuts. That was a doozy, but wait. It’s actually made with Tonda Gentile hazelnuts, which can only be found in the northern Piedmont hills of Italy. These are also found in Nutella so you know they’re the best. Some other fun facts: In case you are blind, the Frangelico bottle is shaped like a monk. In case you have tummy issues, Frangelico is gluten free. In case you are Jewish, Frangelico is kosher. And lastly, in case you get some and don’t use it, Frangelico has a shelf life of twenty years. Twenty years you say? With our history, this might just be the most perfect bottle for our bar.

Overall Rating for the Nutty Professor

Taste: 4 – Mr. Bottle might say less

Presentation: 3 – unless you are into milky beige

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 27% Alcohol

Ingredients

0.5 oz Mandarine Napoleon

0.5 oz Hazelnut Liqueur

0.5 oz Irish Cream Liqueur

Drink 173: Frah-gee-lay?

2011-08-02T14:49:00.000-07:00

The other day we received a Facebook “like” from Fragoli Liqueur. This was exciting for a number of reasons. First, we always are happy to get a “like” since it boosts our self-esteem and helps us gain on Lady Gaga. Secondly, Fragoli is the first company to publicly proclaim their fondness for TBIAW. It is one thing to have your friend do it, but a company is another level. I wonder if the Fragoli board of directors unanimously approved the "like" or if there was some dissent? Did they battle it out like in Twelve Angry Men?

Perfection, thy
name is Fragoli

Hmm, I guess there were only two reasons it was exciting, but two is a number, too. One thing I’m sure of is that we received their coveted “like” because of the blog’s outstanding content. There was no way it was simply because they have some automated bot that spotted the word “Fragoli” in our Economic Stimulus sidebar and just gave us the “like” in the hopes that we would like them back and possibly link to them in our blog. We frown on that kind of self-promotion. We would never expect them to link back to a post of ours just because it mentioned their product repeatedly and glowingly.

I also hope that Fragoli doesn’t think that we will compromise our editorial integrity when reviewing their product just because they “like”d us. We cannot be bought that easily. Please note that we can be bought. Just not that easily. I implore you to keep that in mind as we talk for a moment about Fragoli, an Italian strawberry liqueur. It is a must to discuss since it is an ingredient in our latest drink the Strawberry Sunrise.

Since we have never had Fragoli before, we tried some straight before putting it in the drink. I can say without bias that Fragoli is the best tasting thing I have ever tried. It was the perfect combination of sweetness, strawberry flavor, and alcohol bite. It was like a strawberry patch exploded into my mouth and I used alcohol nectar to extinguish the flames. Fragoli even has these cute whole wild strawberries in the bottle. Can you imagine anything more perfect? I surely can’t.

We combined the Fragoli with grenadine and orange juice in our Strawberry Sunrise even though we aren’t quite sure Fragoli was the proper ingredient. You see, the recipe called for strawberry schnapps, not fine delicious Italian strawberry liqueur. Since schnapps is just sweetened flavored liqueur, we decided to use Fragoli since it meets the criteria. Really, you’d have to be crazy to use plain old schnapps when Fragoli is available. We are a lot of things but we are not crazy.

It is sad that you can
barely make out the
Fragoli in this picture

Unlike the L.A Sunrise, the Strawberry Sunrise actually looked like a sunrise with a nice separation of the orange juice from the red ingredients. Separate, though not equal. As far as flavor, the drink was quite good. It was almost like a cocktail version of a strawberry and orange Julius. If there were any complaints, it was a little too sweet. This was undoubtedly due to the ½ ounce of grenadine and not the Fragoli. The Fragoli’s sweetness was perfect and it remains blameless in any of the drink’s shortcomings. The Strawberry Sunrise also was a bit weak, coming in at just over 7% alcohol. In this case the recipe takes the blame, since it called for a lot of OJ and not enough Fragoli.

To conclude, Fragoli.

Overall Rating for the Strawberry Sunrise

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackouts: 12 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Strawberry Schnapps – We highly recommend Fragoli

0.5 oz Grenadine

Orange Juice

Drink 172: All That's Missing is the Asbury Jukes

2011-08-01T04:49:00.000-07:00

A little over a week ago we tried the Wallis Blue Cocktail, which we found quite delicious. It is essentially a gin Margarita. Surprisingly, that post received a comment. A reader suggested that we try another gin drink called the Southside because he had heard it was “very tasty.” He even provided a link to the recipe. As we have shown by our one reader-requested drink, we are always happy to honor a fan’s request as long as the drink happens to be in our Mr. Boston guide. In this case the guide does have a South-side but it only bears a slight resemblance to the recipe linked since it ignores several key ingredients. If the supplied recipe was Alec Baldwin, the Mr. Boston version is Stephen Baldwin.

Prettiest leaf this
side of Leif Garrett

All hope was not lost though as the guide has a second drink called the South-side Fizz which is a bit closer but still not an exact match. We decided to have a head-to-head showdown between the two recipes. Of course another sabot got thrown into the machinery when a third recipe got posted to the comments. Since this third recipe came directly from the person who claims it is tasty we altered our plan and decided to use her recipe vs. the Mr. Boston recipe. We did this even though we had already scheduled the other recipe. We hope you appreciate the steps we take to keep things from getting stale at TBIAW. Seriously. This is a lot of work for very few readers. It would probably be more efficient to just send a couple of e-mails or a mimeograph instead of dealing with the blog.

The challenger

Normally when we make a mixed drink that calls for gin we use Tanqueray. Not this time, though. Our Southside fan said “do NOT use Tanqueray.” I’m not sure what she has against Tanqueray (maybe Tanqueray owes her money?) but we honored her request. She suggested alternatives Plymouth, No. 209, and Hendrick’s. Of those, we only have Hendrick’s, but we decided to go with Bombay Sapphire instead because I didn’t want to use 4.5 oz of Hendrick’s on mixed drinks. It is only to be used for Gin and Tonics or for getting crunk.

After we retrieved a bottle of Sapphire from our vast gin cellar, we studied the recipes carefully. There were a few differences so we’ve provided a handy chart to highlight the main ones:

The differences definitely created two distinct drinks each imperfect in its own way. The Mr. Boston version was a little too watery in my opinion primarily due to the fact that you are instructed to fill the glass with club soda once the other ingredients are in place. I hate this type of instruction. We need precision in our recipes (unless it is telling you to add simple syrup to-taste, as in the fabulous Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1) Right in their own book it says a highball glass is 8-10 ounces. This means that an instruction to “fill glass” could lead to up to a two-ounce variability in the drink. I double-checked the math. It is that type of inattention to detail that lead to the financial meltdown.

Mrs. Bottle still preferred the Mr. Boston version to its challenger, though. She found it refreshing while she thought the reader’s version was a bit too sweet. I also found it a bit too sweet but I thought the muddled mint provided a more interesting flavor than the Mr. Boston one. The challenger called for an entire ounce of simple syrup as opposed to ¾ ounce lemon juice which was bit much for us. We added more lemon juice which helped but still left the drink a bit too syrupy. In fairness, our reader said that less simple syrup will make it less sweet. When we make this again we will heed that advice. I am interested to replace the club soda with champagne as well.

Ultimately, since Mrs. Bottle preferred one and I preferred the other the answer to which is better is as muddled as the mint should be.

Overall Rating for the South-side Fizz

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackouts: 9 – 13% Alcohol depending on glass size

Ingredients

2 oz Gin

1 oz Lemon Jucie

1 tsp Simple Syrup

? oz Club Soda

Alternate Recipe

2.5 oz Gin – NOT Tanqueray
¾ oz Lemon Juice
6-8 leaves Mint

1 oz simple syrup (less for less sweet)
1 oz club soda or champagne (very dry)

In a cocktail shaker: Muddle the mint with the lemon juice before adding the gin & simple syrup. Use a handful of ice and shake until the shaker is too cold to hold. Strain & serve it up (not over ice) into a chilled martini glass. Top with club soda or champagne. Garnish with whole mint leaf.

Drink 171: I Get Stupid I Mean Outrageous

2011-07-30T04:57:00.000-07:00

Today we have the Stupid Cupid, a mix of citrus vodka, sloe gin, simple syrup, and lemon juice. You might think it would make more sense to have had this drink back during Romance Week, but you would be wrong. A stupid Cupid would show up late, most likely some time in late July or early August. It has nothing to do with trying to have a bunch of drinks with sloe gin now that we finally acquired some.

All that and a cherry on the bottom

The drink had a prominent lemon bouquet thanks to the lemon juice and citrus vodka. I didn’t think the flavor was crazy-lemony, but Mrs. Bottle felt the citrus was powerful. I think my taste buds may have been de-lemonized because right before we had the drink I had just eaten enough enormous lemon cookies to send me into sugar shock. They arrived in the mail from Mrs. Bottle’s mother and it would have been rude to just let them sit there. I am eating one right now.

37 whole lemons go into every Kroger lemon cookie

As far as the drink, while we disagreed on the lemon, Mrs. Bottle and I both concurred that the drink had a strong alcohol burn. You know a drink is strong when you feel the warmth in your stomach. That isn’t too surprising when you consider the Stupid Cupid is 37% alcohol. We had a little trouble coming to an agreement on whether it should be a three or a four but we easily concluded that a few of these will make anyone stupid.

Overall Rating for the Stupid Cupid

Taste: 3
Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 2 – 37% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Citrus-flavored Vodka

0.5 oz Sloe Gin

1 splash Simple Syrup

1 splash Lemon Juice

Drink 170: Who Has Been Putting Out Their Kools on My Floor?

2011-07-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

A Stinger is made with brandy and crème de menthe. We have not tried that and we are not trying it today. Back in February we had the Vodka Stinger which is made with vodka and crème de menthe. We are not trying that again today. Instead we have the Scotch Stinger. It is made with Scotch and crème de menthe. I think there must be some connection between these drinks since they all have Stinger in the name but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I may need to set the TBIAW iTeam on it. We will put that aside for now and move on to the drink.

I used flash in this photo.
It really enhanced the lint
on our backdrop.

Hmm...this is in
all the Stinger
recipes. Maybe
Mr. DeKuyper knows
the connection.

Anyone who has spent time with Mrs. Bottle knows she is always going on about how mint “makes everything better.” The Scotch Stinger would really put her mint fanaticism to the test. Why? Because it might have mint but it also contains our most dreaded ingredient (in case you aren’t sure to what I am referring, it is the Scotch). So far we have had seven drinks with Scotch and their ratings have been 2,2,2,1,1,2,1. That pattern is like a reverse Fibonacci sequence of suckitude.

It turned out that the mint did make the Scotch Stinger almost tolerable. Don’t get me wrong; it was still gross, but probably the least gross Scotch drink so far thanks to the mint. It was kind of like the difference between a menthol cigarette and a regular cigarette. In either case, I wouldn’t want to kiss you after you had one unless it was extremely late at night. Anyway, the Scotch Stinger was tasty enough that it allowed us to make it our highest rated Scotch drink (tie).

Overall Rating for the Scotch Stinger

Taste: 2

Presentation: 2 – Kind of looked like a glass of wee

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 2 – 38% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Scotch

.5 oz Crème de Menthe (white)

Drink 169: Seven Silver Spiders Swam Silently Seaward

2011-07-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

It does look silver

When we first started this blog one hundred and sixty-eight cocktails ago we thought the majority of the posts would just be a description of the drink and a rating of said drink. Today we finally realize that goal with the Silver Spider, a shooter made from vodka, rum, triple sec, and crème de menthe. This drink tasted mostly like alcohol with a bit of mint. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything special. One thing it will do is get you drunk. There you have it.

Overall Rating for the Silver Spider

Taste: 3

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackouts: 3 – 33% Alcohol

Ingredients

.5 oz Vodka

.5 oz Rum

.5 oz Triple Sec

.5 oz Crème de Menthe (white)

Drink 168: Sloe Ride

2011-07-27T04:58:00.000-07:00

Several drinks in the Mr. Boston guide feature Sloe Gin, most famously the Alabama Slammer and the Sloe Gin Fizz. We would like to try those drinks, but the problem is that it is tough to find authentic sloe gin. Most of the sloe gin you see at the liquor store isn’t made using the traditional method of infusing gin with sloes. Instead, they use grain alcohol. I’m not sure why they are allowed to call that stuff sloe gin instead of sloeshine.

I can't tell you the name of
this drink yet because we
haven't gotten to that
part of the post

We conducted a multi-state search several months ago (true fact) and were unable to locate any real sloe gin. That all changed recently when Mrs. Bottle finally located some Plymouth Traditional Sloe Gin. I’m pretty sure she was supposed to be at work at the time, but priorities are priorities. This was exciting news since it now allowed us a whole new spectrum of drinks. I became a bit less excited when I saw that the bottle cost over $30. Maybe sloeshine wouldn’t have been a bad choice after all.

We didn’t want to shoot our sloe wad by bringing one of the more famous sloe-based drinks right off the bat, so today we bring you the Sloeberry Cocktail, a mix of sloe gin and bitters. The drink tasted a little strange yet somewhat familiar. Mrs. Bottle thought it smelt of cough syrup, but there was something else there. After several sips, I figured it out: The Sloeberry Cocktail tasted sort of like prune juice. I floated this theory by Mrs. Bottle and she could neither confirm nor deny it since she claims to have never tasted prune juice. I actually haven’t had prune juice either, but I’ve been known to enjoy a ~~prune~~ dried plum now and then.

"Slow Barry" is what Robin and Maurice called their brother

We had to know more so we turned to our go-to source for information to learn about the sloe (Wikipedia, making TBIAW possible for over 300 years^TM). It turns out that the sloe is the fruit of the Prunus spinosa species of bushes. I don’t know if you caught the name…Prunus spinosa. That’s right; the sloe is related to the prune. I am here to tell you that a hint of that pruney flavor is present in the Sloeberry Cocktail, too. It wasn’t overwhelming, though. Probably because it cost so much.

Overall Rating for the Sloeberry Cocktail

Taste: 3
Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 5 – 26% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Sloe Gin

1 dash Bitters

Drink 167: Slop Sloppy Joe

2011-07-26T04:04:00.000-07:00

Today’s drink is the Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail No. 1, a mix of rum, triple sec, dry vermouth, grenadine, and lime juice. According to the USDA’s MyDrink, a cocktail should never be more than 23.3% lime juice. This is an improvement over the outdated Tipple Pyramid’s maximum of 34.0%. Regardless of whether you follow the old-school Pyramid or the new-school MyDrink, the Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail No. 1 exceeds the limit since it is 38.7% lime juice.

Seems strangely specific

Note: I literally spent hours working
on the video in Sunday's blog. Since
no one actually watched it, I decided
to spend no more than three minutes on
any future customized pictures for TBIAW.
This is the type of quality to expect
going forward.

Due to the high concentration of lime juice, the primary taste of this drink was tartness. In fact wasn’t the just the primary taste, it was the only taste. It was so tart that if we had tried the SJCN1 during the first few weeks of our journey, we would have probably given it a rating of one. Since we have become more accustomed to these sour assaults we were able to up the rating all the way to a two. There was some extra credit given because the lime juice thankfully overwhelmed the vermouth.

Not Sloppy

It also didn’t help that the drink called for only a quarter teaspoon of two of the other ingredients. Pouring a quarter teaspoon is kind of a pain. You can almost justify the quarter teaspoon of grenadine since it makes the drink a pleasant pink tint. The quarter teaspoon of triple sec is another story. It isn’t enough to add any sweetness or orange flavor to the drink. It is as superfluous as this picture:

Image: scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Overall Rating for the Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail No. 1

Taste: 2

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackouts: 7 – 17% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Lime Juice

0.25 tsp Triple Sec

0.25 tsp Grenadine

.75 oz Light Rum

.75 oz Dry Vermouth

Drink 166: Don't Shoot the Memessenger

2011-07-24T06:32:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that Adolf Hitler loved Piña Coladas. His love was controversial though since the Piña Colada supposedly wasn’t invented until 1954 when the key ingredient cream of coconut was first created. What these so-called “historians” don’t know is that Hitler used the recipe shown in our Mr. Boston guide. Well not our specific copy, but you know what I mean. The recipe calls for coconut milk instead of cream of coconut as is typically used. Adding to the confusion is that the drink was known in Weimar Germany not as a Piña Colada but as Der Gerfrorenananasweiblichgetränk.

We did not love this Piña Colada

Mrs. Bottle and I were both excited to try the Piña Colada, but not because it was Hitler’s favorite. Rather, we like tropical drinks and no drink symbolizes the tropics more than the Piña Colada. It has even been famously immortalized in song. Unfortunately the drink as described in the Mr. Boston book is truly horrible. I can see how being stuck with Gerfrorenananasweiblichgetränk could make someone angry. The main problem is that it calls for coconut milk instead of cream of coconut. Coconut milk is essentially the juice from a coconut. It isn’t sweet, isn’t creamy, and in my opinion isn’t very tasty either.

The rest of the recipe calls for light rum and crushed pineapple. You mix it in a blender with ice and the strain it into your glass. This is an additional flaw, since the crushed pineapple gets mostly strained out, leaving you with rum and coconut milk. We kept tasting it hoping it would somehow magically improve but it never got better. Mrs. Bottle was as crushed as the pineapple but instead of letting it get her down she just found the inner resolve to make a tasty Piña Colada. It is effort like hers that makes America great.

USA! USA!

She found a recipe on our can of Coco López cream of coconut and used that instead. Their recipe uses cream of coconut and pineapple juice instead of coconut milk and strained pineapple. This drink was sweet, creamy, and delicious. It also happens to be closer to the recipe we found in all of our other cocktail guides and as you might imagine we have quite a few. In fact, we added one to our collection yesterday at the Borders going out of business sale. We saved $0.60! It was totally worth it.

Overall Rating for the Piña Colada

Taste: 1

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

3 oz Light Rum

3 tbsp Coconut Milk

3 tbsp Crushed Pineapple

Drink 165: Blue Friday

2011-07-22T04:59:00.000-07:00

The Wallis Blue Cocktail isn’t what you might expect. Namely, it isn’t blue. This is due primarily to the fact that none of its ingredients are blue. Instead they are gin, triple sec, and lime juice. Think of it as a gin-based Margarita, but a bit sweeter. We liked the traditional Margarita a lot, but the Wallis Blue Cocktail was better. The extra sweetness was the tipping point, perfectly balancing the tart lime juice. The sugar-rimmed glass probably helped, too. Has there ever been a beverage that wasn’t improved by a sugar-rimmed glass? Actually, yes.

As far as I can tell, not blue

It has been a while since we have had a bad drink. In fact, we haven’t had a drink rated lower than a three in over two weeks now. This streak is long enough that I’m beginning to get nervous. There will surely be an epically bad streak some time in the future providing karmic retribution. It will likely feature several drinks with Scotch, Galliano, and prune juice.

Now we clumsily transition back to the drink at hand. I was curious about the name of the cocktail so we launched a massive TBIAW investigation. One of our iReporters quickly discovered that a fashion designer named Main Bocher created a color “Wallis Blue” named for Wallis Simpson and used it in her wedding dress. The dress doesn’t look blue to me, so that might explain why the drink isn’t blue. Maybe the absence of blue is a statement on the patriarchal nature of pre-World War II society.

Blueberries, as named by Main Bocher

In case you are not up on your anglophilic studies, Wallis Simpson was an American woman who tried to destroy the English monarchy using only the power of her femininity and almost succeeded. For you youngsters, think of her like the Monica Lewinsky of the 30’s. Coincidentally Lewinsky is also known for a blue dress. But we recommend that you stay away from the Monica Blew Cocktail.

Overall Rating for the Wallis Blue Cocktail

Taste: 5

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackouts: 6 – 21% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Gin

1 oz Triple Sec

1 oz Lime Juice

Drink 164: Hot in the City

2011-07-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

Captions require
effort

Oftentimes when I look at a drink recipe I think, “Whoever created this drink gave it very little effort.” Sometimes that can work. Other times you end up with the Sun Kiss, a mix of amaretto and orange juice. You don’t even put it in a shaker. You just pour into an ice- filled glass. The lime wedge only gives the façade of effort. The drink was unremarkable in every way. It looked okay and it tasted okay. It pretty much I suppose if you love amaretto you would probably like the Sun Kiss a bit more than we did.

Since the drink’s creator gave the drink such little effort, I am going to make up for it by giving this entry very little effort as well. It is for the best as we here at the Bottle Wonderland Estate are not immune from the heat wave that is both captivating and destroying our great nation. I never knew it got so hot in the summer. I don’t want us to expend too much energy and end up with some heat-related malady. It is supposed to be 98° today with a heat index of 105°. If the heat index was only 98° you would be nearing the beginning of the third paragraph. Instead you are nearing the end of today’s post. That extra 7 degrees of perceived heat makes all the difference.

Overall Rating for the Sun Kiss

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackouts: 11 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Amaretto

4 oz Orange Juice

Drink 163: Mock It To Me

2011-07-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

Am I a clown to you?

Today we have the Tequila Mockingbird, a mix of tequila, green crème de menthe, and lime juice. We already knew that mint and lime complement each other but were still nervous about mixing it with tequila. I almost suggested to Mrs. Bottle that we use some cheap tequila so we didn’t waste the good stuff but we decided to forge ahead giving the drink its best chance of success. It turned out that the Tequila Mockingbird was delicious and nothing went to waste. As usual, the mint and lime were delicious and refreshing together and the drink packs a bit of a punch, too.

I’m not sure why it is called the Tequila Mockingbird but I don’t usually let lack of actual knowledge keep me from commenting. A mockingbird mimics the sounds of other birds so it is safe to assume that this drink must mimic another drink. While it looks a lot like the Jade that drink isn’t well known enough to be mimicked and/or mocked. That would be the equivalent of TBIAW mocking a blog that is less well known. Something like the concisely named “Addiction help life coach Ontario, Success life coaching - Certified Life Transformation Coach” blog. It just wouldn’t be right. Since we’ve ruled out the Jade, I think I’m going to go with the Mojito instead. The artificially colored mint liqueur is clearly mocking the Mojito’s fresh mint and the absence of club soda is an obvious slap in the face.

Another thing that probably deserves mocking is what we ate for dinner last night, DiGiorno Pizza and Wyngz. We can be mocked for eating junk food and Wyngz can be mocked for being Wyngz. In turn, Wyngz are mocking real chicken wings with both their content and zpelling. I was going to mock Wyngz with a scathing send-up but I learned that Stephen Colbert already discussed them on his show. Some people find him funny, so instead of wasting any more of my time with this sub-par blog post I will just share what he did:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Thought for Food - Wyngz & Wal-Mart

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

Video Archive

Overall Rating for the Tequila Mockingbird

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackouts: 6 – 20% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Tequila

.75 oz Green Crème de Menthe

1 oz Lime Juice

Drink 162: Too Much Ado

2011-07-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

You probably remember when the main road to the Bottle Wonderland Estate was closed earlier this year because of a downed power line. It was all over the national news. It caused logistics issues not seen since Hurricane Katrina. Wait, you don’t remember? Oh yeah, that’s right, it actually was no big deal. That’s because every person on the planet who doesn’t live in Los Angeles can deal with a temporary road closure without it being major news for a week. That said, I was glad to see that Laker Girl tryouts were unaffected.

Local news coverage

No sunrise and no smog

In honor of the so-called Carmageddon we bring you the L.A. Sunrise, a mix of vodka, crème de banana, rum, orange juice, and pineapple juice. We aren’t sure why it is called the L.A. Sunrise since the drink doesn’t have a “sunrise effect” like the Tequila Sunrise or its grosser cousin the Hairy Sunrise. It isn’t even covered with a thick haze of smog. Maybe if we had used dark rum instead of the called-for “rum” it would have tinted everything brown and had a more realistic appearance.

The drink ultimately left Mrs. Bottle unsatisfied (insert too-easy joke here (and here)). She felt the drink too weak and somewhat pointless (also too easy). I thought it tasted pretty good with a nice pineapple-orange juice flavor. She noted that she couldn’t even taste the alcohol and said that she might as well just drink some pineapple-orange juice. To her it is hardly worth writing about, but it is still more newsworthy than a road closure thousands of miles away.

Overall Rating for the L.A. Sunrise

Taste: 4

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 10 – 10% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Vodka

.5 oz Crème de Banana

.25 oz Rum

2 oz Orange Juice

2 oz Pineapple Juice

Drink 161: Three Minutes to Wapner

2011-07-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

If you look closely
you can catch a glimpse
of the mysterious Mr. Bottle

Before we get to today’s drink the Rain Man we must make some corrections to our last post. First, and this is embarrassing, we inadvertently called the Drink with Jerry blog Drinking with Jerry. That is a horrible mistake and we apologize sincerely. I hope Jerry didn’t kill himself because he made the same error. The second correction is that Jerry is not dead. He was nice enough to comment on yesterday’s post and we hope he resumes his blog soon. Technically this isn’t a correction since we did not say he was dead, just that we like to imagine that he was dead. In fairness, I often like to imagine certain people are dead. It is a fun way to pass the time.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get back to the Rain Man, a mix of 151-proof rum, melon liqueur, and orange juice. The drink was not bad as long as you can deal with melon liqueur. That ingredient constituted only 1/8 the volume of the drink but 7/8 of the flavor. The orange and rum combined to level the melon out enough that Mrs. Bottle and I both liked it even though she isn’t a melon liqueur fan. We didn’t even allow its putrid presentation to put us off. The only thing that slowed us down was concern about the 151 rum.


This is to remind you of the 151 warnings. We in no way used this picture again because we were too lazy to come up with something else

We have already covered the dangers of 151 rum but there is one warning they left off the label: overstating drink power. Upon tasting the Rain Man Mrs. Bottle repeatedly mentioned that she could feel a tingle in her nose due to the powerful 151. She must have said it 10 or 20* times. What she didn’t realize is that the overall strength of the drink was the same as our previous drink, 19% alcohol. She didn’t comment about how the Peter Pan burned her nose, though. Clearly the 151 triggered some kind of psychological response. When Mrs. Bottle reads this I suspect it will also trigger a psychological response. I can’t help that, I must report the truth.

* All figures approximate

Overall Rating for the Rain Man

Taste: 4

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 7 – 19% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.25 oz 151-proof Rum

.75 oz Melon Liqueur

4 oz Orange Juice

Drink 160: Never Neverblog

2011-07-15T04:06:00.000-07:00

Garnish with a faerie

Lately I have been having a little trouble coming up with topics for the blog. You may have noticed that the frequency has dipped a little over the last two weeks. The quality, of course, is as sterling as ever. Hopefully I will rally soon and a fountain of fresh ideas will spring forward. The first step is admitting I have a problem. Now that we have that admission out of the way I am trying to determine the root cause for the idea deficit. I think it is either concern over the debt ceiling or that I am over 18 hours behind in watching Harry Potter movies.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person to run into this problem. In fact, while researching today’s drink the Peter Pan Cocktail, I ran into someone else who seemingly suffered a similar fate. His name is Jerry and he has (had?) a blog called Drinking With Jerry that is pretty much the same concept as TBIAW (with the same inspiration). His version of the Peter Pan Cocktail is the same as ours, too with gin, dry vermouth, orange juice, and bitters. He thought it tasted like “shampoo” but we didn’t. We didn’t love it, but it was decent even though it contained dry vermouth. Mrs. Bottle pointed out that gin seems to have a better relationship with vermouth than other liquors do. I think it is because gin is so delicious it can make anything taste good. In this case it allowed the drink to be more palatable than one might think. The orange juice probably helped as well. We both felt that the Peter Pan Cocktail had potential to grow on you if you gave it enough time and if you leave your window open.

Not Jerry
img: http://pixyland.org/peterpan/

Speaking of time, it looks like Jerry’s blog was pretty time-consuming. He clearly went to a lot of effort in his photography and I have to say that the design of his blog is nice. The pictures are certainly more interesting than our “drink with a black background and occasionally a lame prop” motif. He had initially been writing a few sentences with each drink but that ended after April 21 and on May 19 he stopped his blog for good. Maybe the time commitment got to be too much. Maybe the fact that no one was voting on his drinks made him frustrated. Perhaps his lack of Facebook fans frustrated him (the same as TBIAW!!). I don’t know Jerry, but I don’t want to think that he just gave up. Quitting is not cool. I prefer to imagine that he is dead

Overall Rating for the Peter Pan Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4 – It has a faerie!

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 7 – 19% Alcohol

Ingredients

.75 oz Gin

.75 oz Dry Vermouth

.75 oz Orange Juice

2 dashes Bitters

Drink 159: Cop a Squat

2011-07-13T16:05:00.000-07:00

Do not judge a Bajito by its outward appearance

Today we have the Bajito, a mix of dark rum, fresh lime, simple syrup, mint leaves, and basil leaves. The Bajito continues our mini-run of drinks that feature fresh mint although at a week old we are stretching the definition of “fresh”. The basil we used was as fresh as fresh can be, though, coming directly from the Bottle Wonderland back forty into the cocktail shaker. You might be surprised that the Estate features an extensive farm. Despite our affinity for the green plastic lime, Mrs. Bottle and I are actually big proponents of sustainable local food. That is why I plan to move very close to the Jelly Belly Factory.

Even better than food from the local farm is the food you grow yourself. Knowing we raised that basil from a small basil plant purchased at Lowe’s all the way to its current incarnation as a medium sized basil plant brought extra satisfaction to every sip. It would have brought even more satisfaction if we could have actually tasted the basil in the drink. While there was a hint of basil, the drink pretty much tasted like a regular Mojito. That isn’t a bad thing since a Mojito is delicious and so is the Bajito.

Where the Bajito falls down is in its appearance. Bajito is Spanish for “squat” and I have to assume it is called that because it is shorter than a Mojito and not because it looks likes like something that happens when one is squatting. The good news is that it has 3 ounces of rum so after one or two you won’t care how it looks. Four or five of them will probably make a lot of things look better than they are. I recommend it before reading TBIAW.

Overall Rating for the Bajito

Taste: 4

Presentation: 0

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackouts: 4 – 29% Alcohol

Ingredients

3 oz Dark Rum

1 tbsp Simple Syrup

5 Slices Fresh Lime – How much is that, anyway?

4 Fresh Basil Leaves

4 Fresh Mint Leaves

Drink 158: Cool as a Cucumber

2011-07-11T15:02:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me (and that is a select group!) will tell you that I rarely complain and never whine. When little indignities or injustices strike, I receive them stoically or apply a devil-may-care attitude. That is why you won’t hear me wailing about the fact that Bottle Wonderland Cat has been waking me up at all hours of the evening for no reason whatsoever. I certainly won’t bore readers with woe-is-me accounts of Bottle Wonderland Kitten #1 hurling himself against the door at 4:00 AM and making an egregious amount of noise simply because he wants a kibble.

Waiter, there's a plant in my drink

A lesser blogger might cry about how his lack of sleep prevents him from formulating a rational thought or from making insightful asides in his entries. He might even try to drag out his complaint to constitute the majority of a post and blame said sleeplessness for his lack of focus. You won’t see those types of shenanigans here, though. We will keep any of our problems to ourselves and simply present our latest drink, the Cubeltini, a mix of vodka, lime juice, simple syrup, mint, and cucumber. The Cubeltini happens to be the signature cocktail of Trina, a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Where the boys were, circa 1984
img

As I’m sure you already know, Fort Lauderdale is also the setting for the classic film Where the Boys Are ’84, where a bunch of 38 year-olds pretend to be 18 year olds and try to have sex with each other. In that way it is just like a 20 year high school reunion. I think in either case the Cubeltini could probably help, but only with a little modification. The cucumber, mint, and lime juice create a refreshing combination, but they are overwhelmed by the cloying sweetness of the simple syrup. There is an ounce and a half of that stuff, which turns out to be too much. Instead of whining about it (which if you recall, I never do), I would recommend cutting it down to ½ an ounce or so. The reduction in sugar will also help keep the pounds off which is beneficial whether you are entering the hot bod contest or trying to impress your old high school flame.

Overall Rating for the Cubeltini

Taste: 3 (4 if you cut down the sugar)

Presentation: 5 – It has an entire plant in it!

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackouts: 8 – 18% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Vodka

1 oz Lime Juice

1.5 oz Simple Syrup

3 Cucumber Slices

5-7 Mint Leaves

Drink 157: Buck Wild

2011-07-09T11:19:00.000-07:00

Also tasted slightly
out of focus

Today’s drink is the New Orleans Buck which is comprised of light rum, orange and lemon juices and then some ginger ale. And yes, it is me, Mrs. Bottle, here to update everyone on all I’ve learned about this wondrous concoction. But first let me just get down to it and provide the critique because I know all thirteen readers out there (readership is on the rise!) are waiting in serious anticipation.

Mr. Bottle and I both had high expectations for this beverage because what’s not to like? All parts are tasty so they must be good when combined, right? Let me break it down in three languages: No (English), Non (French), and No (Spanish). Actually, that’s harsh because it wasn’t too bad. It was just a little watery tasting, probably due to the fact that the recipe didn’t specify the amount of ginger ale. It just instructed me to fill the glass and stir. Maybe if it had said to “fill to taste” I would have been more precise and ended up with a tastier drink. Like the mouthwatering Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1. But we’ll never know now because unless the drink scores above a 3 on our scientific rating scale, it’s unlikely to be made again.

Let’s get back to my research. I initially followed a red herring and focused on the New Orleans part of the drink name. It seemed obvious that this drink originated in New Orleans but all I could really find was info about New Orleans Buck Jumping. What, pray tell, is this activity you might ask. After more digging, I discovered that it’s another name for second line dancing in New Orleans brass band parades. I would latch on to those folks who watch HBO’s “Treme” because I know second line dancing would be familiar to you, but I believe there might be fewer “Treme” viewers than readers of our blog.

Scene from HBO's Treme. By seeing a scene
from Treme you are part of a very exclusive club
img: hbo.com

So after an exhaustive eight minutes focusing on the New Orleans aspect, I happened upon a link discussing the New Orleans Buck’s ample history as it belongs to the Buck family of drinks. Excitedly, my mind started reeling with the possibilities of a whole line of alcohol by this Buck family and a new alcohol website to ~~ridicule~~ investigate. Alas, it turns out that the Buck drinks are beverages that include any alcohol, lemon or lime juice, a piece of citrus fruit (maybe), and ginger beer or ginger ale. I was going to explain more here but Mr. Bottle read what I’d written so far and said “Wait- we already wrote about the Buck drinks. Don’t you remember?” To which I replied, “Oh, am I supposed to be reading your posts?”

Overall Rating for the New Orleans Buck

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5 – Looks mighty refreshing

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Light Rum

1 oz Orange Juice

0.5 oz Lemon Juice

Ginger Ale

Drink 156: Frisky Business

2011-07-08T04:24:00.000-07:00

Today’s drink is the Frisky Witch, a duo made from vodka and sambuca. As with most duos, the Frisky Witch is very strong, weighing in with an alcohol content of 41%. The anise flavor is very strong as well, weighing in with a licorice score of 93%. It was a bit too much for Mrs. Bottle to handle even though she thinks that plain sambuca tastes fine. I liked the Frisky Witch although I wouldn’t want to drink more than six or seven of them at a time.

Please ignore the licorice surgery

If you think six or seven drinks are too many, you are not a college student. According to a recent survey of college students, binge drinking brings benefits such as “more courage, improved communication skills, and better social abilities.” I attended college and I can assure you that binge drinking can lead to a lot of things, but “improved communication skills” is not one of them. Unless of course you are looking to increase your slurring and volume level because you are normally soft spoken and people make fun of you because of your precise enunciation. “Better social abilities” is questionable, too. If “regrettable sexual encounter” falls under that umbrella then I suppose it makes sense.

Not sure if this falls under "better social abilities"
or "improved communication skills"

In addition to the benefits that the college students enumerated, there are actual benefits as well including a reduction in the chances of cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and Type-2 diabetes. Of course those benefits are achieved by only having one (if you are a woman) or two (if you a man) drinks per day. Doctors can really be a buzzkill. They didn’t even give a recommended amount for children. Why do they want kids to catch Alzheimer’s?

Overall Rating for the Frisky Witch

Taste: 4 (Mr. Bottle) 2 (Mrs. Bottle)

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 2 – 41% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Vodka

1 oz Sambuca

Drink 155: Ain't That a Jicama Head

2011-07-07T04:08:00.000-07:00

While our drink selections may at times appear completely random it is only because they are usually random. The genius of it is that sometimes they appear random when they are really carefully chosen by our selection committee (Mrs. Bottle). Sometimes she chooses a drink because it is related to a holiday. Other times it is because she wants to make sure we don’t have too many good drinks in a row. Today it is because we had an ingredient that she didn’t want to let go to waste. That ingredient is fresh mint.

If you know what this is it is attractive.
Otherwise it might skeeze you out

We have fresh mint because Mrs. Bottle was going to make a delicious orange and jicama salad this past weekend for the neighborhood 4^th of July blowout. Not the big blowout down the road, but the one we got invited to. It happens that the salad includes fresh mint and we had a lot left over. Why did we have so much mint left over? Because Mrs. Bottle couldn’t make the salad. Why couldn’t she make the salad? Because we could not find a decent jicama within a 30 mile radius of the Estate.

Don’t get me wrong, we found jicama at our usual grocery store (we won’t name it here, but it rhymes with Ferris Jeter); we just didn’t find a good one. When Mrs. Bottle picked up the first one she found, it had a hole in it and then bug flew out of said hole. That is considered good luck in some countries, but in America it is considered gross. She picked out a second one but when she cut it open at home it too had a hole in it cleverly concealed within the center of the root. The non-hole portion was black with rot. Mrs. Bottle ignored my suggestion of using the rotted tuber anyway and insisted I find another one. I spent the next several hours trolling every grocery store that wasn’t too inconvenient but still came a cropper.

Not to scale
Moth

Since Mrs. Bottle also ignored my other suggestion of making an orange and rutabaga salad, we had a lot of mint left over. We ended up using the mint in the Frozen Mint Daiquiri which also has rum, lime juice and sugar. This isn’t to be confused with the previously reviewed Daiquiri which has no mint and is not frozen but conversely also tasted good. Mint and lime is a good combo, but the Frozen Mint Daiquiri was too tart for our liking. This is likely due to the fact that it called for sugar instead of simple syrup. I guess no one told Mr. Boston that sugar doesn’t really dissolve in a frozen drink. We salvaged the drink by adding some simple syrup, making it quite tasty. If only the recipe called for “simple syrup to taste” like the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1, it would have been a big hit. Then again there are few drinks that are as big as the DSCTn1.

Overall Rating for the Frozen Mint Daiquiri

Taste: 2 (4 if you add simple syrup)

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3 – Frozen drinks are an automatic 1 point deduction

Drinks Until Blackout: 12 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Light Rum

1 tbsp Lime Juice

6 Mint Leaves

1 tsp Sugar

1 cup Ice

Drink 154: Crocodile Rocked

2011-07-05T05:28:00.000-07:00

The flamingo straw
was not explicitly
specified but we felt
it was a nice touch

So after missing my regularly scheduled post, Mrs. Bottle is finally here to talk about Sunday’s drink. On Tuesday. Just so you don’t think I was being lazy and not properly devoted to all eleven of you readers out there, let me give a brief background on what happened. You may remember that we recently added two kittens to the household count. This has nothing to do with them but it has everything to do with our 13 year old cat, Mrs. Fatty Needs-A-Lot McCrankyPants (Mrs. FNM for short - formerly known as Bottle Wonderland Cat). She got a little sickly last week and after picking her up from the vet, turns out she has developed an even pickier palate than she already had. After turning her nose up at her normal prescription food that costs half of TBIAW estate’s mortgage payment, Mr. Bottle went in search of any food that might interest her taste buds. The result was that I spent most of Sunday sorting through a bag of Friskies Surfin’ Turfin’ Favorites picking out the pink fishies and brown drumsticks for her to eat from our hands every few hours. This was in between playing referee while Mr. Bottle wrestled her to the ground to force pills and syringes of medicine down her throat. But we are determined to get Mrs. FNM back to her normal finicky but still eating self.

Found some!

And speaking of finicky taste buds, let’s talk about today’s drink. The Crocodile Cooler is made with citrus-flavored vodka, melon liqueur, triple sec, simple syrup, lemon juice and lemon-lime soda. I was a little skeptical because of the melon liqueur, but it turned out to be quite tasty and the Bottle’s delicate taste buds were singing. In fact, we even had a guest try it who we’ll call Mrs. Older-than-Mrs. Bottle. This is what she gets for not reading the blog. Anyway, even though Mrs. OTMB also doesn’t like melon liqueur, she did enjoy the drink as well. Luckily for her I didn’t make her sort out the melon liqueur from the rest of the drinks and then serve it to me from her hand.

Overall Rating for the Crocodile Cooler

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5 – Extra points for not being the real color of a crocodile

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Lots of ingredients or it would rate a 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Citrus-flavored Vodka

1 oz Melon Liqueur

0.75 oz Triple Sec

1 oz Simple Syrup

1 oz Lemon Juice

Lemon-Lime Soda

Drink 153: Drinkee Doodle Dandy

2011-07-04T05:23:00.000-07:00

TBIAW is pretty US-centric, which makes sense since that’s where the Bottle Wonderland Estate is located. It is not intended to be a slight in any way to other countries, though. We love all countries and the people in those countries, although we are keeping a very close eye on you, Moldova. Even with our pro-US stance, we still attract visitors from around the world, as you can see here:

Unfortunately this map does not show our
tremendous popularity in Antarctica

You can also see that we don’t get many readers from the southern hemisphere. That’s because their Internet runs in the opposite direction and they have a hard time getting here.

For those visitors from other lands who don’t already know, today is the 4^th of July, also known here in the US as Independence Day. This is when we celebrate our country’s freedom by eating a lot of grilled meat, drinking delicious mass-produced American beer, and shooting off fireworks. Coincidentally, that is also how we celebrate Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Black History Month.

To help celebrate we bring you today’s drink the 4^th of July Tooter, a combination of grenadine (derived from the French word for pomegranate), vodka (from Russia), and blue Curaçao (named after a foreign country). On first glance, you might think those ingredients belong in some effete America hater’s cocktail, but if you reflect deeply on it (an American strength) you can clearly see that they represent the great melting pot of our nation. If you can’t see that, you should go back to Canada where you belong.

The ingredients also just happen to be red, white, and blue, the colors of Old Glory. The idea is to float the ingredients to make a red, white, and blue shooter. This is the same concept that worked so well for us when we made the Irish Flag that we were excited to try it again. We were rewarded because it worked just as well this time. The vodka didn’t float at all on the grenadine, and the Curaçao didn’t work much better.

Caution! The sparklers are flammable.
They are also made in Thailand

Luckily here in the US of A we are more concerned with substance than style so the taste is more important than the looks. And in the taste department, the 4^th of July Tooter did well with a with a nice orange flavor, although it was a bit sweet. The main issue is that it wasn’t chilled in any way which is a problem in the middle of summer. The forecast today is calling for temperatures in the mid-nineties so something cold would be nicer. In fact when we tested the drink we ended up using good old American ingenuity and we plopped an ice cube in it. Not only did it chill the drink, the ice cube added a little white and made it an aesthetic victory as well. USA! USA!

Overall Rating for the 4^th of July Tooter

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5 – It doesn’t matter if it didn’t work, it tried!

Ease of Preparation: 2 – Floats

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Grenadine

1 oz Vodka

1 oz Blue Curaçao

Those Who Can't Do, Blog

2011-07-02T06:06:00.000-07:00

This certainly looks like the
next big thing to me

Over the past few months we have reviewed scores of drinks, critiqued liquors, rated beers, and even made the occasional restaurant review (what happened to that feature?). Even though we have been reliably informative, hilarious, and touching, TBIAW still hasn’t caught fire with the masses. We need something to set us apart from other blogs about drinking, and that something is a signature cocktail of our own.

That’s right, you read correctly, we are going to come up with our own original drink. Once we perfect it we fully expect it to become the next big thing. The current big thing is planking. If something as dumb as that can become popular then I think we have a real chance. Of course we are hurting ourselves by unveiling our first attempt on a holiday weekend when most people will be outside doing something fun instead of avoiding work by reading our blog.

This is a fad, really?
Img: whataplanker.com

Creating a signature cocktail isn’t as easy as it sounds. The most difficult part is coming up with something original in light of the thousands upon thousands of recipes available online. The easiest way to develop something unique is to invent your own liqueur. Then any drink you make with it will be new. You can put the brand of the liqueur in the name of every recipe to further strengthen your message. To publicize it sufficiently it is also a must to create a web site with an annoying splash page with music and slowly developing graphics. A cool logo and weird bottle don't hurt either.

Alas, I searched the entire grounds of the Bottle Wonderland Estate and I could not find a distillery or a cadre of web developers so we will have to use ingredients that have already been invented. For our first attempt we decided to use science to determine the right ingredients. And by science, I mean an Excel spreadsheet. We chose to use Excel 2003, widely agreed upon by the top spreadsheetologists in the country to be the version installed on our laptop.

Notice the sophistication, precision, and cell formatting

We took our spreadsheet and created a model to determine which ingredients were most likely to lead to a tasty beverage. The model was quite sophisticated and used formulas such as SUM and COUNTIF. The laptop smoked and sputtered and caused an area brownout but eventually it spit out a list of vodka, orange juice, lime juice, and lemon juice as the top four. After determining that this was a unique set of ingredients we used a variation on the Hodge conjecture to optimize the proportions.

Naming the drink was quite easy. With the selected ingredients the only logical choice was to call it the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer. With that settled, Mrs. Bottle carefully measured and mixed the inaugural Dragon Street Cobra Tamer (3 shakes over purified ice in a metallic shaker) and poured it into our fanciest chilled cocktail glass. It was good but a little too tart. Recognizing that mixology is both art and science, we decided to add a little simple syrup to balance it out. This was really a genius touch because by adding “simple syrup to taste” to the recipe it is on you if you think it is too sour or too sweet and we remain blameless.

Nailed the logo!

We ultimately felt that the drink was not a perfect five, but it was a solid four. There is nothing wrong with a four and that gives us the opportunity to create additional drinks. Mrs. Bottle began planning out the ingredients of our next drink before we had even finished this one (sneak preview: there will be coffee liqueur). The only downside is that we had to change the name of our drink to the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1 so we have room to grow.

Overall Rating for the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1

Taste: 4

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 26% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka

0.5 oz Orange Juice

0.25 oz Lime Juice

0.25 oz Lemon Juice

Simple Syrup to taste

Logo images: 1upgamers.com, howstuffworks.com,streetsigngenerator.com

Drink 152: Labor Pains

2011-07-01T05:29:00.000-07:00

If you don’t follow sports you may not have heard that the NBA is officially locked out today. What does a lockout mean, exactly? I don’t really care but I do know that it means there won’t be basketball until the lockout ends. The NFL is locked out, too, so this winter it is looking like the only pro sports option will be hockey, which apparently has a pro league. Who knew? I hope someone starts a Calvinball league to fill the void.

In both the NBA and NFL the lockouts are about the same thing: Money. This is surprising to me because in a million years I never would have thought money could cause a disagreement. We decided to pay tribute to money by having a green drink today. It is called the Jade and it is made from rum, green crème de menthe, triple sec, lime juice, and simple syrup. We’ve already covered that the only difference between regular crème de menthe and green crème de menthe is some food coloring. Therefore we just used our regular stuff and some Rit dye. I was skeptical about the Jade’s combination of mint, rum, orange, and lime but it actually worked. The mint and lime balanced each other like they do in a Mojito and there was a nice hint of sweetness from the triple sec and simple syrup.

The emptiness of the glass symbolizes the
gap between the owners and players

We debated whether it should get a four or five but we reached an impasse. I thought it rated a four but Mrs. Bottle questioned why it wouldn’t be a five. I then explained to her that we must have a hard rating cap so the small market drinks like the Jade can compete fairly with the big market drinks like the Cuba Libre. She countered that the careers of these drinks can be short so they need to maximize their ratings when they can. We are now firmly entrenched in our positions and I don't know when we can resume rating drinks.

Overall Rating for the Jade

Taste: 4 or 5

Presentation: 5 – Hard to beat a fake green hue

Ease of Preparation: 2 – Lots of half teaspoons

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 27% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Light Rum

0.5 tsp Crème de Menthe (green)

0.5 tsp Triple Sec

1 tbsp Lime Juice

1 tsp Simple Syrup