Drink 130: Reading is Fundamental

Here at the Bottle Wonderland Estate, we take reading very seriously.  Mrs. Bottle is always reading a novel by one of the great authors of our time like Charlaine Harris or that British lady who writes those Harry Potter books.  Personally, I’m not one for them fancy books so I focus on the Internet supplemented by a variety of magazines.  With the number of different periodicals littering our home, I think we may be the only reason the magazine industry is still afloat.

One of my favorites is Forbes. The articles are fine (“buy low, sell high”, “Obama = bad”, “corporations rock!”), but the ads are what I really like.  If it wasn’t for Forbes, I wouldn’t know which fractional jet company is the best (it’s Netjets!), who I should use for wealth management, or which $125,000 watch gives the greatest value. One ad in the latest issue really caught my eye:

All I know is that whatever product they are selling, I am buying.  Those guys are obviously having a great time, and why wouldn’t they be? They have clearly reached the end of their long day of modeling.  I can tell it is after work because some of them have a five o’clock shadow.  Also, those two guys in the back seat have loosened their skinny ties.  That is a clear sign of relaxation.   Maybe they just finished a quick mani/pedi/teeth whitening session. I just hope they don’t crash since not a single one of them is looking at the road and the driver is peering into a non-existent side mirror. Whatever they are doing, they certainly don’t look like a bunch of douches.

Orange again

After they finish those cigars, they will probably settle down and have a nice glass of brandy.  Maybe they will have it straight or just maybe they will have our latest drink, the La Jolla, a mix of brandy, crème de banana, orange juice, and lemon juice. Crème de banana has a fairly strong flavor, but in the La Jolla, it is overwhelmed by the other components.  Even when we specifically sought out the banana flavor, it was nowhere to be found.  You definitely could taste the brandy and citrus, though, and it was not altogether unpleasant.  Probably not up to Forbes' standards, though.

I don’t have time for any more blogging today; I’ve got some reading to do.

Overall Rating for the La Jolla

Taste: 3
Presentation: 2
Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Blackout: 4 – 27% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Brandy

0.5 oz Crème de Banana

1 tsp Orange Juice

2 tsp Lemon Juice

Drink 115: Brandy, You're a Fine Drink

I said "NO VUVUZELAS!"

Sound the trumpets and blast the other horns because Mrs. Bottle is here! Mr. Bottle needs a little reprieve from the blog, mainly due to the fact that his laptop appears to be broken and he’s in Mr. Fix-it mode. These are not happy times at the Bottle Wonderland Estate but I know he will prevail over the apparent crappy quality of our Steve Jobs product. So on to a description of today’s beverage. The highly regarded and rumored to be deadly in large quantities: Brandy Alexander (more horns please, but no vuvuzelas).

So the Brandy Alexander consists of crème de cacao (brown), brandy, and heavy cream. Because I am a numbers person as seen in my previous masterpiece Bad Cocktail Reason No. 1 (and 2 and 3 and 4), I have three points to make about this drink.

Point #1. This was definitely a tasty drink. But as you can see below, our recipe called for ½ ounce of each ingredient which makes for one tiny drink. My mother has regaled me many times with the story of how one night she drank herself silly on this drink when I was but a young pup and she now refuses to touch them. If she drank the recipe below, she must have had about 22.

Keep in mind that this
glass is actually tiny

Point #2. Hopefully nobody will fault us, but instead of heavy cream, we used fat free half and half. I had a coupon so go ahead and shoot me.

Point  #3. According to Wikipedia, the Brandy Alexander is made with cognac and crème de cacao. It was supposedly made popular in the early 20^th century “at the time of the wedding of Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood and Viscount Lascelles, in London.” Super fascinating. But the part that sticks out to me is the word “cognac”. You see, I have a friend who doesn’t seem to understand that brandy and cognac are the same thing. I was at a happy hour when I kept saying “brandy” and this person would say “cognac” as if I needed correcting. Let me just say that I never need correcting. Ever. I hope Mr. Bottle is also reading this.

So go ahead and drink your Cognac Alexander but you may want to up the amounts so you don’t have to spend your entire night making your drinks.

Overall Rating for the Brandy Alexander

Taste: 4
Presentation: 2 – Tiny beyond belief
Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

½ oz Crème de cacao (brown)
½ oz Brandy
½ oz Heavy cream

Drink 110: The Fifth of May



As Mexican as
apple pie

 ¡Hola! Today is Cinco de Mayo, the holiday where you eat fajitas and drink margaritas.  Unless you are actually Mexican, then you probably ignore it.  Since we are not Mexican, we wanted to celebrate this fine holiday in the TBIAW way.  Therefore we decided to drink a traditional Cinco de Mayo favorite, the English Highball. You may be saying to yourself, “Self, I don’t understand why the English Highball is a traditional Mexican drink.”  All I can say to you is that I’m sorry you don’t understand.

After Mrs. Bottle prepared the English Highball I was pretty excited.  It looked delicious, with the color and fizz of cream soda and a nice lemon twist.  Mrs. Bottle was not excited.  I asked her why and she said, “I know what the ingredients are.”  I took that as a bad sign..  It turns out that the English Highball is made from gin, brandy, sweet vermouth, and club soda (or ginger ale). Once I found out it had both sweet vermouth and club soda, I was no longer excited.

I'd like to solve, Pat
source

It turns out that the lack of excitement was justified; The English Highball is truly awful.  The sweet vermouth was the primary flavor with a slight brandy undertone.   As if that combination was not bad enough, the club soda just made it taste watered-down and even worse.  I think ginger ale might have improved the taste but in reality this drink was probably beyond help.  I have no idea why they love it so much in Mexico.  The next time I am there I will be sure to ask someone.

Overall Rating for the English Highball

Taste: 1

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Lemon twist away from a 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 9– 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

.75 oz Gin

.75 oz Brandy

.75 oz Sweet Vermouth

Club Soda or Ginger Ale

Drink 99: Bad Cocktail Reason No. 1 (and 2 and 3 and 4)

East India Cocktail Pick No. 1

Mr. Bottle isn’t feeling it today so I offered to fill in (I'm Mrs. Bottle for those first time readers out there- all none of you). Today’s drink is the East India Cocktail No. 1 and it’s made from brandy, pineapple juice, triple sec, Jamaican rum, and the all important dash of bitters. Basically this drink sucks. There are many reasons so let me get on with the enumeration.

No. 1: There is only ½ tsp. each of the pineapple juice and triple sec and 1 tsp. of the rum. What the hell is the point of that? All you can taste is brandy, brandy, brandy. This is like getting a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and there being a tiny pin-headed dot of peanut butter in the center. Might as well just have bought a Hershey’s bar. In this case, you would have poured yourself a shot of brandy.

No. 2: This whole idea that it’s ok to have a recipe with a tsp. or ½ tsp. of this stuff is absurd. It’s not easy to pour these amounts from a liter sized bottle. And you certainly won’t find those marks on your shot glass so have fun pouring into those tiny little spoons. So why put yourself through the pain for what No. 1 points out above. You can’t taste a ½ tsp. of anything.

This chart will help you see what I mean

No. 3: Brandy is not tasty. Not to get repetitive, but I cannot emphasize enough that as No. 1 points out, a ½ tsp. of a liquid is not going to impact the flavor of the drink. Sadly this resulted in a big swig of burning brandy down the gullet. I guess this point doesn’t apply if you like brandy but this is my list so it stays.

No. 4: The name of this drink is too long. And there’s no East India Cocktail No. 2 so I don’t get it.

Overall Rating for the East India Cocktail No. 1

Taste: 1 – Brandy, brandy, brandy
Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 1 – Those teaspoons ruined it
Drinks Until Blackout: 3 – 37% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Brandy
1 tsp Jamaican rum
½ tsp Pineapple juice
½ tsp Triple sec
Dash of Bitters

Drinks 84, 85, 86: One of These Drinks Is Not Like the Others

We’re finally back and I promise this post will be worth the wait.  As long as your expectations are very low.  I’m not joking about that.  I think that having a couple of days with no posts has destroyed my rhythm. One of the reasons we decided to post a little less frequently was that it was getting hard to keep up with the daily posts, but in some ways it seems harder now.

We used an olive pick
for the cherry in the Carrol Cocktail,
Classed it up don't you think?

We are still trying to figure out the best way to structure the blog on the new non-daily basis.  Our initial thought was to keep having a drink per day and then bombard you with multiple reviews in a single post.  This way we can still work through the Mr. Boston guide and finish sometime in 2015.  As long as the world doesn’t end before then.  I know some may have thought the world may have ended on April 4 when there wasn’t a new post but the sun still came up.

It turns out that I’m not sure the multi-drink format is going to work, but here it is nonetheless.  We did think it might be fun for the drinks to be related in some way, so today we bring you the Bikini, the Hot Pants, and the Carrol Cocktail.  I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you what the mini theme is: Sexy Clothes.  And Carrol. It turns out we didn’t come up with that idea until after we had already had the Carrol Cocktail.  This idea really hasn’t been properly thought through.

Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny
Milky Sour Lemon Bikini

The Carrol Cocktail is a simple mix of brandy and sweet vermouth.   It mostly tasted like brandy which just a hint of funny-tasting vermouth. At least that’s what I think it tasted like, since we had it almost a week ago and I barely remember it.  Next time I should probably make a note or something. 

Next up is the Bikini, which has vodka, rum, milk, lemon juice, and sugar.  This one had a nice lemon flavor but it was just a hair too tart.  I was going to make a joke about hair and bikinis here, but that would be in poor taste.  Strangely, the drink had sugar in it instead of simple syrup.  Simple syrup probably would have been a little better since it would have mixed in more easily. The vodka and rum combined to provide a noticeable alcohol burn, but it conveniently had some milk to coat your resultant ulcer.

Remember what it was like before you tasted
the Hot Pants? You will wish you did

Finally we have the Hot Pants, a surprising combination of tequila, peppermint schnapps, grapefruit juice, and sugar.  In the 70’s Southwest Airlines had a commercial that said “Remember what it was like before Southwest Airlines? You didn't have hostesses in hot pants. Remember?“  I don’t remember that, but I do remember that before Southwest Airlines I didn’t have airplanes with sunroofs. Getting sucked out of a plane hole might be the preferable alternative to drinking a Hot Pants, though. I never would have guessed that tequila, peppermint, and grapefruit juice would not complement each other. 

Overall Rating for Carrol Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 – 32% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Brandy

0.75 oz Sweet Vermouth

           

Overall Rating for the Bikini

Taste: 3

Presentation: 2 – Doesn’t look like something I want to drink

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 26% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Vodka

1 oz Light Rum

0.5 oz Milk

1 oz Lemon Juice

1 tsp Sugar

Overall Rating for Hot Pants

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 25% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Tequila

0.5 oz Peppermint Schnapps

1 tbsp Grapefruit Juice

1 tsp Sugar

Day 68: We We We So Excited

By now I’m sure you’ve heard the fantastic song “Friday” by Rebecca Black, especially since we linked it a few days ago.  I’ve become strangely obsessed with it.  If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you watch it now:

In honor of Ms Black, and since today is Friday, Friday, our post is a little ditty written in the same style and sung to the same tune.  Please sing as you read.  For a more authentic sound, it will help if you have autotune.

Seven PM making drinks in the evening

Gotta make them, gotta post our blog

Gotta have a glass, gotta have alcohol

Mixin’ everything, my mouth is waiting

So thirsty ‘cause it needs a drink

Gotta go take the picture

Gotta taste it, we’ll write a post (a post)

Adding in the light rum,

Adding in the brandy,

Adding in the lemon juice

Will it taste good?

It’s drink time, drink time

Gotta love that it’s drink time

We’re lookin’ forward to the tasting, tasting

It’s drink time, drink time

Gotta love that it’s drink time

We’re lookin’ forward to the tasting

Drink it up, drink it up, yeah

Drink it up, drink it up, yeah

Fun, fun, fun, fun

Lookin’ forward to the tasting

7:45, we samplin’ our drink

It’s called the Quaker’s Cocktail I should mention that

Rum, rum, it’s made with rum,

You know that it is

I drink this, she drink this

The shaker’s by my right, ay

I drink this she drink this

And you read it

Mix it in the shaker

Pour it in the glass

Gotta make a rating

Three or four stars?

It’s drink time, drink time

Gotta love that it’s drink time

We’re lookin’ forward to the tasting, tasting

It’s drink time, drink time

Gotta love that it’s drink time

We’re lookin’ forward to the tasting

Drink it up, drink it up, yeah

Drink it up, drink it up, yeah

Fun, fun, fun, fun

Lookin’ forward to the tasting

Yesterday was Irish Flag,

Today is Quaker’s Cocktail

We we we so excited

We so excited

We gonna have a drink today

Tomorrow is Polynesian Cocktail

And Homestead Cocktail comes afterwards

We don’t want this blog to end

Today is Quaker's Cocktail

Sadly it must end, but I would guess that we will have more musical blogs, especially on days I can’t think of other gimmicks.

We should probably mention that we both enjoyed the Quaker’s Cocktail.  In addition to the aforementioned rum, brandy, and lemon juice it also contains raspberry syrup.  Mrs. Bottle doesn’t like raspberry but she didn’t think the drink had an overwhelming raspberry flavor.  She thought the lemon juice made it a little tart, but I thought the syrup provided the right amount of sweetness.  At any rate, this drink was one of the better ones we have tried lately, and it also packs a bit of a punch at 26% alcohol.  We shouldn’t have been surprised, because everyone knows that Quakers are party machines.

Overall Rating for the Quaker’s Cocktail

Taste: 4

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 5

Ingredients

.75 oz Light Rum

.75 oz Brandy

.5 oz Lemon Juice

2 tsp Raspberry Syrup

Day 64: The Joy of Victory

Olympic Cocktail is presumptuous
with its gold medal color

The Olympic Cocktail consists of brandy, triple sec, and orange juice.  This is our third drink featuring brandy.  The first two both scored a final grade of 3 even though the French judge awarded them each a 5.  We had to throw out his scores though since the French judge had a clear pro-Cognac bias.  Although Pierre’s bias was obvious, differences of opinion based on other factors can occur when you are rating something that is inherently subjective like drink flavor.  Of course, Mrs. Bottle and I are widely acknowledged as tastemakers and our judgments are thoughtful, reliable, hilarious, and unimpeachable.  They are impeachschnappsable, though.

Of course, not everyone has the same integrity and wisdom that we do.  The judging scandals and controversy over the years at the Olympics are too numerous to fully enumerate.  Can something really be a sport if some potentially corrupt or inept judge ultimately decides the winner?  That question was of course rhetorical.  The answer is obviously “no.”  Therefore figure skating, boxing, gymnastics, synchronized swimming, ice dancing, Top Chef, freestyle skiing, dog shows, half-pipe snow (or skate) boarding, diving, and American Idol should all be de-classified as sports and removed from the Olympics.

Removing those “sports” will probably be controversial, but we here at TBIAW are willing to take the heat.  We prefer to see unadulterated competition unsullied by corrupt judges.  We need to see the purity of sport on the court, track or field decided by objective measures and not via the whims of outside observers. Luckily for us, we never claimed that our journey constituted a sport, so we are in the clear.  Of course if a liquor company or other entity wanted to sponsor us, we would be happy to modify our scoring.

Until that day, you can trust us to be as honest as humanly possible.  With that in mind, we are proud to let you know about the Olympic Cocktail.  Our expectations were as low as those of the Jamaican bobsled team, but the drink’s performance was more akin to the Canadian curling team. The drink wasn’t overly sweet and it the brandy provided a nice bite.  It was one of the better drinks we have had to date.  There was also the added bonus of finally finishing a bottle of triple sec that we have had since the Clinton administration. 

Brandy Cocktail Podium

Not only that, but we used Tropicana Pure Premium® Never From Concentrate 100% Pure and Natural Orange Juice with Calcium and Vitamin D.  It has 16 fresh picked oranges squeezed into each carton (specially designed to preserve freshness).  It (the juice) has all the vitamin C you need for a whole day of radiance. We poured ourselves some sunshine.  Note to any potential sponsors: this paragraph is just one example of how we can insert your marketing message seamlessly into TBIAW without raising even the hint of impropriety.

Overall Rating for the Olympic Cocktail

Taste: 4

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 3 – Would have been a 4 had we used 1 oz of each ingredient instead of the difficult to measure ¾ oz

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 20% Alcohol

Ingredients

.75 oz Brandy

.75 oz Triple Sec

.75 oz Orange Juice

Day 43: Swan vs. Swan

Brown Feather would not
sound as appetizing

Last night I had to make a rare trip away from the Bottle Wonderland Estate.  When I returned Mrs. Bottle was waiting to make our next drink.  I had already looked at the ingredients and wasn’t hopeful about how it would taste.  “Tonight’s drink is going to be bad” I speculated.  “I don’t care” replied Mrs. Bottle, “I’m going to drink it all anyway.”   I guess she had a bad day.  If we ever talked I would probably have more details to share.

The aforementioned drink is the Black Feather, a mix of brandy, dry vermouth, triple sec, and angostura bitters.  I wouldn’t call this drink my favorite, but it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. The brandy flavor shines through with just a hint of sweetness thanks to the triple sec.  It is the type of drink where if I had it on a regular basis I would probably start to really enjoy it.  We only have  about 1,460 more drinks to try before we can start thinking about adding a new drink to the standard rotation, so I will be sure to stock up on brandy and vermouth in early 2015.  Based on history, we will probably have some of our current supply left so that won't be necessary.

The name Black Feather reminds me of the scene in Black Swan where Nina (Natalie Portman), who is embracing her role as the sensual Black Swan, begins to sprout black feathers from her back.  In a panic, she goes to see her understudy Lily (Mila Kunis).  Nina and Lily have a complex relationship since they are bitter rivals yet find themselves strangely attracted to one another.  When Lily unlocks herself from Nina's sultry gaze, she plucks a feather from Nina's back.  Much to Lily's surprise, the feather is actually a bomb that explodes and instantly kills her.  Needless to say, this was shocking to see.

My memory isn't what is used to be, so I may have some of that last bit conflated with a Spy vs. Spy episode. 

Black Swan Poster

Overall Rating for the Black Feather

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4 – Classy with a lemon twist

Ease of Preparation: 3 – Making a lemon twist is tricky

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 –25% alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Brandy

1 oz Dry Vermouth

.5 oz Triple Sec

1 dash Angostura Bitters

Day 33: I Slit a Sheet

Ever since we did the Week of Cream, people have been clamoring for another theme week.   Since we are less than a week away from Anna Howard Shaw’s birthday, I was thinking about a week of drinks that would celebrate the women’s suffrage movement.  Drinks like the Betsy Ross, the Prohibition, and the Corpse Reviver would pay fine tribute.  While researching I learned that Ms Shaw was also active in the temperance movement.  Screw her, then.  We will do a week of romantic cocktails instead.  Welcome to Romance Week 2011.

Romance Bear's Hunny Pot

Our first drink of Romance Week is the Between the Sheets, a shooter composed of brandy, light rum, triple sec, and lemon juice.  It was invented by Harry MacElhone at the New York Bar in Paris sometime in the 1930’s.  MacElhone also invented the Bloody Mary, making him the Thomas Edison of mixology.  Edison may have invented the light bulb, the phonograph, and motion pictures, but MacElhone gave us the Monkey Gland, so as inventors I will call them even. Oh man, a Monkey Gland would really hit the spot right about now.

The Between the Sheets is made with brandy.  Since neither Mrs. Bottle nor I had ever had brandy before we had to do a little reading up.  In the process we learned that Cognac just brandy that is produced in Cognac, France.  Just like squares and rectangles, all Cognac is brandy, but not all brandy is Cognac.  One of the more famous Cognacs is Courvoisier, the favorite brand of Leon Phelps, the Ladies Man, one of the most romantic men on the planet.  If the Ladies Man loves Cognac, it will certainly make a romantic cocktail.



She also found it too sour. Or not.



We tasted our Cognac straight before mixing in the drink. It tasted quite a bit like whiskey, but it was smoother and had a richer mouth feel.  Since whiskey drinks haven’t done well for us, I got a bit nervous.  It turns out that I found the drink quite pleasant.  The Cognac really blended nicely with the rum and triple sec but it was a bit tart due to the lemon juice.   Mrs. Bottle thought it was too sour.  Some other recipes for the Between the Sheets call for simple syrup to be added so that would have made it better for her.

As far as the romantic qualities, it has Cognac, so that is a plus.  It is kind of sour, so that is a potential minus. It is named Between the Sheets, which isn’t particularly romantic especially if your mind turns to bedbugs.  And finally, it is a shooter, which isn’t romantic at all.  On the upside, it is over 20% alcohol, and we all know that can lead to romance.  It did not for us.

Overall Rating for the Between the Sheets

Taste: 3 - I might give it a 4, but Mrs. Bottle would never.
Presentation: 3 

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 - Stick to less if you want romance

Romance Score: 2

Ingredients

.5 oz Brandy

.5 oz Light Rum

.5 oz Triple Sec

1 oz Lemon Juice