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

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 143: Hot Fizz

Sometimes I wish our blog had more comments.  We currently have 159 posts and 59 comments.  I created a spreadsheet and determined that we have less than one comment per post:

See?

Other times I read the user comments on different web sites and I realize that comments might not be the best thing in the world.  In the local paper the editors frequently have to shut down the comments due to abusive posts.  I make a game out of guessing before clicking a link if a story will have the comments disabled. If you want to try, here is a hint: It happens in every story involving a hot-button topic like crime, immigration, pool parties, government, NASCAR, rainbows, or The Bachelorette.

For some reason I can’t help myself and read the comments even though I can feel myself getting dumber with each comment read.  It seems like spelling, grammar, and capitalization rules are mere guidelines when one posts a comment.  I admit that I will flub my righting from time to time, but I at least make an effort.  I guess when you are foaming at the mouth because some anonymous person has the opposite political views than yours that you don’t have time to run a spell check or use the shift key.

Sometimes I can empathize with that urgency, though.  For example, when we tried today’s drink I was fully prepared to immediately take to the Internet and proclaim that the liberal media was to blame.  There is no real basis for that assertion, but I did not like the drink and felt the need to vent. I did not do so because I was kind of tired. 

A glass too big

The drink is called the Pineapple Fizz and it is composed of rum, pineapple juice, simple syrup, and club soda.  It tasted like a big ol’ glass of club soda with a wisp of pineapple flavor.  If you halved the amount of club soda the Pineapple Fizz might be good.  Unfortunately it is one of the many recipes in the Mr. Boston guide that doesn’t have a proportion listed for an ingredient.  It just says to fill the glass with club soda. What kind of a recipe is that?  We need more government regulation on recipes!  No, the free market will take care of it! Or I could just use a smaller glass.

To summarize, I will quote a comment I recently saw on YouTube: 82xfpg 833ec3 78wu5 6437gk b5wg 

Overall Rating for the Pineapple Fizz

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Rum

1 oz Pineapple Juice

1 tsp Simple Syrup

? oz Club Soda

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 105: Muddle Buddies

Looks as good as it tastes

Today we have the Mojito, a mixture of rum, lime, sugar, club soda, and mint.   The Mojito was the “it” drink of Los Angeles in 2001.   It was the go-to drink in Kissimmee, Florida, in 2008.  That means it is due to be the hot drink of Indiana sometime late next year.  Get ready, Hoosiers, because it is tasty.  The Mojito has the longest history of any drink we’ve tried, with a precursor dating all the way to the 16^th century.   That makes it a little odd that the Mojito was named one of the 25 most influential cocktails of the past century.  It throws the whole list into doubt.  I now have no choice but to question how much influence the Gin Gin Mule actually has.

Enough with the facts, let’s have some commentary.  The Mojito is a great drink.  I can see why people have been drinking it in some form for almost 500 years.   That is real staying power. I seriously doubt that in the year 2525, if man is still alive, he will choose to drink a Canal Street Daisy.   If woman can survive, she won't want one either. Of course, by the year 2525 woman will be killed at the age of 29 in the fiery ritual of Carrousel, so she will have bigger things to worry about but she will still want a Mojito.

Why is the Mojito so good?  Because mint and lime is really a great combination that helps balance out the sweetness of the sugar and rum.  I have read that some people add angostura bitters to cut the sweetness.  I guess those folks didn’t think to just put less sugar in the drink.  The Mojito also gave Mrs. Bottle another chance to muddle some mint.  Muddling makes her so happy I’m going to start drinking a Mojito every morning.  That way we will both start off the day with smiles on our faces.

Earliest known painting of a Mojito
and its inventor Richard Drake

Overall Rating for the Mojito

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 12% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Light Rum

2 tsp Sugar

1 Lime, halved

2 Sprigs Fresh Mint

Club Soda

Drink 102: It Ain't No Honey Badger

Look how Wild!

Today we have the Wild Thing, a mix of tequila, cranberry juice, club soda, and lime juice.  I’m not sure why this drink is called the Wild Thing.  I checked in the official TBIAW drink naming guidelines and they clearly state that in order for a drink to qualify as “wild” it must meet one or more of the following conditions:

A) The drink must contain a brazllion ingredients

2) The drink must have at least one crazy ingredient such as ayahuasca

C) The drink must incorporate a butt-load of alcohol

Sadly, the Wild Thing fails on all counts.  It has four ingredients.  That is well short of a brazillion. The four ingredients are about as wild as a tiny kitten.  Ooooh, club soda, how exotic!  Finally, 1.5 ounces clearly could not load any but the smallest of butts.

This is a Wild Thing

On the bright side the drink was very good.   It was on the verge of being too tart, but it went just to the edge and then pulled back.  It was also the first drink we had with club soda that rated higher than a 3.  This is probably due to the fact that there was only an ounce.  That was really just enough to provide a nice fizz.  I was going to rate it a four but Mrs. Bottle declared, “I would give that a five!”  Since she can be something wild when I don’t do what she says, a five it is.

Overall Rating for the Wild Thing

 

Taste: 5

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4 – A lime wheel away from a 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 8 – 15% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Tequila

1 oz Cranberry Juice

1 oz Club Soda

0.5 oz Lime Juice

Day 66: Sorry Your Mom Blew Up, Ricky

Doesn't look Irish to me

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

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

 

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

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

Overall Rating for the Irish Rickey

 

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Irish Whiskey

.5 oz Lime Juice

Club Soda

Day 54: Bourbonic Plague

Unfortunately the garnish
didn't completely block the
mouth of the glass

Our cocktail today is called California Lemonade and it has lemon juice, lime juice, grenadine, club soda, and simple syrup Unfortunately for us it also features whiskey, our least favorite spirit other than that freaky kid in The Ring.  Apparently people in California have no idea what lemonade tastes like because this drink tasted nothing like it.  In case anyone reading this lives in California, here is what lemonade should taste like: Sugar and lemons.  Here is what the so-called California Lemonade tasted like: Sour and ass.

That may be a bit of hyperbole, but this drink was pretty bad.  The ratio of sour stuff to sweet stuff was way off.  We have had enough drinks now to know that if you have a lot of sour juice, you need a lot of simple syrup or some other sweet element to balance it. A 1:1 ratio is probably best, slightly less if you don’t have a sweet tooth.  The California Lemonade had 3 ounces of lemon and lime juice with only 1 tablespoon of simple syrup and ¼ teaspoon of grenadine.  That is about a 5.5:1 ratio of sour to sweet, which is too much for any right-thinking person.  The sour was so powerful that it almost completely masked the whiskey, which was its one redeeming quality

Speaking of whiskey, I am starting to wonder why I want to learn to like it in the first place.  The good stuff is really expensive and we don’t need that at the Bottle Wonderland Estate.  Simply maintaining our Renaissance garden consumes a large portion of our budget.  I suppose I am supposed to like whiskey because someone decided it was manly and it shows some sort of toughness to drink something that tastes bad. Paregoric tastes bad, too, and contains more alcohol than whiskey. Why didn’t that become popular?  Probably because paregoric prevents diarrhea, and we all know that not wanting diarrhea is for wusses.

Requires a lot of Roundup

The thing about the California Lemonade is that it contains whiskey but still isn’t manly.  Even I know that walking around with a drink that has a lemon, orange, and a cherry as garnishes does not exude machismo.  It is also served with straws.  Not one straw, multiple straws.  The jury is out on whether it is manly to drink out a straw or not, but I am confident you won’t see a bunch of coal miners sipping straws from the same drink.  I guess the multiple straws are good when you say “hey this is terrible, you should try it!” and you don’t want to spread cooties.  Cooties are not manly.

Overall Rating for California Lemonade

Taste: 2 - So very close to a 1

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 10% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Whiskey

2 oz Lemon Juice

1 oz Lime Juice

1 tbsp Simple Syrup

.25 oz Grenadine

Club soda

Day 41: Short Squirt and a Long Jacket

Two Pineapples and a
Microphone

For today’s drink we have the Gin Squirt, a mixture of gin, simple syrup, grenadine, and club soda. The drink wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t anything that we would try again.  It had a strong gin flavor which I enjoyed quite a bit more than Mrs. Bottle did.  The next most prevalent flavor was club soda.  Even though my love of carbonation has been well documented, I don’t really care for club soda (more on this in a minute).  There was also a hint of sweetness thanks to the simple syrup.  All the grenadine added was a light pink hue.  The fruit garnish was a nice touch, but it couldn’t elevate the drink past mediocrity.

I thought the Gin Squirt would have been greatly improved by omitting the simple syrup and grenadine and substituting tonic water for club soda.   I would then have a Gin and Tonic, which is delicious, instead of a Gin Squirt, which is not.  The tonic water makes all the difference.  There are plenty of detailed explanations of the differences between club soda and tonic water available with a little searching, but I can boil it down here: Club soda is just carbonated water. Tonic water is club soda with quinine. The quinine not only makes the tonic water taste better than club soda, it also prevents malaria.  You might read things that claim otherwise, but I have been drinking Gin and Tonics for years and I have never contracted malaria. Quod erat demonstrandum.

More fun to say than to drink

This is our first squirt, but it will not be our last.  We will be having a Whiskey Squirt at some point down the road.  The only difference between the two is that the Whiskey Squirt has ginger ale instead of club soda.  Just kidding, it has whiskey instead of gin. I’m looking forward to it because you can’t have too many squirts. It is also fun to say squirt. Squirt squirt squirt.

Overall Rating for the Gin Squirt

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 3 – Tricky Garnish

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 11% alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Gin

1 tbsp Simple Syrup

1 tsp Grenadine

Club Soda (fill)

Day 10: My Cousin Fonzie

Canal Street Daisy

The Canal Street Daisy is probably the worst drink I have ever tried.  It is composed of Scotch whisky (we used Johnny Walker Black), orange juice, lemon juice, and club soda.  The Daisy dethroned the previous nadir, a drink called “Oddly Purple Toes” I had over 15 years ago.   That I remember that drink and that this one was worse should tell you something. 

I can’t adequately describe how foul this was.  As previously noted, We are not whisk(e)y drinkers, but we don’t think that was the problem as the whisky flavor didn’t dominate.  The drink tasted vaguely chemical and/or like old dishwater.  Squeezing the orange garnish into the drink changed nothing!  Mrs. Bottle summed it up when she asked, “why would anyone choose to drink this?”  I don’t know, sweetie. We couldn’t even finish it between the two of us so we violated our “no wasting” policy and poured it out.  I’m surprised our sink didn’t spit it back up.  Mrs. Bottle was then so discombobulated that she broke my favorite gin-drinking glass. It was an all-around tragic day.

It gets worse.  I also realized that the key element of My Cousin Vinny is a straight rip-off of an episode of

For some reason this Skylark
is in Germany but it still doesn't
have positraction

Happy Days called “Fonzie for the Defense”.  You may recall the great scene in the My Cousin Vinny where Marisa Tomei explains that the two utes could not have been the thieves because the getaway car had positraction and the defendants’ car (a 1964 Buick Skylark) did NOT have positraction.   Because of this key mechanical difference in the cars, the thief had to have been someone else! This fact blew the whole case wide open and also made Marisa Tomei an Oscar winner.  Probably the second greatest testimony scene in movie history after Colonel Jessup admitting he ordered the code red (spoiler alert!). 

You probably aren’t as familiar with “Fonzie for the Defense” as you are with My Cousin Vinny.  In that notable episode, the Fonz and Mr. C get called for jury duty.  The accused is an African American biker named Jason Davis who is accused of a drive-by purse snatching.  The jury, led by the racist Burch, is ready to convict even though Fonzie protests that they only have “circumventive” evidence.  After Fonzie fails to convince the other jurors, he is ready to go along with the rest and vote guilty until he notices something in the transcript…Jason Davis rode a rare British motorcycle that had a left-hand throttle.  The witnesses reported that the purse snatcher held the purse aloft in his left hand while accelerating away. Because of this key mechanical difference in the cars motorcycles, the thief had to have been someone else!  This convinces the jury that Davis is innocent and they immediately vote not guilty.  The audience also learns a valuable lesson in racial tolerance.  I learned that Happy Days doesn’t really hold up very well.  Oh, and that this is pretty much the same thing as the scene in My Cousin Vinny.

Now I (and you) have to live with the fact that the great My Cousin Vinny scene is tainted. At least you didn't have to drink a Canal Street Daisy  

Ratings on a 10-point scale:

Taste: 1

Ease of Preparation: 6 – Had to slice that orange

Presentation: 8 – We will admit it looks nice

Drinks until blackout: 1 – Purely based on the taste