Drink 183: Whoa, Did You Feel That?

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 147: Drinflation

I have spent a lot of time recently worrying about inflation, but I’m not talking about end of Quantitative Easing 2 and how it might impact the future of the worldwide economy. I’m talking about something much more important.  And that thing is the nagging suspicion that there is rating inflation at TBIAW.  Lately it has seemed like we have been giving the drinks higher ratings than we used to and it has become a growing concern.  We understand that the vast majority of the Internet gets its drink rating information from TBIAW and we give our rating duties the requisite amount of consideration.

Since we maintain a complete database of all of our rated drinks, we decided to conduct a thorough TBIAW investigation to determine if the Fed needs to step in to reduce rating inflation or if we should continue to allow market forces to shape the scores. Plus, there are few things on this Earth I love more than making charts.  Also, whenever I can’t think of a post idea it seems like there is some way we can just talk about our favorite subjects, us.

With that in mind, we produced this chart showing the cumulative average of our drink ratings:

You can clearly see that the average rating has been steadily trending upwards, a troubling sign.  I also noticed that the standard deviation of the ratings is shrinking.  At some point down the road all three lines will converge.  This could lead to some kind of poltergeist-like black hole where the world swallows itself.  Probably not, but it is still something to keep in the back of your mind as we reach December.

We also took a look at the running totals for the number of drinks with each rating:

You can see that our twos, threes, and fours were fairly consistent, and then some point around drink 80 our twos start to fall behind.  It also appears that around drink 100 we start to hand out fives like they were free kisses.  The combination of these factors appears to be the cause of our creeping average score.

What is causing these changes?  I can think of three possible explanations:

1. Our tastes are changing. This seems like a likely candidate. As we’ve tried more drinks we have become more accepting of certain flavors and flavor combinations. This became evident when we recently revisited some old drinks and realized that we would have given them higher scores if we rated them today.

2. We are selecting drinks with a “success bias”. That is, Mrs. Bottle has been picking out fewer bad drinks. There is some basis in truth here as well as Mrs. Bottle admitted that she has been avoiding the 371 different varieties of the Martini that Mr. Boston uses to pad its pages. There would be a lot of opportunities for low scores had we tried those drinks.

3. We are trying to raise the drinks’ self-esteem. We love our drinks and we feel bad when we have to give one a low score. Therefore we may have become more likely to give a drink the benefit of the doubt.

4. It can all be blamed on random noise. Maybe we are just on a run of good drinks and over time things will even out. If things do even out, it certainly will not be because I purposely start down-grading drinks to level the score.

You are probably wondering how all of this will impact our latest drink, the Kentucky Blizzard, a combination of bourbon, cranberry juice, lime juice, grenadine, and sugar.  We chose this particular drink not only because it isn’t a Martini but also because Mrs. Bottle’s parents are visiting us here at the Estate and her father is a bourbon man.  He found the drink pleasant enough, but didn’t express a lot of opinion either way.  Of course, he is pretty low key about most things.  When he found out his only daughter was getting married he just raised an eyebrow and proclaimed, “hmm.”   It signaled happiness, disappointment, or indifference.  I choose to believe it was happiness.

When I think "Blizzard" I think bright red with an orange

Mrs. Bottle and I both thought the drink wasn’t bad, especially considering it had 1.5 ounces of whiskey, our least favorite spirit.  If anything, it could have used a little more bourbon because it was a bit too sweet.  It probably could have used less grenadine or sugar, too.  We both thought a little lime juice wouldn’t hurt, either.  Ultimately, we gave it a three.  It may have gotten a four last week before we installed our new rating austerity measures.  The grade of three didn’t stop us from finishing it, though.  Shortly after the last drop was consumed, Mrs. Bottle’s father came into the room and asked where the rest of his drink was.  I guess he liked it more than we thought.

Overall rating for the Kentucky Blizzard

 

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 8 – 14% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Bourbon Whiskey

1.5 oz Cranberry Juice

0.5 oz Lime Juice

0.5 oz Grenadine

1 tsp Sugar

Drink 137: Worst. Post. Evar.

Oooh, Johnny

The Johnny on the Beach is a mix of vodka, melon liqueur, black raspberry liqueur, pineapple juice, orange juice, grapefruit juice, and cranberry juice.  It is the same as the Sex on the Beach with the addition of the orange and grapefruit juices.  The taste was pretty much the same as the SotB as well:  A melon-dominated fruit bomb.  It is late and I have already had two margaritas so here endeth the post. 

Overall Rating for the Johnny on the Beach

Taste: 3

Presentation: 1

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 18% Alcohol

Ingredients

¾ oz Vodka

½ oz Melon Liqueur

½ oz Black Raspberry Liqueur

¼ oz Pineapple Juice

¼ oz Orange Juice

¼ oz Grapefruit Juice

¼ oz Cranberry Juice

Drink 135: Stay Gold, Ponyboy

There is a scene in The Outsiders where Ponyboy is hanging out at the playground and gets into an insult contest with some Socs.  Bob the Soc says, “You guys know what Greasers are? White trash with long, greasy hair.”  Then Ponyboy retorts,  “You know what a Soc is? White trash with Mustangs and matches.”   When I first saw that scene I had some concerns.  The first was that those guys need to work on their insults if they want to intimidate people.  The related second concern was that I didn’t understand what was the big deal about having matches. Were the Greasers anti-smoking? Did they rock Zippo lighters?  Maybe saying someone had matches was a real burn in 1965.  Matches = burn. Get it?  I slay me.

Mustang Owner
img: Ralph Lauren

It wasn’t until much later that I found out that I had the quote all wrong.  What Ponyboy really said was “Mustangs and madras.”  Oooooh!  That makes a lot more sense than matches.  It still isn’t much of an insult though.   I would think the Socs would take it as a complement.  “Why yes, isn’t this plaid jacket the bee’s knees?” Although these days a Soc wouldn’t be caught dead in a Mustang and would surely have his collar flipped up.

Mexican Matches

I don’t personally own any madras, but I have tried the Mexican Madras, a mixture of tequila, cranberry juice, orange juice, and lime juice.  I can only guess it is called a Mexican Madras because the orange, red, and green fruits evoke the colorful plaid madras fabric.  It has “Mexican” in the name because almost any drink with tequila gets called “Mexican”.  It is a clear case of liquor profiling.  Anyway, the drink was a little sweet, but very tasty.  The proportions of each ingredient were such that you could taste each one individually, but none overwhelmed.  All in all, it certainly would be something Socs and Greasers would agree is delicious, just like Cherry Valance.

Overall Rating for the Mexican Madras

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 11 –  9% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Gold Tequila

3 oz Cranberry Juice

0.5 oz Orange Juice

Dash Lime Juice

Drink 133: Put Your Left Wing In, Take Your Right Wing Out

We here at TBIAW like to remain apolitical.  It’s not that we don’t have political views (ours are clearly correct...thanks for asking!); it’s that we feel that drinking should be nonpartisan.  Unfortunately our neutrality sometimes limits our blog material.  We can’t joke on people lest someone think that we are taking sides.  We will never make fun of someone because of their politics except for the ttZZZZZZZZZ, those guys are a bunch of mouth-breathing idiots. 

This could have been a big week for us given the latest news. For example, there is a green field of jokes about the Democrat congressman sending pictures of his junk to virtual strangers on Twitter.  Sadly, we are unable to touch Weiner no matter how badly we want to. You may also have heard about Paul Revere ringing bells to warn the British that they can’t take away our guns. We won’t comment on that either since Sarah Palin (R) is a lightning rod figure. In that way she is similar to the kite that Thomas Jefferson flew when he invented electricity.

Safe-for-work Wiener Shot

Breezy like
Monday Evening

We’ll just have to focus on other things.  A good choice would be today’s drink the Seabreeze, a mix of vodka, cranberry juice, and grapefruit juice.  It is very similar to the previously reviewed Cape Codder. You can turn a Cape Codder into a Seabreeze by replacing one ounce of cranberry juice with one ounce of grapefruit juice.  The grapefruit juice definitely shines through in the Seabreeze, but in a pleasant way.   It is a welcome substitution.  Another welcome substitution would be almost anything other than an unsolicited photo of your genitals. That rule applies regardless of policital affiliation.

Overall Rating for the Seabreeze

Taste: 4

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka

4 oz Cranberry Juice

1 oz Grapefruit Juice

Drink 119: Oompa Loompa Doompadee Do

A pessimist might
call this glass half foam

Color me embarrassed.  I was fairly confident that yesterday’s entry would be our last.  Alas, the rapture didn’t happen as far as I know and everyone is still here. Mrs. Bottle is so upset that she didn’t get called away that she couldn’t bear to write her normal Sunday entry. Since I was thinking that we wouldn’t have a post anyway, I didn’t spend any time preparing or even thinking about what to write.  Therefore today will have less substance than normal.  That is actually a pretty big accomplishment.

Today we have a TBIAW rarity: The frozen cocktail.  It is called the Sweet-Tart and it made from vodka, cranberry juice, pineapple juice, and lime juice.  You put it all in a blender with some ice, mix it up, and drink it.  That’s the theory at least.  What we ended up with was a bit of very cold liquid drink and a lot of frozen meringue.  I thought the drink's flavor was good although it was a bit weak.  It was also disappointing that it turned out so foamy since the foam was pretty tough to drink.  That can probably be blamed more on our blender than the recipe, though.

Finally, I would like to congratulate the inventor of this drink for calling it the Sweet-Tart instead of SweeTarts, therefore avoiding a trademark infringement and the wrath of Willa Wonka.  He isn’t exactly known for his restraint.    Even John Yoo thinks that Wonka’s methods are borderline.   Of course  anyone who has ever tried to deal with Oompa Loompas would understand that Wonka's toughness is a necessity to maintain factory security.

He just didn't listen
Img: geekologie.com

Overall Rating for the Sweet-Tart

Taste: 4

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 9– 10% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Vodka

3 oz Cranberry Juice

3 oz Pineapple Juice

1 dash Lime Juice

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

Drink 91: Jupiter Is Not Aligned With Mars

The dawning of the taste of a sucky drink

You’ve probably heard about the toddler who was served a margarita instead of apple juice at an Applebee’s recently.  You may not have heard about the other toddler who was served sangria instead of orange juice at an Olive Garden two weeks ago.  I don’t think this was a coincidence. I fear it is actually an Al-Qaeda plot to keep our youth perpetually inebriated. Or it could just be that the service is poor at crap restaurants.  Either way we are in big trouble.  While American pre-schoolers are getting drunk, Chinese kids are already smoking, presumably on their way to an apparel factory to hone their work ethic.

Surprisingly, a lawsuit has already been filed in the Applebee’s case.  Among the suit’s claims is that the toddler suffered hangover symptoms for "for a period of days after the incident”.    The kid is 15 months old.  I thought you were supposed to recover from a hangover quickly when you are young.  If it takes him days to recover when he is 15 months old, it is definitely going to be a problem when he is 480 months old.  Trust me.  Maybe he needs some hair of the dog.  The parents should take him to a TGIFriday’s, order him a grape juice, and hope the kid gets served a Jägerbomb by "mistake".

The real problem here is these sweet drinks that the kids end up slurping down.  If they were drinking something sour or horrible in some other way they probably would stop before they got too drunk.  Of course even a 15 month old might want to pound some shots if his play date needed to be livened up.  Never mind that, though.  The point is that this type of mix-up would never happen with the Aquarius, our latest beverage.  The Aquarius is made from Scotch whisky, cherry brandy, and cranberry juice.   I guarantee that if you give this drink to anyone without ageusia they would fyucker at a minimum and possibly spit it on you. Fyucker is a word I just invented that means “to make the ‘who farted?’ face.”  Until now, this was known as “Beamering”. 







A minor fyucker
Image: bleacherreport.com



I can’t really describe how the Aquarius tasted.  Mrs. Bottle exclaimed “this is horrible” when she tried it.  I could only fyucker.   We’ve already established that Scotch sucks.  I’m starting to believe that cherry brandy sucks as well. We know that two wrongs don’t make a right and now we know that two sucks don’t make a right, either.

Overall Rating for Aquarius

Taste: 2

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 24% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Scotch Whisky

0.5 oz Cherry Brandy

1 oz Cranberry Juice

Day 80: Exciting iPhone 5 News

It is perfectly obvious why
this is called the Robin's Nest

Today’s drink is the Robin’s Nest. Its ingredients are vodka, crème de cocoa and cranberry juice.  The flavor was surprisingly good.  We have had crème de cocoa and vodka before so we knew those flavors would work well.  Adding the cranberry juice seemed odd, but it served to add a pleasant fruity note at the finish and cut down a little on the harshness.  Even so, this seemed like kind of a strange combination for a drink.  Strange enough that I became determined to learn more.  And by determined, I mean I spent two or three minutes doing Google searches.  I didn’t see anything on the first page or two of results, so I gave up.  It is probably good that I am not in charge of finding the cure for cancer.

Speaking of web searches, I have noticed something strange ever since we posted our tribute to Rebecca Black, the Internet sensation. It turns out that if you search for “we we we so excited” on Bing that our post is the second result returned.  It used to be first, but after two weeks Bing must have decided that iheartalkradio.com’s tribute was more relevant than ours.  Clearly Bing has no understanding of humor. We were also the top result for “we so excited” but we have since slipped to the bottom of the first page. We aren’t in the first two pages on Google, so I have no idea where we are in their results.

What does this mean?  It means that our “We We We So Excited” post has the most hits of any of our entries, even if the people who land here hoping for some Rebecca Black info are probably so so so disappointed.  It also means that Bing results are either crap or genius, depending on your point of view.  The third thing it means is that if we want to generate more traffic, we need to be topical.  It has to be meaningful commentary, though. It would be bad form to just list stacey dash, carlisle, adhd, drugs, the game tv show, wiz khalifa rolling ..., brooke burke, espn, honda cbr250r, winrar download just because they are the top Google trends at the moment.  It wouldn’t be any better to just list top Twitter trends like #indvspak , #uknoyoughettowhen , #idontunderstandwhy , RIP Jackie Chan, Arts Council , TRANSMISSION GAGAVISION, Poonam Pandey, Saeed Ajmal , José Alencar , UDRS, either.  You can be sure we will avoid those types of transparent attempts at traffic generation.

I guess some people
could find this motivating

A final learning is that I don’t know what most of those top trends even mean.  In case you don’t know either, I will help you with one of them.  It turns out that Poonam Pandey is an Indian model.  She said that she will get nekkid if India wins the Cricket World Cup, which is currently underway.  I was heartened to hear that she isn’t doing this for publicity; she is just doing it to motivate the team.  She is a true patriot.   I hope it works out for her and the Indian team.  I know how motivating the promise of nudity can be, because I made the same offer to the VCU basketball team if they could make the Final Four and we know how that turned out.

Overall Rating for the Robin’s Nest

 

Taste: 4

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 21% alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Vodka

.5 oz Crème de Cocoa

1 oz Cranberry Juice

Day 72: Is This Post More Carrie or Samantha?

Today we have the Cosmopolitan Cocktail, a combination of vodka, triple sec, cranberry juice, and lime juice.  I was as intrigued by this drink as I have been by any of our previous offerings.  The combination of exotic ingredients sounded exciting and delicious.   The name really piqued my interest as well. After all, “cosmopolitan” implies that this drink is worldly and worldliness is something we strive for here at TBIAW.  After all, if we are not worldly, we cannot know our enemies and continue our fight against the one world government.

It looks huge until you notice the lime

We were not let down by the Cosmopolitan Cocktail.  The drink had a nice flavor with a hint of orange and cranberry.  The lime juice added a bit of sourness, but it was not so much as to overwhelm the other ingredients.  It was so tasty that I was a bit taken aback that this drink is not more popular than it is.  I was commenting to Mrs. Bottle that we should make a special effort to let the world know about this fabulous Cosmopolitan Cocktail. Mrs. Bottle told me that the drink had a brief measure of notoriety ten years ago when it was frequently mentioned on a TV show called Sex and the City.  It probably didn’t catch on since they did not refer to it by its proper name.  Instead of calling it the Cosmopolitan Cocktail they called it the Cosmo, but I ‘m not sure why. I guess they were Seinfeld fans.

I worry about any woman who needs
a magazine to find a man's G-spot
(Image: http://bit.ly/3nwLNn)

I also learned that Mrs. Bottle had tried this drink before and has actually ordered it when we have been out together.  I should probably pay more attention to what she does.  At any rate, she thought that our Cosmopolitan Cocktail was better than the ones you would typically find in restaurants.  She said that restaurants use too much cranberry juice relative to the other ingredients.  This might be because the International Bartender Association’s  (IBA) official recipe calls for twice as much cranberry juice as triple sec or lime juice whereas the Mr. Boston recipe calls for equal parts of all three ingredients.  That might explain why our drink was so pale.

The other difference between the recipes from Mr. Boston and the IBA is the total volume of the drink.  Our version only has 2 ounces but the IBA’s has 3.4 ounces. Of course the Mr. Boston recipe has more alcohol, so that give it a slight edge.  Tiny drinks have been a common theme in our journey, but this time we were ready. I happen to be an expert at making things look bigger than they are so we poured this into a shot glass so make it appear to be normal sized. If only it were always that easy.

Overall Rating for the Cosmopolitan Cocktail

Taste: 4

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 – 28% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.25 oz Vodka

.25 oz Triple Sec

.25 oz Cranberry Juice

.25 oz Lime Juice

Day 62: I'd Rather Drink Bleach With a Georgia Peach

The appearance is quite misleading

Bottle Wonderland Cat woke me up around 5:00 AM today. On weekdays I don’t mind so much since I have to get ready for work and that gives me some time to blog beforehand.  On weekends it is not as acceptable, though, as I need my beauty sleep.  I have tried pointing this out to Bottle Wonderland Cat but she doesn’t seem to understand the calendar. Our next cat will be smarter. 

This got me thinking about calendars in general and then I remembered my awesome idea for a new and better calendar.  I came up with this a few years ago so many of you may have already seen it, but I feel obligated to share it again:

• Weeks are 8 days long
• The first eleven months are 4 weeks long (32 days)
• December is 13 days long in non-leap years and 14 days in leap years.
• December is a national holiday.  Everything remains closed except retail stores, grocery stores, and Chick-fil-a.
• The standard work week is still 5 days (Monday – Friday)
• There is an extra day between Saturday and Sunday.  We will name it something like “Gerald” so we can get rid of that corny “Only on days that end in Y” joke.

Before you get all riled up about the current Gregorian Calendar being the widely recognized Christian standard, remember that it was implemented in 1582.  Galileo was convicted of heresy in 1632 for saying that the Earth orbits around the Sun.  I’m just saying that scientific knowledge wasn’t exactly at its apex in the 16^th century. 

There are really a lot of benefits to this system.  You get a three day weekend every week.  The two week holiday at the end of the year just formalizes what is already a common practice for many.   It will require a massive effort to print new calendars and re-program every computer.  All watches with calendars and so-called perpetual calendars will need to be replaced.  This will provide a massive economic stimulus.   I estimate the economic impact will be over one quadrillion dollars.

One quadrillion dollars also happens to be the amount you would have to pay us to drink today’s drink the Twin Peach again.  The Twin Peach is a mix of peach schnapps and cranberry juice. The peach and cranberry did not complement each other at all.  Mrs. Bottle remarked that all the schnapps did was ruin the cranberry juice. It made the drink cloying and gross and at less than 7% alcohol you would definitely be better off just having some plain juice. I’m beginning to wonder if it possible to use peach schnapps in a drink and have it taste good.  This is our third try and none of the drinks have rated higher than a three. 

The Twin Peach had a flavor odder than anything in this show

I’m not sure why it is called the Twin Peach either.  I suppose it might be because of the two ounces of peach schnapps and it a play on Twin Peaks.  I only hope that Laura Palmer did not live long enough to try a Twin Peach.

Overall Rating for the Twin Peach

Taste: 2

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 13 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Peach Schnapps

Cranberry Juice

Day 50: Welcome to the Jungle Love (Oh we oh we oh)

Busted Cherry

I was excited when I found we were having Jungle Juice for today’s drink.  I pulled out the rubber garbage can and immediately started filling it with Everclear, Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill “wine” and Hawaiian Punch.  I was looking for an oar or a shovel or something to stir it with when Mrs. Bottle gave me a dope slap and asked me what I was doing.  I tried to explain that I was making Jungle Juice but she pointed out that the Mr. Boston recipe just made one glass of the stuff.   If one glass is a jungle, it must be made of Bansai trees.

In my opinion, calling this Jungle Juice is akin to watching Avatar on an iPod Nano.  The only people who could legitimately say this a valid quantity of Jungle Juice all reside in Lilliput.  Once I finished complaining about the name, we decided to stick with our guiding principals and follow the Mr. Boston guide. Their recipe calls for vodka, rum, triple sec, simple syrup, lemon juice, cranberry juice, orange juice, and pineapple juice. The only absent juice is OJ Simpson, but he has an excuse.

Tiny bastards were after the juice!

This drink had the most ingredients of anything we have tried to date, but Mrs. Bottle handled them with aplomb.  She is like the Marie Curie of drink mixing, only less radioactive.  Once she had everything prepared we each sampled the drink.  I found the flavor was a bit lacking and Mrs. Bottle thought the primary taste component was alcohol.   It seemed impossible given the 27 ounces of fruit juice in the glass.

Just when I was ready to give up on Jungle Juice, Mrs. Bottle had a eureka moment: We should stir the drink! It was not unlike the moment Madame Curie discovered radium, only Mrs. Bottle’s idea had a more immediate benefit.  Suddenly the juice and alcohol blended together in a fruity and delicious nectar.  It went from boring to tasty, just like the new Jan Brady. 

Even though we liked the so-called Jungle Juice, we now have to drink a garbage can full of the real stuff. Just as soon as I find that oar.

Overall Rating for Jungle Juice

 

Taste: 4

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 2 – 1 Billion ingredients and tricky garnishes

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 16% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Vodka

1 oz Rum

.5 oz Triple Sec

1 splash Simple Syrup

1 splash Lemon Juice

1 oz Cranberry Juice

1 oz Orange Juice

1 oz Pineapple Juice

Day 46: Broken Charted

I want to reach through
the screen and drink that

The Casco Bay Lemonade is made from citrus vodka, simple syrup, lemon juice, cranberry juice, and lemon-lime soda.  I have no idea what this drink tastes like, because Mrs. Bottle immediately chugged the whole thing right after she made it.  I asked her for a sip and she said that if I tried to put my hand on her drink that I would pull back a stump.  To be fair, I made up those last two sentences, but this drink was good enough to make that scenario completely plausible. It has just enough sweetness and a nice lemonade taste.  The lemon-lime soda gives it a little fizz for a good mouth-feel.  It even has a lemon wheel on top for an attractive presentation. 

The only real downside is that the Casco Bay Lemonade is only 10% alcohol.  We decided that even with this flaw it rated a score of a perfect five.  Then I began to wonder if it rated a five because it was weak instead of rating a five despite its weakness.  This could turn out to be a crushing blow to my machismo, if I had any.   Unlike some who may choose to remain ignorant, Mrs. Bottle and I value truth above all.  Therefore we conducted a minutes-long TBIAW investigation in order to answer this mystery once and for all. The results can be boiled down by a simple chart:

It seemed clear that the highest rated drinks have the lowest average alcohol content. Things were looking bad.  I was briefly heartened when I saw that the drinks with a rating of four have the second highest average alcohol content.  Then I came up with the bright idea to plot a trend line (the red line).  The trend line clearly shows that the higher the alcohol content, the lower the rating. The 84% correlation leaves me little wiggle room.  This is probably the most convincing demonstration that correlation equals causation since it was definitively proven that global warming is caused by the shrinking number of pirates.

Overall Rating for the Casco Bay Lemonade

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3
Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 10% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Citrus-flavored Vodka

2 oz Simple Syrup

2 oz Lemon Juice

1 splash Cranberry Juice

1 splash Lemon-Lime Soda