Drink 201: Balls Well That Ends Well

Are you tired of drinking beverages that are entirely liquid?  Do you believe that America’s decline is due in large part to alcoholic beverages can be made simply by pouring the ingredients into a glass?  Is the prospect of making dozens of jokes about “blue balls” appealing to you?  Then the Cocktail R-evolution Gin Tonic is probably right up your alley.

You may recall from our last post that Mrs. Bottle and I have recently become chemists.  But instead of cooking up meth Walter White-style, we are mixing up interesting new drinks.  Even though our emulsification experiment was a bit of a failure, we remain undeterred.  This week we went with spherification, also know as balling. 

Actually, this looks a lot like Heisenberg meth.

Spherification is the process of turning a liquid into tiny spheres (or balls).  The spheres have the size and consistency of salmon roe.  The good news is that our balls didn’t taste like fish eggs.  Instead they were made with tonic water and blue Curaçao so they tasted like tonic water and blue Curaçao.  But the consistency was dead on.

Turning a liquid into blue balls takes a lot of teasing and a little chemistry.  The first step is to mix the tonic water and blue Curaçao with sodium alginate (NaC₆H₇O₆) powder.  Even though its empirical formula spells “nacho”, the powder tasted horrible on a Tostito.  That isn’t that surprising since it is extracted from brown algae. Its purpose is to create a gelatin-like substance out of liquid.

When Mrs. Bottle mixed the powder in using our last-century hand mixer, she happened to splash some of the blue liquigel onto the counter.  To the untrained observer it appeared to be a careless spill, but the trained observer would realize she was ritualistically pouring some on the counter as a tribute to our fallen homies.  Luckily our countertops are stain resistant since the same tribute happened last time she tried to mix something.

Spherification in action

After the NaCHO was assimilated into the liquid, we used a pipette to drip the mixture into a calcium lactate (C₆H₁₀CaO) bath and make little balls.  Sadly, calcium lactate’s empirical formula spells “chcao” which doesn’t lend itself to any cheap jokes.  I also am not sure what the point of the calcium bath is other that to wash our balls.   I guess it must somehow contribute to the making of the spheres, but our kit came with no details so I’ll just go with ball washing.

That lime slice looks suspiciously
like a lemon wedge

Once we had a sufficient number of balls, we made the drink.  The recipe DVD didn’t have many specifics on the recipe.  It just had us dip our balls into two ounces of gin with some lime slices.  No ice or other tonic water other than that which had been gellified.  Since we are sticklers for the rules we tried it that way even though we know it would probably be horrible.  Much to our surprise, it was indeed horrible.  It was pretty much just drinking straight lukewarm gin with a bunch of fish-egg looking things on the bottom of the glass.  I didn’t get any balls in my mouth and probably would have had to shoot the whole thing in order to get even one.  And not just because it would have relaxed my inhibitions.  Those suckers were stuck on the bottom.

After adding some ice and tonic water
Neato, eh?

We ultimately added some ice and tonic water and turned it into more of a traditional Gin and Tonic, which is delicious.  The balls floated in the tonic and I got some in my mouth in almost every sip. I actually thought the spheres were pretty good and added an interesting textural element to the drink.  Each time I bit into one there was a tiny orange explosion in my mouth.  Mrs. Bottle, on the other hand, did not enjoy chewing her drink and would prefer her next one to be ball free.  It probably will be unless I am feeling mischievous.

Overall Rating for Gin Tonic

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 - All gin

Ingredients

Gin

Tonic Water

Blue Curaçao

Sodium Alginate

Calcium Lactate

Drink 193: A Little Dog'll Do Ya

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

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 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 165: Blue Friday

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 160: Never Neverblog

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 138: Leaping Tall Blogdings in a Single Bound

Congratulations!  You are reading the 23,460^th most influential blog in the blogosphere.  That is, if you believe in the authority rankings at Technorati.com.  This puts us squarely in 98^th percentile of all blogs!  Except for those blogs which have never registered with Technorati.  That turns out to be a lot of blogs.  I did a thorough check of  blogs I read and none of the two of them were there.  Of course they were the blogs of my brother and sister-in-law so maybe they just didn’t know about Technorati.  I then looked for The Everywhereist (one of Time Magazine’s best blogs of 2011) and it wasn’t there either.  This probably means that TBIAW is in reality no higher than the 23,463^rd most influential blog on the blogosphere.  I’m hoping that one of the ranking criteria is the number of times you write a variation of “blog” in a blog entry. Blog.

Of course, this assumes a Normal distribution of blogs

Even if their rankings don’t include everyone, I am setting my sites on their #1 rated blog, The Huffington Post.  AOL recently bought them for $315 million.  We are doing okay here, but if someone offered $315 million to buy TBIAW we would certainly give it proper consideration.  Since it might take a while to get to #1, we will start by trying to move up to 22,208.  This only requires our score to go up one point (of course, our score recently fell a point.  I think we may have peaked with our Foodista mention).  If we can get that point back, we will be tied with such notable blogs as Apitherapy News (bees!) and What I Ate For Lunch And Why (self explanatory).  Coincidentally, one of the names we kicked around for TBIAW was “What I Drank To Numb The Pain And Why” but decided to go with something more whimsical.  We are also testing the theory that parenthetical asides improve our authority ranking (probably not).

Notice the artful use of shadow and light
This is the stuff that gets you into the
twenty-three thousands

Even though there is nothing in the world we want more than an iPhone 5 a higher Technorati ranking, we aren’t going to resort to gimmicks like nudity or interesting content.  We are going to get there by doing what we know how to do best.  And that thing is drinking.  Today we have the Leap Frog Highball, a combination of gin, ginger ale, and lemon juice.  It is starting to seem like the combination of gin and ginger ale/beer is a recurring theme, but that isn’t a bad thing.  The combination works well.  The Leap Frog Highball had a pronounced tartness from the lemon juice but the ginger ale and sweet delicious gin balanced it out.  It also scores points for having “highball” right in the name, thereby eliminating any possible confusion about the proper glassware.  Hopefully it will let us Leap Frog right over our competition. You better watch your back, Baptist Standard!

Overall Rating for the Leap Frog Highball

Taste: 4

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 8 – 13% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Gin

1 oz Lemon Juice

Ginger Ale

Drink 132: Blogger’s Block

Actual appearance of
the Purple Passion Tea

I have run out of ideas for blog posts.  I know this because I have been staring at the blinking cursor for an hour while “The Devil’s Advocate” plays on a TV on the background.  In retrospect, I should have put the TV on a different channel since Keanu Reeves’ “southern” accent in that movie could distract anyone.  Even Kevin Costner thought it sucked. The other problem is that all of the obvious angles for our latest drink the Purple Passion Tea have been covered, forcing me to come up with something original.  TBIAW readers know that is not my strong suit. 

The first problem is the drink’s color. The PPT has “purple” right in the name, but the drink is yellow.  Unfortunately (for me), Mrs. Bottle already covered miscolored (is that a word?) drinks in her Purple Hooter review. Next, this drink tasted nothing like tea, but we have also covered drinks that taste nothing like their namesakes a few times, too.  I even already used the word “namesake” in one of those posts.  Counting this sentence I have written “namesake” four times in 2011, raising my lifetime total to four.

Expected appearance of
the Purple Passion Tea

Here is where I normally list the ingredients.  I wrote that last sentence to pad the entry a bit.  I hope you didn’t notice. The Purple Passion Tea is made with vodka, rum, gin, black raspberry liqueur, simple syrup, lemon juice, and lemon-lime soda.  You might think that with four different types of alcohol that it would be strong, but you would be wrong.  There is less than a shot of alcohol total, which would be weak in any drink, but it is especially so when you also have seven ounces of sugar, juice, and sugar juice (otherwise known as soda).

As far as flavor, this drink was way too sweet.  I actually thought the first sip was pretty good, but as we continued to drink it, the sweetness became overwhelming.  It was also a little thick and had a syrup-like mouth feel.  It was so cloying that adding additional soda actually cut down on the sweetness.  In fact, it was so sweet that it may have put me into a sugar coma leaving me unable to form blog ideas.  Yes, that must be it.

Overall Rating for the Purple Passion Tea

Taste: 3

Presentation: 0 – Would be a 5 if it was called the Yellow Passion Tea

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 33 –  5% Alcohol

Ingredients

0.25 oz Vodka

0.25 oz Rum

0.25 oz Gin

0.5 oz Black Raspberry Liqueur

2 oz Simple Syrup

2 oz Lemon Juice

3 oz Lemon-lime Soda

Drink 129: Greyed Expectations

Shouldn't this be
called a Pinkhound?

Today we have the Greyhound, a highball made from gin and grapefruit juice.  This drink holds a special place in my heart.  Back in the early 90’s, my roommate suggested that we head to a bar on the day before my 21^st birthday.  I disconnected my AOL and we caught the bus downtown to a local watering hole. When the clock struck midnight, I asked him to recommend a drink. He chose the Greyhound, making it the first alcoholic beverage I ever legally consumed.  In case my parents are reading this, it was also the first alcoholic beverage I ever consumed. As far as they know.

Our previous drinks with grapefruit juice have not been that great.  Mrs. Bottle was convinced that the Donald Duck brand grapefruit juice was the culprit.  She may have a case considering that the juice doesn’t expire until 2012.  That seems like a long time for juice. That isn’t necessarily bad, though.  I will put some in my food warehouse and it will be a good source of vitamin C during the zombie apocalypse.

Unbeknownst to me, Mrs. Bottle went out and bought some expensive juice that expires in a couple of weeks in an effort to improve the odds of a tasty drink.   Clearly she fails to see that a licensed character enhances the taste of any food. I will admit that the expensive juice worked, though.  The Greyhound was very tasty. The gin and grapefruit make a nice combination.  I should probably put some gin in the food warehouse, too.  Just in case.

Just add Donald Duck grapefruit juice.
And gin

img:afgen.com

Overall Rating for the Greyhound

Taste: 4
Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 11 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Gin

5 oz Grapefruit Juice

Drink 125: A Tale of Two Kitties

Clear, cold, and delicious

Mrs. Bottle is back for my weekly piece and to report on the merits of today’s drink, the ever classic Gin and Tonic. This might be a surprise, but the drink consists of gin and tonic water and was actually pretty good. No garnish though, which I thought was odd since it’s always served with a lime (or sometimes lemon) in restaurants. This is actually Mr. Bottle’s drink of choice so I thought it would be hilarious to write about since I prefer the Vodka Tonic (or Vodka and Tonic as Mr. Boston calls it). Isn’t that funny? And ironic? Truth be told, we had the Gin and Tonic because I didn’t have the energy to make the frozen complicated drink I was supposed to. Why? See below for the details.

Mr. Bottle came to me not that long ago and told me he felt we needed babies in our life. I thought to myself, he can’t possibly mean human babies because I wouldn’t be able to drink these drinks I’d be preparing and how would that be fair? So I decided that he meant cat babies and off I went to the shelter to adopt two kittens. You might have anticipated Mr. Bottle’s surprise when I introduced him to our new two month old kitten babies but I didn’t. Since he wasn’t as delighted about this as I thought he’d be, I let him name them: Sam Adams and Stella Artois (real identities protected since they’re minors).

That leads us to yesterday when we realized that Sam Adams was going to give us both heart attacks at an early age. What we needed to do was to rig up a way to keep him from falling to his death from TBIAW estate’s second story open hallway onto the foyer below. This was no easy task, but after spending serious time noodling the problem and then shopping for items, we came up with a plan. It took a couple hours to complete but by the time we finished, we had a hideous, but kitten-saving poster board concoction which we are now considering marketing to the masses. Just need to work on that hideous part. And also the part where it is going to be just a tad challenging to get to the room at the end of that hallway. Minor details. Anyway, that brought us to late o’clock and I was pooped so I asked Mr. Bottle if I could just make a Gin and Tonic as our drink of the day because it was easy. And he agreed because he knew there was only one answer.

This is a slightly less impressive than
TBIAW's Great Wall of Poster Board
Img

The final lesson learned is that if you decide to adopt two kittens and continue to write a daily drinking blog, stick with the classics. Too bad we already did the Cosmopolitan. But the Vodka and Tonic is still available…

Overall Rating for the Gin and Tonic

Taste: 5
Presentation: 3 – Where’s the garnish?
Ease of Preparation: 5
Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 16% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Gin
Tonic Water

Drink 122: The Atom's Family

I really need to
pay more attention
to the lighting

Today’s drink is the Mamie’s Sister, a combination of gin, lime juice, and ginger ale. This drink happens to be named after one of the few women in California who has not had a baby with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I am not sure about any relationship between the former Governator and Mamie herself, though.  I have been working on a joke on this topic.  It starts off, “Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn walk into a bar”.  It ends with “I’m sure of one thing, it wasn’t his wife”, but I need to work on the middle section a bit.

There have been a lot of stories over the last few days trying to figure out why powerful men cheat on their spouses and otherwise treat women badly.  I’m guessing the equation goes something like this:

(Opportunity + Overconfidence) * Outsized Sense of Entitlement = Cheating

It doesn’t seem like quantum physics to me, but there is probably a little more to it than that. Maybe those guys who just spent ten years studying the shape of an electron could help refine my findings.  In case you were wondering the shape of an electron, it is round.



They could have saved 10
years if they had just looked
up "atom" on Wikipedia



Once they figure it out, I would be happy to recommend they celebrate by having Mamie’s Sister (the drink).  It was really delicious.  Everyone knows that gin and lime juice complement each other.  After all, they are the main flavors of a Gin & Tonic, my favorite drink. Replacing tonic water with ginger ale makes it a little sweeter than a G&T, but yummy nonetheless.  I can’t wait to meet Mamie now.

Overall Rating for the Mamie’s Sister

Taste: 5

Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Gin

1 oz Lime Juice

Ginger Ale

Drink 116: Wash Off the Blood, Wash Off the 151

Looking good, Hudson Bay
Tasting Good, Billy Ray

Today we have the Hudson Bay, a cocktail made from gin, 151-proof rum, cherry brandy, orange juice, and lime juice.  I was not looking forward to this one, purely based on the fact that it contained cherry brandy.  So far we’ve had six drinks featuring this sickeningly sweet spirit and the ratings were: 2, 2, 2, NA, 3, and 3 which average to 2.4 if you omit the drink that we didn't even make correctly because the stuff is so confusing.  For those of you who are not that into math, let me be clear: 2.4 is not a great score on a 5-point scale.

That said, we thought there was still hope because of the lime and orange juices.  There was a chance their acidity might counter the cloying sweetness of the cherry brandy.  It turned out that they did and the drink was pretty good.  You could still taste the cherry, but it was just one of the mélange of fruit flavors.  In fact, this drink could be pretty dangerous since it has a relatively high alcohol content but doesn’t taste like it does.  It would really go over at a sorority party.

It is also dangerous for a second reason: 151-Proof rum.  We used Bacardi 151, which has this scary warning label on the back:

Let’s provide a sentence-by-sentence layman’s translation of the warning mumbo-jumbo.

WARNING: FLAMMABLE LIQUID – This will catch on fire.

Do not use this product for flaming dishes or drinks – We know the main reason people use this is for Flaming Moes, but don’t do it.  If you do, it’s on you.

All 151 proof rum may flare up, etc – Yes, this could light on fire, but we are no more dangerous than the other guy

Do not pour directly from bottle near the flame or intense heat – In case you missed the first warning that said “FLAMMABLE LIQUID”

Use Caution – This is good advice for any activity, really.

Overall Rating for the Hudson Bay

Taste: 4

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 4– 28% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Gin

1.5 tsp 151-Proof Rum

.5 oz Cherry Flavored Brandy

1 tbsp Orange Juice

1.5 tsp Lime Juice