Drink 200: Mr. and Mrs. Mix a Lot

I hate looking like a jackass.  Which is unfortunate considering the frequency with which I look like one.  I am also kind of a cheapskate.  These two traits are in a constant struggle for superiority each morning when I view my daily emails from Groupon, LivingSocial, AmazonLocal, DealSaver, Vactionist, and Google Offers.  On the one hand am saving money when I take advantage of an offer.  On the other hand I look like a jackass when I hand the cashier my creased piece of paper to save $7 on $14 worth of food and drinks (alcohol excluded). 

Sometimes Mrs. Bottle and I will take advantage of one of these offers to try something new.   It could be a restaurant we wouldn’t normally try or some activity we haven’t done before.  We have an upcoming zip line adventure and we have recently taken an archery lesson and had a Segway tour of our fair city (which really pushed the “don’t look like a jackass” threshold).  These skills will come in handy once the zombie apocalypse finally arrives as I ride at up to 12 MPH and pick off zombies with my bow and arrow.  Just like Katniss Everdeen.

Artist Concept

We recently received an offer that allowed us to try something new, save money (presumably), not look like a jackass (since it was online only), and do one of our other favorite things: drink.  It was for a molecular gastronomy cocktail kit from a company called MOLECULE-R (emphasis theirs).  In case you are unfamiliar with molecular gastronomy, it is when you take food that is somewhat natural and add chemicals to it so it becomes something unnatural.   Think of it like making a Dorito into a taco shell, only with different chemicals.

Our kit recently arrived and we decided to try it out.  The first step was to pick out a drink.  Unfortunately the kit didn’t come with a recipe book.  Instead it came with a DVD.  In case you are unfamiliar with DVDs, they are plastic discs that contain video recordings.  People used to use them to watch movies before FSM invented streaming.  We dusted off our DVD player and perused the choices.  That is, after we watched the mandatory 30 second musical introduction with no option to bypass.

It turns out that many of these recipes require either a lot of time, pre-planning, culinary whippers, or liquid nitrogen.   Since we didn’t have any of those items, we went with something simple, emulsification.  They have several drinks that featured emulsification but we only had ingredients on hand for two: the kamikaze and the margarita.  We have already featured a kamikaze in the blog, but our last two entries were both for margaritas we decided to go with the kamikaze.

Chemistry is messy business

The molecular gastronomy piece of this drink was lime foam. That meant adding soy lecithin to some water and lime juice and whipping it until it became foam. That was the theory, anyway.  Mrs. Bottle whipped the hell out of that stuff but it never really foamed up as much as it did on the DVD. I don’t know if the mix was a little off or if it was something else.  It is possibly related to the fact that chemistry was the only science class I didn’t like.  Too much memorization for my taste.  But I digress.

We were able to salvage a little foam from the top of the bowl and add it to our drink, though.  The rest of the drink is just vodka and orange liqueur.  Mrs. Bottle pretty much hated it.  It is all alcohol and we didn’t chill any of it so she found it kind of warm and gross. I sipped mine making sure to get some foam in each taste and thought it was decent.  If it had been cold it might have actually been pretty good.

Probably should take a lint roller to the backdrop, eh?

We remain undeterred, though.  As soon as my bottle of liquid nitrogen arrives, we will be trying again.

Overall Rating for Kamikaze

Taste: 3

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 2 - From whipping fatigue

Ingredients

Vodka

Triple Sec

Lime Juice

Water

Soy Lecithin

Day 2: Banzai!

Mrs. Bottle made a delicious stir-fry so we decided to stick with an Asian theme and make Kamikazes.   This is our first official Mr. Boston drink and we tried something pretty simple.  Just mix the  three ingredients, pour it in the glass, and pound it.  The most complicated aspect is that they recommend you serve it in a chilled shot glass.  You can chill a glass by leaving it in the freezer or by filling it with ice water.  Since we wanted to drink RIGHT NOW, we went with the ice water method.  

Blurry and Sour

Visually, it wasn’t that exciting. It looks a little like lemonade.  The Cheers shot glass purchased at the Bull & Finch pub was probably the presentation highlight.  Did you know that they changed the name of Bull & Finch to “Cheers Beacon Hill”?  I guess everybody didn’t know their name.

Taste-wise it was not the best drink we ever tried.  In fact, it was the worst of all the drinks chronicled in this blog so far. When Mrs. Bottle tried it she puckered up and couldn’t open her mouth for 30 seconds.  I had pretty much the same reaction. That thing was Sour with a capital S.   That was all you could taste.  Sour sour sour.  I might as well have sucked a lime. The kids today would probably like it, though, since they love that crap.   I will say that it didn’t stop me from finishing it off.   I am dedicated like that.

We did cheat a little on this one, however.  The recipe calls for lime juice and instead of using fresh squeezed we used that stuff that comes in a plastic lime.  I love that plastic lime.  It is so green and festive.  The drink probably wouldn't have tasted any less sour with the real stuff, but it might have tasted better.  Probably not.

The Culprit?

Ratings on a 10-point scale:

Taste: 4

Ease of Preparation: 7

Presentation: 5

Drinks until blackout: 7 – This one has 20% alcohol content,  but it is a pretty small drink.  Your mouth would pucker shut before you could blackout.