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 159: Cop a Squat

Do not judge a Bajito by its outward appearance

Today we have the Bajito, a mix of dark rum, fresh lime, simple syrup, mint leaves, and basil leaves.  The Bajito continues our mini-run of drinks that feature fresh mint although at a week old we are stretching the definition of “fresh”.  The basil we used was as fresh as fresh can be, though, coming directly from the Bottle Wonderland back forty into the cocktail shaker.  You might be surprised that the Estate features an extensive farm. Despite our affinity for the green plastic lime, Mrs. Bottle and I are actually big proponents of sustainable local food. That is why I plan to move very close to the Jelly Belly Factory.

Even better than food from the local farm is the food you grow yourself. Knowing we raised that basil from a small basil plant purchased at Lowe’s all the way to its current incarnation as a medium sized basil plant brought extra satisfaction to every sip. It would have brought even more satisfaction if we could have actually tasted the basil in the drink. While there was a hint of basil, the drink pretty much tasted like a regular Mojito. That isn’t a bad thing since a Mojito is delicious and so is the Bajito. 

Where the Bajito falls down is in its appearance.  Bajito is Spanish for “squat” and I have to assume it is called that because it is shorter than a Mojito and not because it looks likes like something that happens when one is squatting.  The good news is that it has 3 ounces of rum so after one or two you won’t care how it looks.  Four or five of them will probably make a lot of things look better than they are.  I recommend it before reading TBIAW.

Overall Rating for the Bajito

Taste: 4

Presentation: 0

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackouts: 4 – 29% Alcohol

Ingredients

3 oz Dark Rum

1 tbsp Simple Syrup

5 Slices Fresh Lime – How much is that, anyway?

4 Fresh Basil Leaves

4 Fresh Mint Leaves

Drink 158: Cool as a Cucumber

Anyone who knows me (and that is a select group!) will tell you that I rarely complain and never whine.  When little indignities or injustices strike, I receive them stoically or apply a devil-may-care attitude. That is why you won’t hear me wailing about the fact that Bottle Wonderland Cat has been waking me up at all hours of the evening for no reason whatsoever.  I certainly won’t bore readers with woe-is-me accounts of Bottle Wonderland Kitten #1 hurling himself against the door at 4:00 AM and making an egregious amount of noise simply because he wants a kibble.

Waiter, there's a plant in my drink

A lesser blogger might cry about how his lack of sleep prevents him from formulating a rational thought or from making insightful asides in his entries.  He might even try to drag out his complaint to constitute the majority of a post and blame said sleeplessness for his lack of focus.  You won’t see those types of shenanigans here, though.  We will keep any of our problems to ourselves and simply present our latest drink, the Cubeltini, a mix of vodka, lime juice, simple syrup, mint, and cucumber. The Cubeltini happens to be the signature cocktail of Trina, a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, FL. 

Where the boys were, circa 1984
img

As I’m sure you already know, Fort Lauderdale is also the setting for the classic film Where the Boys Are ’84, where a bunch of 38 year-olds pretend to be 18 year olds and try to have sex with each other.  In that way it is just like a 20 year high school reunion.  I think in either case the Cubeltini could probably help, but only with a little modification.  The cucumber, mint, and lime juice create a refreshing combination, but they are overwhelmed by the cloying sweetness of the simple syrup.  There is an ounce and a half of that stuff, which turns out to be too much.  Instead of whining about it (which if you recall, I never do), I would recommend cutting it down to ½ an ounce or so.  The reduction in sugar will also help keep the pounds off which is beneficial whether you are entering the hot bod contest or trying to impress your old high school flame.

 

Overall Rating for the Cubeltini

Taste: 3 (4 if you cut down the sugar)

Presentation: 5 – It has an entire plant in it!

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackouts: 8 – 18% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Vodka

1 oz Lime Juice

1.5 oz Simple Syrup

3 Cucumber Slices

5-7 Mint Leaves

Drink 155: Ain't That a Jicama Head

While our drink selections may at times appear completely random it is only because they are usually random. The genius of it is that sometimes they appear random when they are really carefully chosen by our selection committee (Mrs. Bottle).  Sometimes she chooses a drink because it is related to a holiday.  Other times it is because she wants to make sure we don’t have too many good drinks in a row. Today it is because we had an ingredient that she didn’t want to let go to waste.  That ingredient is fresh mint.

If you know what this is it is attractive.
Otherwise it might skeeze you out

We have fresh mint because Mrs. Bottle was going to make a delicious orange and jicama salad this past weekend for the neighborhood 4^th of July blowout.  Not the big blowout down the road, but the one we got invited to.  It happens that the salad includes fresh mint and we had a lot left over.  Why did we have so much mint left over?  Because Mrs. Bottle couldn’t make the salad.  Why couldn’t she make the salad?  Because we could not find a decent jicama within a 30 mile radius of the Estate.

Don’t get me wrong, we found jicama at our usual grocery store (we won’t name it here, but it rhymes with Ferris Jeter); we just didn’t find a good one.  When Mrs. Bottle picked up the first one she found, it had a hole in it and then bug flew out of said hole.  That is considered good luck in some countries, but in America it is considered gross.  She picked out a second one but when she cut it open at home it too had a hole in it cleverly concealed within the center of the root. The non-hole portion was black with rot.  Mrs. Bottle ignored my suggestion of using the rotted tuber anyway and insisted I find another one.  I spent the next several hours trolling every grocery store that wasn’t too inconvenient but still came a cropper. 

Not to scale
Moth

Since Mrs. Bottle also ignored my other suggestion of making an orange and rutabaga salad, we had a lot of mint left over.  We ended up using the mint in the Frozen Mint Daiquiri which also has rum, lime juice and sugar.  This isn’t to be confused with the previously reviewed Daiquiri which has no mint and is not frozen but conversely also tasted good.  Mint and lime is a good combo, but the Frozen Mint Daiquiri was too tart for our liking.  This is likely due to the fact that it called for sugar instead of simple syrup.  I guess no one told Mr. Boston that sugar doesn’t really dissolve in a frozen drink.  We salvaged the drink by adding some simple syrup, making it quite tasty.  If only the recipe called for “simple syrup to taste” like the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1, it would have been a big hit. Then again there are few drinks that are as big as the DSCTn1.

Overall Rating for the Frozen Mint Daiquiri

 

Taste: 2 (4 if you add simple syrup)

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3 – Frozen drinks are an automatic 1 point deduction

Drinks Until Blackout: 12 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Light Rum

1 tbsp Lime Juice

6 Mint Leaves

1 tsp Sugar

1 cup Ice

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 104: Wedded Bliss

Mint Mint Pieces

Today we celebrate a glorious wedding.  A marriage between an established dignitary and an up-and-coming young socialite.  I am of course talking the Gin Gin Mule, our latest drink.  It is a marriage between the venerable Moscow Mule and the newly resurgent mint, herb about town.   A traditional Moscow Mule is made from vodka, lime juice, and ginger beer.  A Gin Gin Mule replaces the vodka with gin and adds simple syrup and mint.  This combination may sound odd but it was wonderful, just like a mashup of Missy Elliot and AC/DC.

In my opinion the Gin Gin Mule was far better and more interesting than today’s royal wedding.  I don’t really understand the fascination with the royal family or their weddings.  Personally, I am more excited about the upcoming nuptials between Vanessa Minnillo and Nick Lachey.  At least Nick Lachey did something to earn his fame.  Namely, he married Jessica Simpson.  All Prince William did was be born. As far as I can tell, the most interesting thing about today’s wedding was that (a) Kate Middleton has a sister named Pippa and (b) Pippa apparently has a very nice butt.  I also learned that William’s full title is His Royal Highness Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn, Baron Carrickfergus, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Master of Arts.  It’s lucky for him that he was born into the royal family or that title would seem ridiculous.

His butt is nothing to sneeze at, either

The Gin Gin Mule is also a silly title, but far less pretentious.  It is actually a fairly recent addition to the mixed drink world.  It was invented in the aughts by Audrey Saunders, who apparently is a famous bartender.  Have you heard of her?  Me neither. I guess being a famous bartender only buys you so much. Nevertheless, you know it must be a good drink because it was named one of the 25 most influential cocktails of the last 100 years by some random guy who writes for a magazine I’ve never heard of.

The Gin Gin Mule marked some TBIAW firsts.  It was our first “buck” which is a drink made from ginger ale or beer, fruit juice, and liquor.  These are also known as “mules”, hence the name.  It was also our first drink that required muddling.  Mrs. Bottle bought a muddler ages ago in anticipation of this day.  I hadn’t seen her that excited since, well, ever.  She took out a lot of frustrations on those mint leaves.  I have no idea what they ever did to her.

Overall Rating for the Gin Gin Mule

Taste: 5
Presentation: 4 – Only a 3 if you don’t like little bits of stuff floating in your drink
Ease of Preparation: 1 – Complicated with all the muddling and whatnot
Drinks Until Blackout: 8 – 14% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Gin
.75 oz Lime Juice
1 oz Simple Syrup
1 oz Ginger Beer
6-8 Sprigs Mint

"My God, it's full of bubbles"

Back by popular demand, we continue our semi-regular TBIAW feature where we ignore our premise of making a Mr. Boston drink each day and instead review a drink (or two) from a local establishment.  And by “popular demand” I mean “Mrs. Bottle demands we actually do something outside the house.”  I was willing to bow to the will of the people.

You may recall that last week we went to a local Mexican restaurant.  We wanted to mix it up this week, so instead of going to a local Mexican restaurant, we went to a chain Mexican restaurant.  I am looking forward to next week when we go to Taco Bell.

I have friends who decry chain restaurants as soulless pits of mediocre food that cater to the lowest common denominator.  To those friends I say, “oh yeah?” I probably need to improve my retorts.  Regardless, we enjoy their food and there happens to be one near the Bottle Wonderland estate so it is quite convenient as well.  We enjoy eating at the bar for enhanced people watching.  One area where On the Border is definitely above average is the margarita menu.  They have around a dozen different selections and several are very good.

His and Hers



Mrs. Bottle chose the Perfect Patrón Margarita, which is a mixture of Patrón Silver, Patrón Citrónage, and angel tears.  It is sweeter than a “classic” margarita, but not overly so.  It really is the baby bear of sweetness and it is the standard by which we measure all other margaritas.  It comes in at around $10 but it is worth it.  If you eat four or five bowls of the free chips and salsa you are actually getting quite a bargain.   



Artist's Rendition

I usually order the Perfect Patrón as well but I went a different way and got the Mexican Mojito instead.  According to the menu it is 1800 Silver Tequila, Cointreau, mint, agave nectar, and a splash of soda.  In other words, it is a margarita with mint and fizz.  I felt like kind of a tool ordering a mojito but, like any great scientist, I was willing to risk my reputation in the name of research.  The risk was worthwhile as the drink actually turned out to be quite good.  The mint was noticeable but subtle and the carbonation was a nice touch.  As an aside, I cannot emphasize enough how much I love carbonation. Carbonation makes everything taste better, much like deep frying does. I recently learned that there are taste receptors for carbonation and my tongue must be loaded with them. 

So now that you are thinking about my tongue, I bid you adieu.