Day 67: Pinch by Pinch

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  This is my favorite day of the year.  It’s not because I will go out to some hokey Irish pub and drink until I can’t see straight.  That is something I can do any day of the year.  It is my favorite day because I will wear no green and seek large crowds in the hopes that I get pinched.  For many people getting pinched may be an unpleasant experience, but when you are as starved for human contact as I am, a pinch is better than isolation and unfulfilled desires.

I don't think that comes off as disturbing at all, but let’s move on.  We are finishing our run of Irish drinks with the Irish Flag, a shooter made from Irish cream liqueur, crème de menthe, and Mandarine Napoleon orange liqueur. The idea behind this drink is that you can layer the liqueurs and it will end up looking like the Irish flag:

Best Case
Scenario

The Irish Flag name is a little misleading since there is no way it could look like that. Instead, it would look like the Irish flag if you flipped it on its side and changed the color of the center stripe from white to brown (the actual color of Irish cream).  Our best-case scenario is something that looks like an Irish flag that is dirty and passed out after a night of drinking, so it still seems appropriate after all.   

We had a few things working against us in the Irish Flag.  The first is that it called for green crème de menthe.  Our crème de menthe is white.  It turns out that the only difference between the green and white crème de menthe is some green food coloring. Luckily we always keep our pantry stocked with green food coloring. If we didn’t, how could Mrs. Bottle make me green eggs and ham every Tuesday?

The second problem is that this recipe calls for a specific orange liqueur, Mandarine Napoleon, presumably because of its orange color.  We don’t have that particular liqueur so we substituted Patrón Citrónge orange liqueur and planned to use more food coloring to make it orange.  In retrospect, we probably should have chosen Grand Marnier, which is already orange-colored.

The laws of physics were the only other things in our way. Historically we have had a distinct lack of success with cocktail floats. We recently bucked that trend, though, so we had some hope of success.   Mrs. Bottle poured our “green” crème de menthe into the glass.  So far so good.  It floated on the glass no problem. She then added the Baileys and it floated, too!  A little green seeped through much like the bubbling crude of one Mr. Jed Clampett, but it wasn’t enough to cause any major concerns.

Gulf of Mexico Tea

Irish Flag?

 Then came the moment of truth.  Would our Patrón substitute for the Mandarine Napoleon as seamlessly as Replacement Becky filled in for Original Becky?  Would it float on the Baileys and create a sort-of version of the flag of Ireland?  In a word, “no.”  Mrs. Bottle’s pouring technique was flawless, but the laws of physics defeated us again.  The orange liqueur immediately started sinking through the Baileys.  Eventually it sank completely below the Baileys and formed a layer between it and the crème de menthe, representing the flag of nowhere.

Although we were not shocked by this development we were saddened.  We hoped that the drink would cheer us up, but suspected that orange, mint, and Baileys were probably picked more for their aesthetics than their complementary flavors.   It turned out that our concerns were baseless, though, because once again the Baileys overwhelmed the other flavors. We couldn’t taste any mint or orange. It tasted like Baileys with a faint burning in our mouths.  The burning was probably because the Irish Flag is almost 30% alcohol.  A couple of these and you won’t notice or even care that the colors are in the wrong order.



When we make the Libya Flag we will get it right

Overall Rating for the Irish Flag

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackout: 4

Ingredients

1 oz Irish Cream Liqueur

1 oz Crème de Menthe

1 oz Mandarine Napoleon

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 65: Charlie Foxtrot

Drink me, I'm Irish Charlie

In case you didn’t know, St. Patrick’s Day is later this week.  We decided not to do a full theme week since we didn’t think of it in time but we thought we could have a few Irish-themed drinks anyway to get us in the party mood.   We start off with the Irish Charlie, a shooter made from Irish cream liqueur and crème de menthe.  After thorough research we determined that this drink is called the Irish Charlie because that was the nickname of former president of Ireland Charles De Gaulle.  To make this drink into an Irish Charlie Sheen you substitute crazy for the crème de menthe.

We used Bailey’s Irish Cream, the best selling liqueur in the world. We have already covered the special relationship between Baileys and Irish cows but we wanted to learn if there were other reasons it was so popular.  I broke out my Ultimate Encyclopedia of Wine, Beer, Spirits, and Liqueurs and learned that Baileys is the “kind of soft svelte drink that unscrupulous boys plied unsuspecting girls with in nightclubs.”  I can see why that would make it popular.  I wish I had known that when I was in college. It probably would have been more effective than my standard technique of begging and sobbing.  That is also the technique I used if I ever convinced an unsuspecting girl to come back to my apartment.

As far as the drink itself, it was only so-so. The Baileys mostly overwhelmed our taste buds leaving only a hint of mint remaining.  Neither Mrs. Bottle nor I are huge fans of Baileys so this wasn’t our favorite outcome.  It wasn’t terrible, but it isn’t something I would make again.  If you like Baileys and mint you will likely enjoy it.  If you don’t, you probably won’t. You can’t get that kind of review just anywhere.

Using fresh Baileys might help, too.  Baileys has a shelf life of 30 months and I thought ours was probably older than that.  I found the expiration date on our bottle:

This is 2011. 12/2002 is 98 months ago.  98! If that date is 30 months past the purchase date our bottle is over 10 years old.  I think that might actually qualify as an antique.  That might be okay for a bottle of Scotch or fine wine, but this stuff is made with cream.  From happy cows!  I’m no food scientist, but maybe one that was fresh would taste better.  And be less likely to kill us.

Overall Rating for the Irish Charlie

Taste: 3

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 –  24% alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Irish Cream Liqueur

1 oz Crème de Menthe