Drink 189: Just Like Riding a Bicycle



If your urine looks like this
call your doctor immediately



Bonjour Mesdames et Messieurs. We are back with a new drink, the Moulin Rouge.  It is made from sloe gin, sweet vermouth, and bitters. This drink was fantastic if you like horrible cocktails.  It was extremely sweet and almost glue-like in consistency.  At least it had a healthy dose of awful sweet vermouth to counter the almost drinkable sloe gin. 

Mrs. Bottle really hated it and she practically did a spit take when she tried it. I, on the other hand, found it merely terribly unpleasant.  If I were trapped in a crevasse with my arm pinned by a boulder I could probably choke it down after a day or two.  Mrs. Bottle would rather drink her own pee. I have heard it is pretty good. 

You are probably expecting some tie-in to the movie Moulin Rouge or at the bare minimum some kind of send-up of Lady Marmalade. Unfortunately I haven’t seen the film and I would never criticize such a masterpiece of a song.  Also, I have lost my mojo. After not having written anything for a week I kind of forgot how to do it.  I mean I remember how to write words on a page as is evidenced by the thing you are reading.  What I have forgotten is how to bolg. Or is it blog? Either way, it doesn’t take long to get out of the groove.  Don’t fret, though, or bolg isn’t dead. I’m sure I’ll get my mojo back soon enough.  Until then, if we go too long between posts make sure to check you local crevasses and make sure I’m not stuck. I need both my arms.

"OoooooOOoooOOoo"

Overall Rating for the Moulin Rouge

Taste: 1.5

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Sloe Gin

0.75 oz Sweet Vermouth

1 dash Bitters

Christina Aguilera photo: By Julian from Germany (PC134194) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Drink 136: I've Got Pals in Medium Places

Purty!

I do not like whiskey.  I do not like sweet vermouth. I do not like grenadine.  Luckily for me today’s drink the Old Pal Cocktail is a combination of whiskey, sweet vermouth, and grenadine.  If an old pal said he was going to make me a drink with those ingredients, I would punch him square in the neck and question our palship.  Since it was served to me not by an old pal but by Mrs. Bottle, I just thanked her and gave her a little smooch on the cheek.

That turned out to be the right move, because this drink was actually tolerable and I would have felt like a real fool if I had punched Mrs. Bottle in the neck. I guess the sweetness of the grenadine somehow countered both the harshness of the rye and the general unpleasantness of the sweet vermouth.  Two wrongs don’t make a right, but I guess three wrongs can add up to a mediocre cocktail. I can’t explain why that is, but I will have to accept it.  Accepting mediocrity will also be helpful skill for anyone reading this post.  If you can't accept it, just close your eyes and wait for it to be over.  Mrs. Bottle will give you pointers on how to do that in a future post.

Overall Rating for the Old Pal Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 –  27% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Rye Whiskey

0.5 oz Sweet Vermouth

0.5 oz Grenadine

Drink 126: A is for Apple, Presumably

Apple Pie is not red

Since today is Memorial Day, we thought we should feature a drink that represented America. When I think of America, the first things that come to mind are baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.  That is probably due to the fact that I spent a large portion of my childhood parked in front of the TV and therefore relate most things to commercial jingles or Brady Bunch episodes.  It is this type of knowledge that is invaluable when trying to get all the jokes in The Simpsons or Bridesmaids.

Anyway, since there was no drink in the Mr. Boston guide called the Chevrolet (what does bankruptcy and bailout taste like? Scotch, I’m guessing.), we decided to go with the Apple Pie No. 1, a combination of rum, apple brandy, sweet vermouth, grenadine, and lemon juice.  Let’s just get this out of the way, this drink tasted nothing like my mom's apple pie.  It did not taste like a Mrs. Smith's apple pie.  It did not taste like a McDonald's apple pie.  It didn't even taste like one of those Hostess Fruit Pies. It had no characteristics of pie or apples. I’m not sure how it could since it only has a teaspoon of apple brandy and no crust whatsoever.  In fairness, adding more apple brandy probably wouldn’t have helped anyway, since apple brandy tastes nothing like apples.

See?
Img: gosmellthecoffee.com

As far as flavor goes, other than the misleading name it wasn’t the worst drink we’ve tried, but it isn’t anything I would ever choose to drink again.  It mostly tasted like lemon juice and sweet vermouth. So if you like those flavors, we definitely recommend this drink.  If you want a drink that tastes like apple pie, you will have to wait and see if the Apple Pie No. 2 does a better job.  It will be a long wait, though, since there is no Apple Pie No. 2 in our book.  I guess they are still working on the recipe.  I would suggest they start by using none of the ingredients in the Apple Pie No 1.

Overall Rating for the Apple Pie No. 1





Taste: 2
Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 3
Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 25% Alcohol

Ingredients

0.75 oz Light Rum

1 tsp Apple Brandy

0.75 oz Sweet Vermouth

0.5 tsp Grenadine

1 tsp Lemon Juice

Drink 110: The Fifth of May



As Mexican as
apple pie

 ¡Hola! Today is Cinco de Mayo, the holiday where you eat fajitas and drink margaritas.  Unless you are actually Mexican, then you probably ignore it.  Since we are not Mexican, we wanted to celebrate this fine holiday in the TBIAW way.  Therefore we decided to drink a traditional Cinco de Mayo favorite, the English Highball. You may be saying to yourself, “Self, I don’t understand why the English Highball is a traditional Mexican drink.”  All I can say to you is that I’m sorry you don’t understand.

After Mrs. Bottle prepared the English Highball I was pretty excited.  It looked delicious, with the color and fizz of cream soda and a nice lemon twist.  Mrs. Bottle was not excited.  I asked her why and she said, “I know what the ingredients are.”  I took that as a bad sign..  It turns out that the English Highball is made from gin, brandy, sweet vermouth, and club soda (or ginger ale). Once I found out it had both sweet vermouth and club soda, I was no longer excited.

I'd like to solve, Pat
source

It turns out that the lack of excitement was justified; The English Highball is truly awful.  The sweet vermouth was the primary flavor with a slight brandy undertone.   As if that combination was not bad enough, the club soda just made it taste watered-down and even worse.  I think ginger ale might have improved the taste but in reality this drink was probably beyond help.  I have no idea why they love it so much in Mexico.  The next time I am there I will be sure to ask someone.

Overall Rating for the English Highball

Taste: 1

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Lemon twist away from a 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 9– 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

.75 oz Gin

.75 oz Brandy

.75 oz Sweet Vermouth

Club Soda or Ginger Ale

Drink 92: Refund Denied

Possibly subject to AMT

We decided to have the Income Tax Cocktail for April 15th, the day that Federal taxes are due.  Of course when made that decision we didn't realize that  this year's due date was pushed out to April 18th even though April 15th is a Friday.  You are probably thinking, "Why is the due date the 18th?"  Even if you aren't thinking that, it is a convenient technique for telling you why anyway.  It is because April 16th is a holiday in Washington DC called Emancipation Day.  Since the 16th is on Saturday, the holiday is being observed on Friday, which pushes tax day to Monday.  That is almost as confusing as the tax code itself. Well it would be if I use 9,000,000+ more words to describe it.  You might also be wondering, "What is Emancipation Day?" I'm so glad you asked. Emancipation Day commemorates the day that Abraham Lincoln signed the law that freed the slaves in Washington DC.  I have lived in the south most of my life and for some reason people around here don't celebrate Emancipation Day.  I'll have to look into why that is.

Even though this is now 3 days early, we still bring you the Income Tax Cocktail, a mix of gin, sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, orange juice, and bitters.   I'm still not sold on vermouth, but Mrs. Bottle seems to have grown accustomed to it. Thus she liked the drink better than I did. I thought had an unusual taste which I attributed to the combination of vermouths and bitters.  The vermouth taste was slight enough that I still thought the drink was acceptable, though. On the flip side, leaving out the vermouth and bitters would have made for a better albeit less complex drink.  Now if we could only have a better and less complex tax code.  Like vermouth, it would still leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall Rating for the Income Tax Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 2 – This is about the 13th drink that looks exactly the same

Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 28% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Gin
1.5 tsp Sweet Vermouth
1.5 tsp Dry Vermouth
1 dash Bitters
1 oz Orange Juice

Drinks 84, 85, 86: One of These Drinks Is Not Like the Others

We’re finally back and I promise this post will be worth the wait.  As long as your expectations are very low.  I’m not joking about that.  I think that having a couple of days with no posts has destroyed my rhythm. One of the reasons we decided to post a little less frequently was that it was getting hard to keep up with the daily posts, but in some ways it seems harder now.

We used an olive pick
for the cherry in the Carrol Cocktail,
Classed it up don't you think?

We are still trying to figure out the best way to structure the blog on the new non-daily basis.  Our initial thought was to keep having a drink per day and then bombard you with multiple reviews in a single post.  This way we can still work through the Mr. Boston guide and finish sometime in 2015.  As long as the world doesn’t end before then.  I know some may have thought the world may have ended on April 4 when there wasn’t a new post but the sun still came up.

It turns out that I’m not sure the multi-drink format is going to work, but here it is nonetheless.  We did think it might be fun for the drinks to be related in some way, so today we bring you the Bikini, the Hot Pants, and the Carrol Cocktail.  I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you what the mini theme is: Sexy Clothes.  And Carrol. It turns out we didn’t come up with that idea until after we had already had the Carrol Cocktail.  This idea really hasn’t been properly thought through.

Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny
Milky Sour Lemon Bikini

The Carrol Cocktail is a simple mix of brandy and sweet vermouth.   It mostly tasted like brandy which just a hint of funny-tasting vermouth. At least that’s what I think it tasted like, since we had it almost a week ago and I barely remember it.  Next time I should probably make a note or something. 

Next up is the Bikini, which has vodka, rum, milk, lemon juice, and sugar.  This one had a nice lemon flavor but it was just a hair too tart.  I was going to make a joke about hair and bikinis here, but that would be in poor taste.  Strangely, the drink had sugar in it instead of simple syrup.  Simple syrup probably would have been a little better since it would have mixed in more easily. The vodka and rum combined to provide a noticeable alcohol burn, but it conveniently had some milk to coat your resultant ulcer.

Remember what it was like before you tasted
the Hot Pants? You will wish you did

Finally we have the Hot Pants, a surprising combination of tequila, peppermint schnapps, grapefruit juice, and sugar.  In the 70’s Southwest Airlines had a commercial that said “Remember what it was like before Southwest Airlines? You didn't have hostesses in hot pants. Remember?“  I don’t remember that, but I do remember that before Southwest Airlines I didn’t have airplanes with sunroofs. Getting sucked out of a plane hole might be the preferable alternative to drinking a Hot Pants, though. I never would have guessed that tequila, peppermint, and grapefruit juice would not complement each other. 

Overall Rating for Carrol Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 – 32% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Brandy

0.75 oz Sweet Vermouth

           

Overall Rating for the Bikini

Taste: 3

Presentation: 2 – Doesn’t look like something I want to drink

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 26% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Vodka

1 oz Light Rum

0.5 oz Milk

1 oz Lemon Juice

1 tsp Sugar

Overall Rating for Hot Pants

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 25% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Tequila

0.5 oz Peppermint Schnapps

1 tbsp Grapefruit Juice

1 tsp Sugar

Day 79: How About a Nice Game of Chess?

Remember the movie WarGames? At first David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) is excited to break into the WOPR and play Global Thermonuclear War.  After he realizes that he almost causes World War III he throws everything away and hopes no one finds out it was him.  Then the WOPR calls him back.  At that point David realizes he is in big trouble.  No matter what he does he can’t get away. That is kind of like our relationship with vermouth.  I don’t want vermouth to call me back, but it keeps showing up.  That connection might be a stretch, but man I love WarGames and it was on TV last night.

Poor quality assurance

Anyway, today’s drink is the Bronx Cocktail, a mixture of gin, dry vermouth, sweet vermouth, and orange juice.  It is called the Bronx Cocktail because A-Rod has about four of these before every Yankees game. Actually that isn’t true.  As far as I know David Wells is the only Yankee to play while drunk. And A-Rod only admitted to using PEDs while with the Rangers.  There are no PEDs in the Bronx Cocktail so he is in the clear.

That orange is sucking in its gut for the photo

I am really distracted today and keep forgetting that the point of this thing is that vermouth tastes funny.  And not funny ha-ha, but funny weird. Unfortunately vermouth is a common ingredient in cocktails, so we will be having a lot of it.  Since the Bronx Cocktail has two kinds of vermouth, I was a little worried.  At first the weird vermouth flavor was a little off-putting in this drink.  After a few sips, though, it seemed okay.  We think we may be developing a taste for vermouth and that eventually we will appreciate it.  It actually went well with the orange juice and the gin making the Bronx Cocktail reasonably palatable.  It wasn’t great, but it was certainly more palatable than the Yankees. 

Overall Rating for the Bronx Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 25% alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Gin

.5 oz Dry Vermouth

.5 oz Sweet Vermouth

1 oz Orange Juice

Day 70: The Martini Supremacy



Beauty isn't everything

Mrs. Bottle here for my weekly dissertation and today’s libation is the Homestead Cocktail. This is a concoction that consists of gin and sweet vermouth with a garnish of an orange slice. Mr. Bottle and I both slightly liked it but there was an odd flavor, which we attributed to the vermouth. The Homestead Cocktail is a take on the traditional martini, but after flipping through Mr. Boston, there appear to be an abundance of these takes. I’m thinking that instead of blogging about each of these individually, maybe we should have martini night so we don’t have to figure out why having 0.25 ounces less gin and 0.25 ounces more vermouth makes a damn difference. This isn’t Top Martini.  I might not be able to discern the different flavors imparted by less juniper berry juice like Tom Colicchio but I could be Padma…

Speaking of Padma, I want to spend a few moments discussing the glass you see housing the Homestead Cocktail. It’s really quite lovely and elegant on the outside but a real pain to deal with. Why would we buy such a glass? You know how at Christmas time all the liquor stores sell those packages of your booze with fancy glasses you don’t really need? Well, one year we got a package of Bombay Sapphire gin and it included this glass. I got suckered in by the beauty, not realizing that the glass was as deep as Paris Hilton. You can hardly fill the saucer glass with any liquid before it’s in danger of spillage. But it sure does look good, right?

Let me rein it back in to discuss vermouth. Vermouth is fortified wine and there are actually three different basic types: extra dry, bianco/white, and sweet/red. I also just learned that sweet vermouth is drunk as an aperitif, straight up. Um, I think if you’ve tasted it straight up, as we do with each new liquor that we purchase, you’d be quick to disagree. According to Martini & Rossi, the makers of our sweet vermouth, their Martini & Rossi Rosso is “like a symphony” and “each herbal extract hits the palate in a different way to provide intrigue and taste”. Intrigue?  Like Jason Bourne? I thought it was just fortified wine. I guess it is mysterious why anyone would drink vermouth straight. Again, that’s why I’m not Tom Colicchio. I’m sure his palate would appreciate that intrigue.



How can I move without spilling this?

Overall Rating for the Homestead Cocktail

 

Taste: 2

Presentation: 5 – It’s hard to beat that shallow glass

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 – 37 % Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Gin

.75 oz Sweet Vermouth

Day 51: You Like Me, You Really Like Me



A Star Cocktail is Born

Mrs. Bottle here to cover today’s exciting events. In honor of the Oscars this evening, we guzzled down the contents that make up the Star Cocktail. Luckily for all eight of our followers, it will not take as long to read today’s blog as it will to watch tonight’s show. Reading it will be like jumping immediately to see the winners of the only awards anyone cares about: best picture, actor, actress, and supporting folk. Sadly, the content might be more akin to Best Sound Mixing because, again, there are only eight people interested.

The Star Cocktail consists of apple brandy, sweet vermouth, and bitters and is garnished with a twist of lemon. The apple brandy we used was the lower end Applejack by Laird’s which technically might not be a real apple brandy. However, I refused to pay $40 for a bottle of Calvados (fancy apple brandy) when I knew they would both taste like burning yuk. Surprisingly, Mr. Bottle and I both enjoyed the Star. It’s definitely strong – an all alcohol cocktail rolls like that. But I felt that the sweet vermouth and bitters helped smooth the flavors. Except maybe at the very end when the alcohol smacks you around.

Winner: Best Button During Academy Awards

Let me take a second to pull out my notes I scribbled on the way to the laptop to thank everyone for my lemon twist award. This garnish is stunning, just like Harry Winston diamonds on Sandra Bullock’s neck. Luckily for the twist, it is not married to a tattooed crazy person whose cheating ways will steal its lemonlight three days after the big win. And like the Oscar attendees I’d like to pat myself on the back for how awesome I am at making the twist. I’m sure that my excellent performance will bring awareness to the importance of twisting lemon peels everywhere. 

Ed. Note: Notice that Mrs. Bottle did not thank Mr. Bottle for making the twist possible

Did you know that you can pay $4.99 to get the “full Oscar experience”? Instead of experiencing the Oscars like never before, I recommend settling down with a tasty Star Cocktail and soon you won’t care that the song from Country Strong didn’t win Best Original Song (something from this movie is nominated?? Seriously?).

Overall Rating for the Star Cocktail

Taste: 3
Presentation: 5 – It was wearing a Bombay Sapphire glass with a stunning twist of lemon
Ease of Preparation: 3 – That garnish is hard- takes a TON of talent
Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 29% Alcohol

 

Ingredients

1 oz Apple Brandy

1 oz Sweet Vermouth

1 dash Bitters

Day 16: Sucks and the City

Cherry Bomb

Neither Mrs. Bottle nor I had heard of most of the drinks we have tried so far, so for today’s drink we decided to go with something classic, the Manhattan.  The Manhattan consists of whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters. It tastes more like it is made out of ass.

Okay, that may be a bit harsh (just like this drink…rim shot!).  We suspect that we didn’t like the Manhattan because we don’t like whiskey.  We both thought the drink mostly tasted and smelled like straight bourbon.  In order to test this, we poured a little Wild Turkey into a glass and tried it straight.  It turns out that the Manhattan is much better than straight bourbon, similar to the way a punch in the stomach is better than a punch in the junk.

I wondered how this drink became a classic so I did some research and it turns out the Manhattan was invented some time in the mid to late 1800’s.  Then it became clear to me: The people of the late 1800’s had no idea how to have fun.  A popular leisure activity of the time was hoop and stick.  Wee! No wonder this drink became popular.  It bested the current champion, Gin and Soot.

Time for a Game of Hoop and Stick

We still hope that we can develop a palate for whiskey.  Obviously a lot of people like it so it must be possible to enjoy it.   Until that happens, it will be tough for any of the whiskey drinks to earn a high score.

Luckily for us, there are at least two more variations on the Manhattan left for us to try.  We can hardly wait.

Overall Rating:

Taste: 2 – Only because we are giving the benefit of the doubt to whiskey fans.

Ease of Preparation: 4

Presentation: 4 – It has a cherry!

Drinks until blackout: 4 – A little over 35% alcohol

Ingredients:

2 oz Whiskey

.5 oz Sweet Vermouth

1 dash Angostura Bitters