Drink 127: Banana Fana Fo Oster

Our selection of a hurricane
glass instead of the prescribed
brandy snifter turned out to be
half-baked as well as half-full

Since it was a holiday yesterday, Mrs. Bottle and I decided to throw nutrition out the window and eat whatever we wanted.  To maximize our self-indulgence we decided to get a couple of milkshakes in the middle of the afternoon just because we could.  Then later that night we had our drink, the Banana Foster. The Banana Foster is made from spiced rum, banana liqueur, vanilla ice cream, and a banana.  It is kind of like an alcoholic banana milkshake.  It turns out that the prospect of having a milkshake when you still feel bloated from your previous milkshake is not the most appealing thing in the world.

While it looked like a milkshake on paper, it turned out to be more like thick room-temperature alcoholic banana milk.  In case you were wondering, that also isn’t that appealing.  Even though the Banana Foster is in the “Frozen Drinks” section of our Mr. Boston guide the drink wasn’t even cold, much less frozen.  I guess a couple of scoops of ice cream weren’t enough to cool down all of the other ingredients.  Maybe the drink used to be colder when this recipe was invented, but global warming climate change caused it to melt.  If I get time I will consult some scientists to determine the truth and then reject their findings if they do not match my political beliefs.

Flavor-wise, the drink was good as long as you are a banana fan.  It also has a dash of cinnamon on top which is always welcome.  If it had been a little bit colder, it probably would have rated a perfect five. On the other hand, if you are anti-banana, you probably won’t like the Banana Foster.  You also won’t like it that much if you want a strong drink, if you are lactose-intolerant, if you are allergic to potassium, or if your vessel was ever hijacked by Captain Morgan and you are still carrying a grudge. 

Also too warm

Overall Rating for the Banana Foster

Taste: 4

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 12 – 6% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Spiced Rum

0.5 oz Banana Liqueur

2 scoops Vanilla Ice Cream

1 Medium Banana, Sliced

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 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 124: The Daiquiri is a Lie

When I checked our drinking calendar (side note: I love that we have a drinking calendar) and saw that we were having a Daiquiri it seemed the perfect way to kick off the holiday weekend.  I called-in sick, pulled out our industrial-strength blender, picked some strawberries at the local patch, grabbed a jug of rum, and sat in the kitchen waiting for Mrs. Bottle to return from work so we could whip up a delicious frozen creation.  I was certain it would knock the socks off the ones we have at our favorite local restaurant, Applebees.

When Mrs. Bottle pulled a cocktail glass out of the freezer and started pouring rum, lime juice, and simple syrup into the cocktail shaker it left me shocked and saddened.  It turns out that a traditional Daiquiri has very little to do with the frozen drinks you get at Fat Tuesday or your favorite drive-through.  Inside Edition should investigate how this drink got bastardized from a simple cocktail into a sot's Slurpee instead of hassling people who have busy lives and enjoy the convenience of a to-go adult beverage.  I’m not sure it required much investigative journalism to deduce that some people who get buy drinks at a drive-through consume them while driving.  On the next Inside Edition: There is pornography available on the Internet!

Yes, this is what a
Daiquiri looks like



The classic Daiquiri was invented in the early 1900’s in Puerto Rico, at least according to this full page tourism ad disguised as an article.  According to the ad, a group of mining engineers were sitting around the bar when one of them said, “Caballeros Y amigos, we have been enjoying this delicious mixture for some time, but strange to admit the drink has no name. Don‘t you think it is about time something was done to extricate us from this sad predicament.”  I, for one, believe that quotation is 100% accurate and shows no signs of being completely fabricated.  I’m just relieved that they were extricated from their sad predicament.  I wonder which mine-related hardship was worse: Not having a name for their fruity rum drink, or spending 69 days trapped in a collapsed mine? The Chilean miners did have TV, so it is a tough call.

They look fine to me

The rating for the Daiquiri was also a tough call.  The flavor was very tart due to the ounce of lime juice.  It almost overwhelmed the rum and made the drink somewhat one-noted. On the other hand, Mrs. Bottle and I had no problem finishing it off, so it definitely wasn’t bad.  At one point I turned to Mrs. Bottle and said, “We have been enjoying this delicious mixture for some time, but it is strange to admit I think it could be better.  Don’t you think that if we added just a touch more rum or simple syrup it would counter the lime juice and extricate us from the sour taste?”  She agreed.

Overall Rating for the Daiquiri

Taste: 4 – Just barely squeaked past a 3
Presentation: 3
Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 .5 oz Light Rum
1 oz Lime Juice

1 tsp Superfine Sugar or Simple Syrup

Drink 123: Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

Do not be deceived
by its looks

We have a few things to discuss today, so let’s start with our latest drink, the Mamie Gilroy, a combination of Scotch whisky, lime juice, and ginger ale.  This was by far the best drink we’ve had that contained Scotch. Unfortunately that is like being the best Dane Cook joke.  In other words, it sucked.  Even the lime juice and ginger ale weren’t enough to save it.  The only redeeming thing about this drink is that we finally polished off our bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.  I think we will try a different brand for our next Scotch.  Feel free to suggest one in the comments.

Why the pot shots?

The Scotch was only the difference between this drink and our last drink the Mamie’s Sister, which used gin as its spirit.  There was actually one other difference: the Mamie’s Sister rated a perfect five.  Going from the Mamie’s Sister to the Mamie Gilroy is like having a date with Marcia Brady and thinking, “Man, she is cute, I wonder if she has any sisters” and then having a date with the New Jan Brady.  Next time I'll stick with Marcia. If replacing gin with Scotch can turn a drink from Marcia to Jan, it makes me wonder if there will ever be a drink with Scotch that tastes good.  I think a Venn diagram of cocktails probably looks like this:

Finding a drink that both contains Scotch and tastes good is like finding a white buffalo.  Or possibly a unicorn.  Or maybe a leprechaun riding a unicorn.  We won’t stop trying though, because that’s who we are.

This is probably more accurate

The other thing I would like to discuss is our new found “fame.”  As noted, we were the Foodista Featured Drink Blog of the Day yesterday.  We were expecting a lot of new visitors and we were genuinely excited about it.  They might not ever read more than the one featured post, but at least we would get some exposure. I spruced up the place, adding their nifty badge and updating the Top Drinks and the All Drinks lists.  We were ready for the onslaught. It didn’t quite work out that way, though.  The best I can tell from Blogger’s stats is that we got about a dozen clicks from Foodista.  A dozen!  I haven’t been this let down since Mrs. Bottle told me she wanted to do a downward dog with me and I found out it was yoga.

Reenactment
img: hotandhealthymom.com
Formerly known as fitmilfs.com

I can’t blame Foodista, though, since they did put us on their home page all day yesterday.  They also said, “we will also post a couple shout outs on our Twitter and Facebook pages.”  I was shocked that with 110,000+ Twitter followers and almost 25,000 Facebook fans that more people didn’t click through those shout outs.  Except the shout outs never occurred. Maybe I can blame them a little.  Either way, I am keeping the badge.

Overall Rating for the Mamie Gilroy

Taste: 2
Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 5
Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 12% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Scotch
0.5 oz Lime Juice
Ginger Ale

It Is An Honor Just To Be Nominated

We are very excited today to announce that we are the Foodista Featured Drink Blog of the Day for May 26, 2011.  This is the highest honor a web site can get.  They only award it to 365 drink related blogs per year.  If you add their featured Food Blog of the Day, TBIAW is one of only 730 featured Foodista blogs for 2011.  I’m just glad we got featured this year instead of next year, when instead of being one of the elite few, we would have been one of the masses of 732 featured blogs.

In all seriousness, we are pretty pumped about it and expect to get a lot more traffic today than we typically get.  I anticipate the effect on Blogger’s servers will be similar to that of Lady Gaga’s on Amazon.  If you have been with us since the beginning, you can probably stop reading now and think about how you knew us before we got famous. The rest of this post will mostly be pimping ourselves with an orgy of self-links (linksturbation?) since there will be a lot of new visitors today.



We, too, are Golden Gods now
Img: etawful.com

If you want to see the genesis of TBIAW I suggest you start here. Since that fateful day, we have reviewed 122 drinks from the Mr. Boston guide. Because you will probably not want to go back and read all the reviews, let me highlight a few. Our most popular post prior to today is our entry into the Stove Top stuffing “unpotatofest” contest.  I am very surprised we didn’t win with our carefully crafted submission.  We also got a lot of hits on our parody of Friday by Rebecca Black, although that was due more to inexplicably being the top search result for “We So Excited” on Bing.com than to the quality of our song.  Our recent post on the rapture was probably better before you got sick of reading about the rapture. If you’d like to read Mrs. Bottle’s take on a drink, you might want to try this one where she tries to blame me for something that is clearly her fault.  Finally, for whatever reason, Mrs. Bottle found this one informative.

In addition to the drink reviews, we’ve also done a few posts where we evaluate restaurant drinks, although it has been a while since we’ve done that due to a self-imposed austerity program and laziness. We’ve also done some taste tests, but my favorite is when we tested light beer.  You know, this is getting tiresome. You should probably just read all the posts (in order) and then you’ll eventually be back here.  We’ll wait.

Four delicious light beers ready for tasting

This whole Foodista featured blog of the day is a genius idea if you think about it.  They feature a blog each day and in return the blog will talk about Foodista and maybe even post a badge on the site that permanently links back to them.  This will generate more traffic for Foodista in the long run.  The joke is on them, though, since our blog is only read by a few of our friends.  I think I will steal the idea, though, and feature a few hidden gem web sites you may not know about.  Hopefully, those sites will post our badge and talk about us and lead people here.

This picture could be viewed as analogous to our concept

For our first ever “The Bottle is a Wonderland Featured Web Site of the Day” we present an up-and-coming web site called The Facebook.  It is a site that lets you list your interests and personal information where it can be mined so they make money and keep up with your friends.  It is sort of like Geocities, but I think it has more potential. I haven’t had time to create a badge though.  I hope that doesn’t keep them from talking us up.  The ball is in their court.

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 121: Drink Named Like a Lady

This looked a bit greener than the
picture shows. Mrs. Bottle thought
it looked like pea soup.

Let me get the boring drink review out of the way first. Once that’s over with we can talk about something funny, cool, and/or interesting.  The drink is the Shady Lady, a combination of tequila, melon liqueur, and grapefruit juice.  It was just kind of so-so, with a bit of an odd taste.  It could be that melon liqueur doesn’t really complement grapefruit juice.  Or it could be that months-old Donald Duck brand grapefruit juice is not the best.  Whatever the reason, it didn’t taste like something I would want to drink again and it was a relief to finish it.  It is also a relief that we are done with that section of today’s post and we can now continue with something more engaging.

Overall Rating for the Shady Lady

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Two garnishes?  That is a one point deduction

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 –  11% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Tequila

1 oz Melon Liqueur

4 oz Grapefruit Juice

Drink 120: Bulls on Parade

Are you like me? Do you think bullfighting is a noble sport of gallantry and art?  Do you think that the bulls are asking for it?  Do you like the way the toreador’s butt looks in his bedazzled pantaloons?  If you answered “yes” to either of the first two questions then you are not like me.  I think bullfighting is an anachronistic remnant of the past that should be forgotten, sort of like MTV. 

Do these pants make my butt look gored?
Img: totalprosports.com

I don’t like to see people get hurt, but I do think that the only good thing about bullfighting is when the bull wins.  In case you are wondering about that fellow with a bull’s horn in his butt, he wasn’t seriously hurt.  I suppose that’s a good thing, but I’m not sure the bull would agree.

Mrs. Bottle is now a pro at lemon twists

Another bull that might leave you feeling bad is the Brave Bull, but not because of its taste.  The coffee liqueur and tequila combined to make a refreshing drink.  I could see myself having a few of these.  The problem is that it comes in at just under 35% alcohol.  This makes the Brave Bull is one of the strongest drinks we’ve tried so far.  Drink too many and you might feel like you’ve been gored.   Your butt probably wouldn’t be as sore, though.  Probably.

Overall Rating for the Brave Bull

Taste: 5

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Twist of lemon held it to a 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 3– 35% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Tequila

1 oz Coffee liqueur

Drink 119: Oompa Loompa Doompadee Do

A pessimist might
call this glass half foam

Color me embarrassed.  I was fairly confident that yesterday’s entry would be our last.  Alas, the rapture didn’t happen as far as I know and everyone is still here. Mrs. Bottle is so upset that she didn’t get called away that she couldn’t bear to write her normal Sunday entry. Since I was thinking that we wouldn’t have a post anyway, I didn’t spend any time preparing or even thinking about what to write.  Therefore today will have less substance than normal.  That is actually a pretty big accomplishment.

Today we have a TBIAW rarity: The frozen cocktail.  It is called the Sweet-Tart and it made from vodka, cranberry juice, pineapple juice, and lime juice.  You put it all in a blender with some ice, mix it up, and drink it.  That’s the theory at least.  What we ended up with was a bit of very cold liquid drink and a lot of frozen meringue.  I thought the drink's flavor was good although it was a bit weak.  It was also disappointing that it turned out so foamy since the foam was pretty tough to drink.  That can probably be blamed more on our blender than the recipe, though.

Finally, I would like to congratulate the inventor of this drink for calling it the Sweet-Tart instead of SweeTarts, therefore avoiding a trademark infringement and the wrath of Willa Wonka.  He isn’t exactly known for his restraint.    Even John Yoo thinks that Wonka’s methods are borderline.   Of course  anyone who has ever tried to deal with Oompa Loompas would understand that Wonka's toughness is a necessity to maintain factory security.

He just didn't listen
Img: geekologie.com

Overall Rating for the Sweet-Tart

Taste: 4

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 9– 10% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Vodka

3 oz Cranberry Juice

3 oz Pineapple Juice

1 dash Lime Juice

Drink 118: If You Can Read This, You Were Left Behind

Looks the same
as yesterday but
tastes very different

I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but today is supposed to be the rapture. In case you are not familiar with Christian theology, the rapture is some kind of deal where the good people go meet Jesus and the rest of us fight to the death Thunderdome-style. At least that’s what I think happens, because it turns out I’m not too familiar with Christian theology.  Thus, I was a bit curious as to why today is predicted to be the rapture, so I did some extensive research and learned that it is because a radio host has proved it with math.

Here is the proof:

1. The number five equals "atonement", the number ten equals "completeness", and the number seventeen equals "heaven".
2. Christ is said to have hung on the cross on April 1, 33 AD. The time between April 1, 33 AD and April 1, 2011 is 1,978 years.
3. If 1,978 is multiplied by 365.2422 days (the number of days in a solar year, not to be confused with the lunar year), the result is 722,449.
4. The time between April 1 and May 21 is 51 days.
5. 51 added to 722,449 is 722,500.
6. (5 × 10 × 17)² or (atonement × completeness × heaven)² also equals 722,500

If you are like me, you can’t see a single flaw with that logic.  It is so sound that it allows me to ignore the fact the same person also predicted the world would end in 1994 and even wrote a book about it. He claims that he made a math mistake that time. I put it in my calculator and 722,449 + 51 does indeed equal 722,500.  Quod erat demonstrandum.

This prediction clearly was
not proved with math

Anyhoodle, the whole shebang happens at 6:00 PM local time so I still have a few more hours before I will need to break out my boomstick and start defending the Bottle Wonderland Estate from the rest of the heathens.  I’m not sure how much heart I will put into it though, because I will probably be lonely after Mrs. Bottle gets called up.  At least I won’t have to hear her singing “Snow” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers like she has been doing non-stop for the last week.  I try to find the bright side in things.

If she does get called up, this could be the end of TBIAW, as she does most of the work.  It is too bad that the probable last drink in our anthology is the Godchild (how fitting), a mix of amaretto, vodka, and cream. I thought it mostly tasted like burning and amaretto, which also happen to be the two flavors in Hell.  Mrs. Bottle thought it was pretty good, though.  Her only complaint was that it tasted a little too amaretto-y.  I’m sure when she is with the Lord that no drink will be too amaretto-y.

Of course if none of this happens I will feel quite the fool at 6:01 PM.

Overall Rating for the Godchild

Taste: 3
Presentation: 2
Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Rapture: 6 – 20% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Vodka
1 oz Amaretto
1 oz Heavy Cream

Drink 117: What's White and White and White All Over?

So white it
broke my camera

For the third time this week, we have a drink that features cream.  Some of you may recall that we already had a cream-themed week this year and you may think that we forgot.  I assure you we did not.  It just so happens that Mrs. Bottle opened a carton of cream and we hate to waste food so we are having a lot of creamy drinks this week.  Spoiler Alert: More cream tomorrow!

Today’s creamy concoction is the Peppermint Stick, a combination of peppermint schnapps, crème de cacao, and light cream (we used half and half).  This drink was very good, one of the better cream drinks we’ve had so far.  It had a nice combination of peppermint and chocolate.  The only downside is that mint-flavored drinks don’t really go with any other foods.  It certainly did not mesh well with the orange chicken I was eating at the time.  It might be good with some chocolate cake.

Artist Conception

The other quibble is the presentation.  The drink actually looked pretty nifty with its whiter-than-white color.  The problem is that a traditional peppermint stick has a red stripe and the Peppermint Stick had no stripe of any color.  They need to do something to add some red or change the name to something more appropriate.  I suggest The Albino Peppermint.

Overall Rating for the Peppermint Stick

Taste: 4

Presentation: 3 – Looks kind of cool but nothing like a peppermint stick

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 7– 16% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Peppermint Schnapps

1.5 oz Crème de Cacao

1 oz Light Cream

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

Drink 115: Brandy, You're a Fine Drink

I said "NO VUVUZELAS!"

Sound the trumpets and blast the other horns because Mrs. Bottle is here! Mr. Bottle needs a little reprieve from the blog, mainly due to the fact that his laptop appears to be broken and he’s in Mr. Fix-it mode. These are not happy times at the Bottle Wonderland Estate but I know he will prevail over the apparent crappy quality of our Steve Jobs product. So on to a description of today’s beverage. The highly regarded and rumored to be deadly in large quantities: Brandy Alexander (more horns please, but no vuvuzelas).

So the Brandy Alexander consists of crème de cacao (brown), brandy, and heavy cream. Because I am a numbers person as seen in my previous masterpiece Bad Cocktail Reason No. 1 (and 2 and 3 and 4), I have three points to make about this drink.

Point #1. This was definitely a tasty drink. But as you can see below, our recipe called for ½ ounce of each ingredient which makes for one tiny drink. My mother has regaled me many times with the story of how one night she drank herself silly on this drink when I was but a young pup and she now refuses to touch them. If she drank the recipe below, she must have had about 22.

Keep in mind that this
glass is actually tiny

Point #2. Hopefully nobody will fault us, but instead of heavy cream, we used fat free half and half. I had a coupon so go ahead and shoot me.

Point  #3. According to Wikipedia, the Brandy Alexander is made with cognac and crème de cacao. It was supposedly made popular in the early 20^th century “at the time of the wedding of Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood and Viscount Lascelles, in London.” Super fascinating. But the part that sticks out to me is the word “cognac”. You see, I have a friend who doesn’t seem to understand that brandy and cognac are the same thing. I was at a happy hour when I kept saying “brandy” and this person would say “cognac” as if I needed correcting. Let me just say that I never need correcting. Ever. I hope Mr. Bottle is also reading this.

So go ahead and drink your Cognac Alexander but you may want to up the amounts so you don’t have to spend your entire night making your drinks.

Overall Rating for the Brandy Alexander

Taste: 4
Presentation: 2 – Tiny beyond belief
Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

½ oz Crème de cacao (brown)
½ oz Brandy
½ oz Heavy cream