Drink 193: A Little Dog'll Do Ya

We still got it

Today we have the Salty Dog, a combination of gin and grapefruit juice.  It is essentially a Greyhound with a salted glass.  The Greyhound earned a coveted four glass rating, but the Salty Dog scores a perfect five.  Why the difference?  I'm glad I asked.  Let's quickly examine the three key differences between our Greyhound and our Salty Dog:

1. The salted rim.  Surprisingly, this made the drink a bit saltier than it would have been otherwise. It actually did seem to complement the tartness of the grapefruit juice, though. At least until the salt was all licked away. 

2. The recipe.  The recipe we used for the Greyhound called for 5 ounces of grapefruit juice and 1.5 ounces of gin.  The recipe we used for the Salty Dog used 4 ounces of grapefruit juice and 2 ounces of gin.  Maybe more gin=more deliciousness? You are probably thinking that it is odd that Mr. Boston would use different proportions for what is essentially the same drink.  That’s because you forgot that this is the rebooted alternate universe TBIAW where we are throwing off the self-imposed shackles of our prior incarnation.  So instead of Mr. Boston, we used a recipe we found on the liquor bottle. This brings us to…



Calls for lime wedge,
picture has lime wheel

3. The gin. I’m not sure what gin we used when we tried the Greyhound, but it was probably Seagram’s, our standard "mixed drink" gin.  For the Salty Dog we used Bluecoat American Dry Gin since that is where we got the recipe.  The Bluecoat is a step up in price, flavor, and alcohol content (94 proof vs. 80 proof) from Seagram’s.  Maybe one of those factors enhanced the drink.  If I had to chose, it would probably be the price difference.

Since the Bluecoat is a new addition to the Estate’s liquor collection it deserves closer examination.  It was acquired as Christmas gift from Mrs. Bottle to me (she really does know me well).  I’m pretty sure she chose it based on its pretty blue bottle and the fact that it uses a cork instead of a screw-top.  Everyone knows cork=delicious.

Pretty!

 Regardless of her selection methodology, the choice was a good one.  It has its own distinct and yummy flavor. Out of our high-end gins of Bombay Sapphire, Tanqueray 10, and Hendrick’s it reminded me the most of the Bombay Sapphire.  Mrs. Bottle and I are planning a blind gin taste test in the near future so we can really determine which is best. I will have more to say about Bluecoat then.  Potential topics include web sites that don’t work properly in the world’s most popular browser, whether copper pots make better gin or just attract copper thieves, and the pros and cons of using water from the Schuylkill River in distilled spirits.

Overall Rating for the Salty Dog

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4 – A salted rim away from a 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 16% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Gin

4 oz Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice

Drink 192: Nog Day Afternoon

As a special holiday gift, today’s post comes in poem form.

Twas the day before Xmas and I read through our blog,

It’s been nigh a year since we first tried eggnog.

Not only that, as some did point out,

With less frequency come the drinks that we tout.

Screw this, it will take me all day to make a bunch of rhymes.  Our content can stand on its own without resorting to gimmicks.  These so-called parodies are often forced and awkwardly worded anyway.  It is sort of like the grammatical gyrations you have to go through to avoid ending a sentence in a preposition.  This is an example of the type of sentence to which I refer.  A friend once taught me a simple solution to this non-problem: Just add the word “a-hole” to the end of your sentence and it no longer causes heartache to any nearby wannabe English teachers.

Wrong: These aren't the droids you're looking for.

Right: These aren't the droids you're looking for, a-hole.

These aren't the grammar rules for which you are looking

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the real issue: Why do we use so many colons in our posts?  No, that isn’t it, although it is a legitimate issue.  The real issue is the seeming abandonment of  TBIAW.  While it might appear that Mrs. Bottle and I had given up, we haven’t.  We are just extremely lazy.  It turned out we were no longer willing to take the time to do a bunch of work without remuneration.  It also turned out that we are tired of our legions of fans clamoring for fresh posts so here we are.

We are rebooting TBIAW and expect it to be a smashing success.  Who among us hasn’t appreciated the recent reboots of Star Trek, Batman, James Bond, and Superman?  Well maybe not Superman, but you get the idea.  Reboots are so popular that they are rebooting Spiderman only 5 years after the last film from the previous incarnation.  I am looking forward to the reboot of the yet to be released Hunger Games. We rebooting up in here so much you’d think we’re running Windows ME. We aren’t quite sure what rebooting our blog entails, but I can tell you that it will be spectacular.

The rebooted TBIAW includes
low-resolution poor color balanced
photos taken with an iPod

In order to get into the reboot (and holiday) spirit, today we once again review eggnog. This time instead of the Southern Comfort nog, we had Organic Valley Organic Eggnong.   At first I thought the carton said that it was “orgasmic” eggnog.  I didn’t know if an orgasm was the cause or the effect of the cartoned cream and it wasn’t something I was willing to find out (although Orgasmic Valley sounds like a fun place to live). Fortunately I soon realized my mistake and poured myself a glass of eggy goodness.  And then I poured a ton of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum in there.  Maybe a bit too much in my over-excitement about our reboot.  It was a bit like drinking creamed gasoline.  I added a bit more of the nog after I made some room in the glass and then it was quite delicious.  After I realized that a puny 10% alcohol content had me crying like a little girl I understood just out of practice I had become.

Overall Rating for Eggnog

Taste: 4

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 10% Alcohol

Ingredients

5.25 oz Eggnog

2 oz Captain Morgan Spiced Rum