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 91: Jupiter Is Not Aligned With Mars

The dawning of the taste of a sucky drink

You’ve probably heard about the toddler who was served a margarita instead of apple juice at an Applebee’s recently.  You may not have heard about the other toddler who was served sangria instead of orange juice at an Olive Garden two weeks ago.  I don’t think this was a coincidence. I fear it is actually an Al-Qaeda plot to keep our youth perpetually inebriated. Or it could just be that the service is poor at crap restaurants.  Either way we are in big trouble.  While American pre-schoolers are getting drunk, Chinese kids are already smoking, presumably on their way to an apparel factory to hone their work ethic.

Surprisingly, a lawsuit has already been filed in the Applebee’s case.  Among the suit’s claims is that the toddler suffered hangover symptoms for "for a period of days after the incident”.    The kid is 15 months old.  I thought you were supposed to recover from a hangover quickly when you are young.  If it takes him days to recover when he is 15 months old, it is definitely going to be a problem when he is 480 months old.  Trust me.  Maybe he needs some hair of the dog.  The parents should take him to a TGIFriday’s, order him a grape juice, and hope the kid gets served a Jägerbomb by "mistake".

The real problem here is these sweet drinks that the kids end up slurping down.  If they were drinking something sour or horrible in some other way they probably would stop before they got too drunk.  Of course even a 15 month old might want to pound some shots if his play date needed to be livened up.  Never mind that, though.  The point is that this type of mix-up would never happen with the Aquarius, our latest beverage.  The Aquarius is made from Scotch whisky, cherry brandy, and cranberry juice.   I guarantee that if you give this drink to anyone without ageusia they would fyucker at a minimum and possibly spit it on you. Fyucker is a word I just invented that means “to make the ‘who farted?’ face.”  Until now, this was known as “Beamering”. 







A minor fyucker
Image: bleacherreport.com



I can’t really describe how the Aquarius tasted.  Mrs. Bottle exclaimed “this is horrible” when she tried it.  I could only fyucker.   We’ve already established that Scotch sucks.  I’m starting to believe that cherry brandy sucks as well. We know that two wrongs don’t make a right and now we know that two sucks don’t make a right, either.

Overall Rating for Aquarius

Taste: 2

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 24% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Scotch Whisky

0.5 oz Cherry Brandy

1 oz Cranberry Juice

Day 74: Taste My Finger

Drink looks like a lady (finger)

Today we present the Lady Finger, a combination of gin, kirschwasser, and cherry brandy.  This is the third drink we’ve made using kirschwasser but the first one that actually called for it. We decided to have it because Mrs. Bottle is still annoyed by the confusion caused by the similarities in cherry brandy, maraschino liqueur, and kirschwasser and she was determined to find a drink that actually called for kirschwasser.  In an unrelated note, this paragraph just set the Guinness World Record for the most mentions of kirschwasser.

When I hear the term lady finger, the first thing I think of is yummy dessert.  When I think of yummy desserts, the first thing I think of isn’t an Easy-Bake Oven, but it might be in the first 100 things I think if.  Probably not, but I had to have some way to segue into this next bit.  In case you don’t know what an Easy-Bake Oven is, it is a toy oven that uses a 100 watt light bulb to bake little cakes.  I never had one as a child, probably because I was a boy when I was a child.  Some might say I am still a boy, but those people are doo-doo heads.  I did have a set of dishes I played with, though, so I know my parents raised me in a gender-neutral way.  That probably explains why I watch Glee. 

I was always a little jealous of anyone who had an Easy-Bake Oven.  It was not because I wanted to bake a cake. It was because I wanted to eat a cake because I liked to eat cakes.  In fact I still like to eat cakes but now I can just buy a cake if I want one.  Back then I had no money so baking and eating a cake was an attractive option.  Sadly, children today may not have that opportunity.  Starting in 2012, you will no longer be able to purchase a 100 watt bulb.  Since that is the heating element in an Easy-Bake Oven,  this will instantly make 50 years’ worth of Easy-Bake ovens obsolete.  I am sure Al Gore did not understand this particular unintended consequence of the light bulb ban.

This one doesn't use a light bulb,
but we will ignore that inconvenient truth
Image:msn.com

Look, I am as green as the next guy. Mrs. Bottle and I have replaced most of the Bottle Wonderland Estate’s light bulbs with compact florescent lights.  We did this even though our kitchen is now dark for five minutes after we turn on the switch.  We keep the thermostat at 68 in the winter and 80 in the summer even though this means I wear a hoodie from mid-September until mid-May.  I wear a Speedo from June-August, not just because I want to, but also because it is hot in our house. My car gets an eco-friendly 16 MPG and we recycle everything.  What I am trying to say is that we get it.  Incandescent bulbs are bad.  But now we have to give up crappy cakes baked by 6 year olds? That is asking for too much sacrifice.

It was also a sacrifice to drink the Lady Finger just so 8 or 10 people could read this stupid blog.  The drink sucked and we did not enjoy it.  It was cloyingly sweet due to the cherry brandy.  With cherry brandy, much like peach schnapps and Irish cream, a little goes a long way.  This went too far.  That lady should keep her finger to herself.

Overall Rating for the Lady Finger

Taste: 2

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 – 37% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Gin

1 oz Kirschwasser

1 oz Cherry Brandy

Day 69: Blog Post for Day 69

Caption for Polynesian Cocktail Picture

The Polynesian Cocktail is made from vodka, cherry brandy, and lime juice.  The origins of this drink remain unclear, but it was probably born during the tiki bar craze in the 40’s and 50’s.  During this time many classic drinks such as the Mai Tai and Zombie were invented.  These drinks usually have exotic recipes and frequently feature rum and tropical juices.  You may have noticed that the Polynesian Coktail is not as famous.  There are a few reasons for this.  The first is that it contains neither rum nor tropical juices, the two key components of a tiki drink.  A lime might qualify as tropical, but it is hardly exotic.  How many exotic fruit juices come in a plastic container in the shape of the fruit?

Another fame-limiting aspect of the Polynesian Cocktail is the name.  It just isn’t very creative.  Couldn’t they have called it the Tonga Donga or the Tuvalutti Frutti?  I guarantee that if you ordered a Tonga Donga that you would remember it.  Really, almost anything is better than Polynesian Cocktail.  I wonder if the original name was Regional Drink and Polynesian Cocktail seemed like a big step up. Between the non-tropical ingredients and the boring name I think the bartender was having an off day when he came up with this. I’m not sure he even understood the concept of a tiki drink.



Can of Beer
Image: http://bit.ly/b07xpf

Actually, I’m not really sold on any drink that has “cocktail” as part of the name, either.   We have had a string of them lately. In addition to the Polynesian Cocktail, in the last few days we’ve had the Quaker’s Cocktail and the Olympic Cocktail, too.  Tomorrow’s drink is the Homestead Cocktail.   Do they really have to tell us that a drink is a cocktail?  Usually when I am served something in a cocktail glass and it has tons of alcohol I am able to deduce that it is a cocktail all by myself.

The final, and probably most important, reason that the Polynesian Cocktail did not become famous is the taste. It was not good.  I actually didn’t find it that bad, but Mrs. Bottle really disliked it.  It was also the rare drink where she felt that the sugar-rimmed glass actually made the taste worse.  To me it tasted mostly like the cherry brandy with a bit of lemon.   The sugar didn’t make any difference to me either way which is unusual because I love sugar.  If the sugar does nothing then we are probably in trouble.  Regardless, I am sure that this drink is not as good as a Tonga Donga.

Overall Rating for the Polynesian Cocktail

Taste: 2

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 3 – Sugar rim always costs a point

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 26 % Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka

.75 oz Cherry Brandy

.75 oz Lime Juice

Day 59.1: Lake & Palmer Got Left Out, Too.



Looks and tastes like cherries

Today we have some good news and some bad news.  The bad news is that we will not be reviewing today’s scheduled drink, the Emerson.  Had we been reviewing the Emerson, we would have mentioned that it is a combination of gin, sweet vermouth, lime juice, and maraschino liqueur.   We planned on using Heering's Cherry Liqueur as our maraschino liqueur. After yesterday’s debacle, I began to wonder if that was going to be the right ingredient for the job.  I did a little research and discovered that it was not;  maraschino liqueur and cherry liqueur are not the same thing. Why would they be? After all maraschino is "bittersweet, clear liqueur flavored with Marasca cherries." How stupid for us to assume that cherry liqueur would be the same as cherry liqueur.



Cherry something

The good news is that the Heering web site says that their liqueur is the “original ‘Cherry Brandy’”. Cherry brandy is exactly what we needed yesterday to properly make the Cherry Sling.  So for the first time in TBIAW history we are going to re-test a drink. Today we have the Cherry Sling with “cherry brandy” instead of the incorrect ingredient we used yesterday, cherry brandy.

Even though we are excited to correct our mistake, we are still a little miffed about these product labels.  We can possibly blame ourselves for not knowing that maraschino liqueur and cherry liqueur are not the same thing.  On the other hand I’m not sure how we could have known that something with “The Original Cherry Liqueur” on the label is actually “cherry brandy” and something that says “brandy distilled only from a mash of pure Oregon and Washington cherries” isn’t cherry brandy.  In other news, we also learned that up is now down and The Time is not the worst song in recent memory. 
 

Queen Margrethe is the Queen of Denmark





Copenhagen, Denmark.  It is in Denmark.



That isn’t the end of the problems with the Heering liqueur label, though.  Clearly the bottle wants to give the impression of being Danish. On the label is a seal from Margrethe, the Queen of Denmark.  It also says “Peter F. Heering Copenhagen” and “Peter F. Heering Denmark”.  They really aren't being too subtle. I'm surprised it doesn't come in a Viking helmet made of Lego.  Now let’s take a peek at the back of the bottle:

Product of Sweden, eh?   Once again, TBIAW reveals a member of the global New Wold Order conspiracy.  I have to say I wasn't as shocked as I was two months ago when we discovered that “Italian” Galliano is made in Holland.  If Finlandia Vodka turns out to made in Poland I don’t know who I'll turn to.

As far as the drink itself, the "cherry brandy" made a huge difference compared to the cherry brandy.  We tried it straight first, as is our custom with new spirits.  It was fairly viscous with a sweet cherry taste.  Like many liqueurs, it had a strong similarity to cough medicine.  In the Cherry Sling that sweet thinkness really balanced out the lemon juice nicely and turned what was something horrible into something quite nice.  Well, I thought it was nice, Mrs. Bottle thought it still sucked.

Overall Rating for the Cherry Sling

Taste: 3 – I thought it was a 4, but Mrs. Bottle didn’t like it at all

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 –  16% alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Cherry-Flavored Brandy

1 oz Lemon Juice

Day 59: Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch Cherry Bombed

 

Doesn't even look cherry

The Cherry Sling* is supposed to be made with cherry-flavored brandy and lemon juice. Instead of cherry-flavored brandy we used Kirsch, which is brandy distilled from cherries.  We have a great book called The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Wine, Beer, Spirits, and Liqueur and it says “confusingly, Kirsch is not related to cherry brandy.”  Yes, that is confusing that a product that is brandy distilled from cherries is not cherry brandy.  I am already easily confused, so I don’t need foodstuffs out there trying to intentionally trip me up.  At least we aren’t the only ones confused by it.

It turns out that using Kirsch instead of cherry-flavored brandy was a big mistake. Kirsch is very strong and doesn’t really have much cherry flavor (if any).  Cherry-flavored brandy is a super-sweet liqueur that has strong cherry flavor.  *Because of that, the drink we made wasn’t really a Cherry Sling but something much worse.  It really was truly horrible.  The drink was 1/3 lemon juice with no sweet elements at all to balance it.  The two ounces of 80-proof Kirsch only added some burn.  I am down with sweet burning, but sour burning is no fun.

No idea why we thought this was cherry brandy

This is actually the second time we used Kirsch in a drink that probably was supposed to use the other stuff.  In that case it worked out, but it might have been better if we had used the cherry brandy instead. This is an embarrassing mistake for TBIAW but I can’t promise we won’t make similar ones in the future.  Despite our outward appearance, we are only human. I don’t really have much else to say other than to look out for these trick foods.  It turns out that spotted dick isn’t something you always have to avoid.

Overall Rating for the Cherry Sling*

Taste: 1

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: -1 due to confusing ingredients

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 27% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Cherry-flavored Brandy

1 oz Lemon Juice

Day 39: A Delicacy of Jimmies Robed in Frothy Cream



This looks a lot like yesterday's but
this one isn't terrible

It is Valentine’s Day and it is also the seventh and final day of Romance Week.  Today’s drink is the Lover’s Kiss, a cordial made with amaretto, cherry brandy, crème de cocoa (dark), and cream. Before we launched this blog I didn’t know there was such a thing as crème de cocoa so I was doubly surprised to learn that there were two different kinds.  They are the Ebony and Ivory of liqueurs.  The dark one turned out to be much thicker than the white and it had a richer chocolate flavor.  I am still talking about crème de cocoa.

The Lover’s Kiss drink also features cherry brandy and we used Clear Creek Distillery's Kirschwasser. According to their web site it has a "feline delicacy of cherry flavor robed in manageable spirit that plays like a string quartet".  First off, I don't know what the hell that even means.  Secondly, if I saw "feline delicacy" on a menu, I would reconsider where I chose to eat.  Finally, my feline isn't that delicate, unless pooping on the floor counts as delicate.  Where I come from, we consider it indelicate.  Regardless, we tried the Kirschwasser  straight and did not think it had a feline delicacy.   It mostly tasted like burning.

After tasting the Kirschwasser we had low expectations for this drink, but we were pleasantly surprised.  It had a nice chocolate flavor with a hint of cherry.  I don't know if the cherry flavor came from the Kirschwasser or from excess juice from the cherry garnish but either way it was a nice touch.  The maraschino cherry symbolizes the bright red lips of your lover, if your lover is a harlot. For the second straight night, our drink was topped with the widely acknowledged two most romantic foods: whipped cream and chocolate jimmies. Serve it in a champagne flute and your partner will know you have class.



I didn't have an idea for a second photo
so here is a bunny with a pancake on its head

 Originally I was going to recap the Romance Week 2011 drinks but considering that we already have a list, that would be repetitive.  Then I thought I could give some last minute romance tips, but all I really know is that you should listen to your partner, show her that you are thinking about her, and don't be an ass.  When are an ass anyway, apologize.  There is probably better advice, but that's all I got.  Anyway, by the time Valentine’s Day rolls around I would imagine most people are tired of reading romance tips the same way I am tired of stories about how busy the day is for florists, the magical powers of chocolate, or 10 ideas for a romantic gift.  It is the same crap recycled year after year by lazy writers.

We promise not to use those tactics during Romance Week 2012.

Overall Rating for the Lover’s Kiss

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 3 - It is hard to get whipped cream into a champagne flute

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 18% alcohol

Romance Score: 4

Ingredients

.5 oz Amaretto

.5 oz Cherry-flavored Brandy

.5 oz Crème de Cocoa (Brown)

1 oz cream