Drink 191: I Did Not Dealt It



At least it was free.



I can smell your fart.  Fast Five is playing on the tiny screen in front of me and I can smell your fart.  I was beginning to doze off to the dulcet tones of Vin Diesel delivering lines as he tears towards a cliff in his 1966 Corvette Grand Sport but thanks to your malodorous cloud I am still awake. We are somewhere over the North Atlantic and I am in the type of haze caused by two free beers and an Advil PM. It is either 3:30 AM or 9:30 PM depending on whether you have adjusted your watch yet.   And you farted.  And I smelt it.





View of Paris? from the window.
Might have missed this
 without the fart



What the hell is wrong with you?  Are you lazy or vindictive?  I already know the answer: “Yes.” There is a bathroom no more than 10 feet from your seat unless you managed to throw your fart from the back of the cabin.  Go down the stairs and fart up a storm.  Please. On this plane the bathrooms are even downstairs so you can rip away without detection.  Instead, you decided to release your intestinal gas right in your seat and now I, along with the rest of the passengers in the vicinity, am breathing your micropoopballs.  Gross.   Luckily for Mrs. Bottle she slept through it.  Actually, there are times in the middle of the night when I’m glad she has that ability.



On the bright side I will now get to see more of Paul Walker and The Rock Dwayne Johnson driving fast and blowing crap up.  That really translates well on a 320x240 screen with headphones with one ear intermittently cutting out.  All the while smelling your fart.  Did you eat a cabbage and broccoli salad before the flight?  Next time, please try some of these tips.  I recommend asking the flight attendant to move you to an empty corner of the plane.  That should also enhance you chances of getting a date with her later.  They love honesty.

Yep, that's what happened.



Not purple.



Since we are discussing honesty I feel obligated to let you know that today’s drink the Purple Pancho has a misleading name.  It is not purple at all.  It is kind of teal which is pretty far from purple unless you are talking about proximity on the Charlotte Hornets’ uniforms.  The drink is a combination of tequila, blue Curaçao, sloe gin, lime juice, simple syrup, and lemon juice.  Once you get over the confusion about the name, the taste is pretty good.  It is essentially a slightly sweeter Margarita.  I couldn’t really detect the sloe gin other than a slight prune-y  bouquet which would have been extremely welcome on my flight.  Mrs. Bottle found the drink a little too sweet but I had no problem with it other than the name.  I am going to rename it the Teal-a Tequila though.

Overall Rating for the Purple Pancho

Taste: 4

Presentation: 0

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Tequila

0.5 oz Blue Curaçao

0.5 oz Sloe Gin

2 oz Lime Juice

1 oz Lemon Juice

1 oz Simple Syrup

Drink 179: Do Youngsters Understand the Phrase "Mailing It In"?

Normally it takes me about an hour to write a TBIAW entry.  That includes the photograph, research (those Google searches don’t run by themselves), proofreeding, and about 20-45 minutes of checking Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Renren, Myspace, Orkut, Badoo, Cougarlife, and Frühstückstreff.  Tonight I am in a bit of a hurry so I am going to try to keep it quick, which isn’t a problem for me.

No time for a caption

Our drink is the Blue Maragarita and it is composed of tequila, blue Curaçao and lime juice.   I was excited because Mrs. Bottle let us use the blue Curaçao instead of sending us on a Wumpus hunt like she did for our previous drink. It is a good thing, too, because the blue Curaçao is the only difference between this drink and the regular Margarita, which we have already reviewed.  Since we have already reviewed it, there isn’t much point in talking about this one.  It is left as an exercise for the reader to figure why this one gets a five while the other one only got a four even though they tasted the same.

Overall Rating for the Blue Margarita

Taste: 5

Presentation: 4 – Needed a garnish

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Had to salt a rim

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 24% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Tequila

0.5 oz blue Curaçao

1 oz Lime Juice

Drink 178: Marmalade? Dead! Niedermeyer? Dead!

Today we have the Marmalade, a drink made from Curaçao and tonic water.  We didn’t use our blue Curaçao because Mrs. Bottle didn’t want to use it.  I’m not quite sure why she didn’t want to use Curaçao in a drink that called for Curaçao but sometimes it is better to just let these things go. Trust me on this.

Does not look like marmalade

We’ve discussed a bit in the past that Curaçao tastes like oranges even though genuine Curaçao is made with larahas instead of oranges. The only reason I bring this up now is because I am trying to set the world record for the most mentions of Curaçao in one blog post. Curaçao. Since we didn’t have any non-blue Curaçao we had to decide what to use as a substitute. Our choices were triple sec, Cointreau, and Grand Marnier.  I wanted to go with Cointreau since its pronunciation is an inscrutable as Curaçao’s (here’s how not to say it) but Mrs. Bottle insisted we research to find the best option.  It was at this point when I really wanted to suggest we just use our actual bottle of Curaçao but thought better of it.  The only reason I feel safe even writing that is because Mrs. Bottle is in a different state right now.

According to Wikipedia, the original name for Cointreau was "Curaçao Blanco Triple Sec" so it was looking promising as a substitute.  Then I found this guy who says “Cointreau is probably the most recognized brand of orange liqueur in the triple sec style, and Grand Marnier, despite being French, is more in line with the Dutch curacao style”.  As you probably know, a random web site carries almost as much weight as a Wikipedia article so I was now confused about the viability of Cointreau as compared to Grand Marnier as a Curaçao substitute.  Mrs. Bottle then consulted our Ultimate Encyclopedia of Wine, Beer, Spirits, and Liqueurs which said that Grand Marnier was the closest to a genuine Curaçao but that it was a “finer” product.  We immediately ruled out the Grand Marnier.  Not because it is too fine, but because that stuff is spendy.

Does look like marmalade
Clearly did not use blue Curaçao either
Img 

At this point we just threw up our hands and decided to go with our el-cheapo triple sec.  I’m pretty sure there isn’t a whole lot of difference in any of these liqueurs other than marketing anyway.  Maybe we need to do an orange liqueur taste-test.  Regardless, the drink was decent but nothing special.  Mrs. Bottle kept saying she only tasted the tonic water, but I thought it tasted like an orange soda that was way past its expiration date.  I think it may have tasted better if it has been blue.

Overall Rating for the Marmalade

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Had to slice an orange

Drinks Until Blackout: 12 – 6.5% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Curaçao

4 oz Tonic Water

* Please no e-mails, we know it is Marmalard in Animal House

Drink 175: Are You Effen Kidding Me?

Beauty is only skin deep

If I told you we had a drink made from vodka, blue Curaçao, and lemonade, you would probably think that it would be tasty.  We certainly did.  How could a drink with those ingredients possibly be bad?  Well, somehow the Blue Lemonade managed to pull it off.  It didn’t really taste like lemonade even though it had four ounces of the stuff.  It didn’t taste much like blue Curaçao either.  It pretty much tasted like vodka.  Nothing against vodka, but when I have a drink with “lemonade” right in the name I think that it should taste like lemonade. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first drink that failed to hurdle that seemingly low bar.

We suspected the problem might lie in our choice of ingredients.  We immediately ruled out the blue Curaçao since it is the same stuff we’ve been using for our other blue drinks and it hasn’t yet caused any problems.  Our next suspect was the lemonade.  Mrs. Bottle makes all of our pitchers of lemonade and she thought maybe she had made a bad batch.  I found that unlikely since she hand-squeezes three dozen fresh lemons for each batch and sweetens it with sugar cane grown right in the back yard.  Ed Note: I have just been informed that Mrs. Bottle actually just uses Crystal Light.  She tasted the lemonade and proclaimed it lemonadey so we crossed it off the list.

That left us with the vodka.  In this case we used Happy Vodka. Since it was the winner of our vodka taste test we were confident it was fine.  We then double checked the recipe and saw that it specifically called for Effen vodka.  We aren't sure why Mr. Boston would brand-whore and we found it hard to believe that using Effen vodka would make that much difference in the drink flavor. We headed over to the Effen web site to learn more.  The first thing I learned is that EFFEN loves using capital letters.  The second thing I learned was that when you use EFFEN, “you tell those around you that you prefer products that emphasize design and balance form and function.”  These people are also known as Apple fanbois.  Also, that sentence could use some work.

Also emphasizes design

It is obvious from our photographs and the overall beauty of TBIAW that design is a priority in our lives.  Anyone who has seen me shirtless knows that I also balance form and function.  That said, I don’t really know what design and form have to do with vodka.  Function, sure.  It is obvious that the function of vodka is to get you buzzed.  Do you really need EFFEN to do that?  Probably not.  I've never tried it though so maybe it is just that good.  I just don't EFFEN know.

Overall Rating for the Blue Lemonade

 Taste: 2

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackouts: 9 – 12% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka – Use EFFEN only.  It is written.

0.75 oz Blue Curaçao

4 oz Lemonade

Drink 153: Drinkee Doodle Dandy

TBIAW is pretty US-centric, which makes sense since that’s where the Bottle Wonderland Estate is located.  It is not intended to be a slight in any way to other countries, though.  We love all countries and the people in those countries, although we are keeping a very close eye on you, Moldova.  Even with our pro-US stance, we still attract visitors from around the world, as you can see here:

Unfortunately this map does not show our
tremendous popularity in Antarctica

You can also see that we don’t get many readers from the southern hemisphere.  That’s because their Internet runs in the opposite direction and they have a hard time getting here. 

For those visitors from other lands who don’t already know, today is the 4^th of July, also known here in the US as Independence Day. This is when we celebrate our country’s freedom by eating a lot of grilled meat, drinking delicious mass-produced American beer, and shooting off fireworks.  Coincidentally, that is also how we celebrate Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Black History Month.

To help celebrate we bring you today’s drink the 4^th of July Tooter, a combination of grenadine (derived from the French word for pomegranate), vodka (from Russia), and blue Curaçao (named after a foreign country). On first glance, you might think those ingredients belong in some effete America hater’s cocktail, but if you reflect deeply on it (an American strength) you can clearly see that they represent the great melting pot of our nation.  If you can’t see that, you should go back to Canada where you belong.

The ingredients also just happen to be red, white, and blue, the colors of Old Glory.  The idea is to float the ingredients to make a red, white, and blue shooter. This is the same concept that worked so well for us when we made the Irish Flag that we were excited to try it again.  We were rewarded because it worked just as well this time.  The vodka didn’t float at all on the grenadine, and the Curaçao didn’t work much better.

Caution! The sparklers are flammable.
They are also made in Thailand

Luckily here in the US of A we are more concerned with substance than style so the taste is more important than the looks. And in the taste department, the 4^th of July Tooter did well with a with a nice orange flavor, although it was a bit sweet.  The main issue is that it wasn’t chilled in any way which is a problem in the middle of summer.  The forecast today is calling for temperatures in the mid-nineties so something cold would be nicer.  In fact when we tested the drink we ended up using good old American ingenuity and we plopped an ice cube in it.  Not only did it chill the drink, the ice cube added a little white and made it an aesthetic victory as well. USA! USA!

Overall Rating for the 4^th of July Tooter

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5 – It doesn’t matter if it didn’t work, it tried!

Ease of Preparation: 2 – Floats

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Grenadine

1 oz Vodka

1 oz Blue Curaçao

Drink 139: Ice, Ice, Melty

Despite the book's
insistence, we do not
own a parfait glass

Mrs. Bottle here on a gorgeous Sunday morning to discuss today’s lucky drink of the day. The winning drink is the Frozen Citron Neon which is made with citrus-flavored vodka, melon liqueur, blue Curaçao, lime juice, lemon juice and simple syrup. A veritable bevy of ingredients that Mr. Bottle and I both thought was pretty tasty. Since it’s been quite hot lately (yesterday registered 183 degrees on my internal thermometer), it seemed appropriate to have what Mr. Boston calls a “FROZEN drink”.

Let me digress for a few moments about frozen drinks. I do like a nice icy concoction on a hot summer’s day, even the non-alcoholic kind. My one issue with these drinks that are made with crushed ice and blended into a smooth consistency is that they really don’t get to that smooth consistency unless everything melts before you finish. Take a Starbucks Frappucino. It’s all yummy with the coffee flavor and syrupy goodness until you get close to the end. Then it’s all bland ice with coffee-flavored remnants because those big chunky ice bits can’t get up the straw and they’re left behind to wallow in watered down coffee mixture. I have actually resorted to a system for drinking my Fraps where I take 2.75 hours to consume each one so any big chunks have melted. This means that at the end I’m just drinking iced coffee so maybe I should just order those from now on. Anyway, just take this whole diatribe and apply to any frozen drink, especially if you hate coffee.

That’s a nice segue into the next part of today’s story. From the picture you can tell that the name of this drink was pretty accurate. Neon, it is. But when I think of neon, it takes me back to one of the best cars ever made in America. That’s right, the Dodge Neon. Sadly, Chrysler stopped making the Neon on September 23, 2005 and I don’t think there’s been a nicer looking car made since then. Except maybe the Aston Martin Vanquish. It’s almost too close to call because the Neon is one unique automobile. Plus, apparently you can do quite a lot to a Neon to make it even snazzier.

"Snazzy" is the first word that comes to mind when I see this
img: automotive-insight.net

And speaking of snazzy, I would definitely recommend the Frozen Citron Neon. It’s got a great color and is one super cool drink. Pun totally intended.

Overall Rating for the Frozen Citron Neon

 

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 11 – 8% Alcohol if you wait for all the ice to melt

Ingredients

1½ oz Citrus-flavored Vodka

1 oz Melon Liqueur

½ oz Blue Curaçao

½ oz Lime Juice

½ oz Lemon Juice

½ oz Simple Syrup

Drink 94: Dash Dash Fizz Fizz

The Leaning Tower
of Fizz-a

Today we have the Ritz Fizz, a mix of Champagne, amaretto, blue Curaçao, and lemon juice.  It tasted exactly like what you’d expect if you had a glass of Champagne and did not add amaretto, blue Curaçao, or lemon juice.  The recipe called for a dash of each of the other ingredients.  Maybe our definition of a “dash” isn’t the same as Mr. Boston’s, but the dashes weren’t enough to be detectable.  You could smell lemon but I think that was mostly due to the lemon peel garnish.

The good news is that both Mrs. Bottle and I like Champagne so we liked this drink.  We can’t give it a perfect five, though, because this is a blog about cocktails, not Champagne.  A blog about Champagne would probably be kind of boring, but at least you wouldn’t have to drink any Scotch.

Overall Rating for Ritz Fizz

Taste: 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4 – Lemon twist

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

4 oz Champagne

1 dash Amaretto

1 dash Blue Curaçao

1 dash Lemon Juice

Drink 82: It's Our Bloggy and We'll Post When We Want To

Is there anything
blue food coloring
can't make better?

We’re back!  It turned out our change to reviewing only household spices didn’t take.  I was all set to eat a tablespoon of cinnamon and review it, but decided that before I could possibly do such a thing that I wanted a drink.  At that point we decided to go back to our original format.  The fact that today is April second has nothing to do with it.

We are going to make a real change to the blog, though.  We are not planning on daily updates going forward.  We are going to try to do it two or three times a week instead.  I don’t know if will lead to an increase in quality of the posts but it will definitely reduce the quantity which some may view as an improvement.  This will be a big help to our slower readers, of which there are many.  We’ll see how this goes and there’s always a chance that we will switch back to daily.  Until then, I recommend you subscribe to the atom feed or follow us on Twitter or Facebook so you won’t miss an update.

Our first drink under the new old format is the Blue Marlin, a shooter composed of light rum, blue Curaçao, and lime juice. I was concerned about the ratio of Curaçao to lime juice in this drink. The concern turned out to be well founded, as the Blue Marlin packed a powerful punch of sour.  In my opinion doubling the Curaçao would have improved the drink.  Shooters are meant to be chugged and not sipped, though, so the tartness was tolerable.  A sour drink is better in small doses.  Just like TBIAW.

Overall Rating for Blue Marlin

Taste: 2

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 21% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Light Rum

.5 oz Blue Curaçao

1 oz Lime Juice

Day 60: Why So Blue?

Big and blue, like Babe the Ox

The Catalina Margarita features tequila, peach schnapps, blue Curaçao, simple syrup, and lemon juice.  After two days of cherry-inspired confusion, sadness, and rage, we were happy to have a drink that did not have cherry brandy, “cherry brandy”, or brandy flavored with cherries.  It is also always exciting to have a drink loaded with blue food coloring.  I think if hospitals added some blue food coloring to their IV bags, people would find them more inviting.  Since our drink was blue and claimed to be a margarita, one of our favorite drinks, it seemed as if we were set for a syzygial alignment of goodness.

The peach schnapps eventually put an end to any delusions of a successful drink.  Before tasting the Catalina Margarita I noticed that it had a powerful peach aroma.  On my first sip I didn’t think the peach taste was overpowering, but it was a bit sweet.  At first it seemed that Mrs. Bottle liked it quite a bit more than I did.  This in itself wasn’t surprising because she is a like a happy-go-lucky pixie who is always flitting around looking for the positive.  I, however, have a skeptic’s heart. I would base my final opinion on a hard look at the facts and nothing more.



Mrs. Bottle and I differ on
 the fullness of this glass



The undeniable fact is that between the two of us we couldn’t finish the Catalina Margarita.  That is not a sign of a drink we like.  The more I had the more I noticed the peach flavor.  It eventually became all I could taste, and that is not a good thing.  That combined with blue Curaçao and the simple syrup also made the drink cloyingly sweet.  The drink began to sit there, unloved.

Even after an hour there was still some left in the glass.  It wasn’t just backwash either since the color was still a vibrant blue.  I knew Mrs. Bottle was becoming less enamored with it as well when she tried to force me to drink it, since she is loath to share her alcohol.  “DRINK THIS!” she yelled as she shoved the glass in my face.  She didn’t even care that I was trying to watch Tosh.0.  Hopefully I didn’t miss any videos of people getting seriously injured.  That is always hilarious.

Overall Rating for the Catalina Margarita

Taste: 3 – Only if you make it smaller

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 3 – 5 ingredients is a lot

Drinks Until Blackout: 8 – 15% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Tequila

1 oz Peach Schnapps

1 oz Blue Curaçao

2 oz Simple Syrup

2 oz Lemon Juice

Day 56: Where No Ale Has Gone Before

As blue as an Andorian's blood

Mrs. Bottle here covering today’s drink, the Galactic Ale. I believe many folks might also refer to it as Romulan Ale. To avoid further possible confusion, I’m not referring to a pale lager produced in San Salvador that surprisingly did not receive high marks from the Beer Advocate. No, it is the ale illegally consumed by members of the Starship Enterprise, as well as other inhabitants of the Star Trek universe. My guess is that if the pages of Mr. Boston contained a drink called Romulan Ale, copyright issues would ensue. Hence we have the royalty-free Galactic Ale.

Let me say that I begged Mr. Bottle to allow me to report on this beverage. And by beg I mean that I asked if I could write it up and he said “of course”. I do love me some good Star Trek TV shows and movies. I believe this is a learned behavior. You see, my parents were avid watchers of the original Star Trek series. They even reportedly left their wedding reception early to watch a new episode airing that evening (that’s what I’ve been told and I choose to believe that’s how they spent their wedding night). We also watched countless re-airings of the show while sitting at our TV trays every evening for dinner.

I thought I knew these shows inside and out until Mr. Bottle recently received the Blu-ray box set for Christmas. Holy wow, the first season was really slow, choppy, and I’ve found them to be the perfect cure for sleeplessness. That said, nothing beats William Shatner’s dramatic rendition of Captain Kirk. I … must … re … examine … his … performance … in …T.J. … Hooker!

Thinking about Kirk, I imagine his reaction after drinking the Galactic Ale, a shooter combining vodka, blue Curaçao, lime juice, and black raspberry liqueur. I’m sure he would say “This is very blue, tasty and lightly fruity with a slight raspberry flavor. Not a big alcohol taste, so that’s a plus. Now Spock, go mind-meld the bad guy, Dr. McCoy, check my vitals, and Yeoman Janice or Green Lady, kiss me now!!”

Khaaan you bring me another one?

To sum it all up, I’m pretty sure you’ll live long and prosper after consuming large quantities of this delicious blue libation.



Overall Rating for Galactic Ale

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5 – Bluuuuuue!

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 –  24% alcohol

Ingredients

.75 oz Vodka

.75 oz Blue Curaçao

.5 oz Lime Juice

.25 oz Black Raspberry Liqueur

Day 53: Woman Bites Dog (food)

Electric Blue

For today’s drink we have the Electric Jam, a mixture of vodka, blue Curaçao, simple syrup, lemon juice and Sprite lemon-lime soda.  Being a relatively low-alcohol drink that has soda in it, I was confident we would like it and that confidence was rewarded.  The lemon juice keeps it from being overly sweet and, as usual, the carbonation from the soda gives it a pleasant bite.  The Electric Jam is not only easy on the palate; it is easy on the eyes as well.  There's something about an artificially blue drink that just works. Made a boring looking drink?  Just add blue Curaçao.We’ve already covered the fact that blue Curaçao isn’t made from oranges but tastes like oranges.  This is enough of a segue for me to do some patented TBIAW navel gazing.  Hopefully I won’t find much lint.

I keep telling myself that we are doing this blog for our own entertainment.  For Mrs. Bottle I think it is actually true.  For me, I would love to have more readers. It would give me some kind of validation, however pathetic that may be.  If you are reading this right now I don’t want you to think that you aren’t enough, though. I think you are very special.  Really, it’s not you, it’s me. 

I know that other blogs don’t blow up because they are funnier, more original, or more relevant than TBIAW.  That would be ridiculous.  I think the real issue is that we need a gimmick and I think I may have stumbled on something while I was listening to Howard Stern on the radio.  He had on an animal rights activist who has been trying to get an animal protection law passed in Ohio.



Yum!

To attract attention to her cause, she has been eating dog food every day and posting the videos on YouTube.  It's not exactly Gandhi's hunger strike, but it must be working, right?  She was on Howard Stern after all.  The King of All Media won’t have just anyone on his show.  Unless, of course, you are a porn star, stripper, or regular woman willing to get naked and/or ride the sybian.  He will also have you on if you have a speech impediment, are transgender, have a high voice, are a little person, or if you are mentally disabled.  I guess it really isn’t as hard to get on his show as I thought.

Regardless, her first dog food video has over 17,000 views.  That is a lot more than the total views of TBIAW since we started it.  If only we had thought to review dog food every day instead of drinking  we could have way more of the attention I crave.   Sample review:  "It sucked.  Again"  I then noticed that her video for day 14 only has 254 views so maybe eating dog food alone isn’t enough to hold an audience.  She must have noticed, too, because the next day she got naked and it got bumped up to 1,724 views.  Of course she wasn’t really naked so the following day the views dropped to under 200.  She got “naked” again a couple of days later, but the genius denizens of the YouTube community could not be fooled a second time and only 375 of them fell for it and she hasn’t gotten above 500 since then.

What did we learn from all this?

 

1. Eating dog food every day will get you a more attention than drinking a different drink each day but…
2. It will not get you that much more attention unless…
3. You get naked, but…
4. You shouldn’t say you are naked but not show anything

So I think our best bet is to skip the dog food, keep up the drinking, but start doing it fully nude. That might be a little awkward for our family members and co-workers who read this, but you can’t make an omelet without some huevos, so get ready!

Sneak Preview

 

Overall Rating for Electric Jam

Taste: 4 - So very close to a 5

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 8 – 13% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.25 oz Vodka

.5 oz Blue Curaçao

1 oz Simple Syrup

1 oz Lemon Juice

1 oz Lemon-lime soda

Day 31: Loch, Scotch, and Barrel

"Brackish" is not a quality
we look for in a drink

Mrs. Bottle here. I think Mr. Bottle is breathing a sigh of relief that he doesn’t have to write about last night’s drink after almost having to fill in for my weekly turn at the libation review. It turns out that on the 3^rd night in a row of attending some form of event where drinks have a heavy presence, my body turns on me. Maybe it was just the memory of that Pom-Lemonata from the night before but after an hour at a friend’s party, I felt nauseated as hell (someday I’m sure Mr. Bottle will explain to you the difference between being nauseated and nauseous- riveting stuff). But I’ve soldiered on to share the story of today’s drink.

It is the Loch Lomond, a mix of Scotch whisky, peach schnapps, blue Curaçao, grapefruit juice, and lemon juice with a starfruit garnish. Surprisingly, starfruit can't be found in Charlotte in early February so we had to skip it. This concoction sounds odd enough when you feel good, so you can imagine that the idea of drinking it last night was not something I relished. All I wanted to do was to lie on the couch and watch my new favorite show Top Gear on BBC America. I’m not sure why there’s a BBC America on my cable. It’s not like there’s a huge surplus of British immigrants in the US, right? The only thing I can surmise is that we Americans must think England is some sort of mystical place where all your dreams come true. Like Disneyworld. Must just be those accents. Just listening to The Stig speak made me feel better and up for the taste test.

How can a duck
hand-squeeze?

The Loch Lomond is unremarkable in every way except for taste, smell, and appearance. I thought it smelled like an old shoe. It was the color of greenish sea water, perhaps similar to the Scottish lake it was named after? And the taste? It was odd, having a prominent grapefruit juice flavor with some sort of weird chemical flavor at the end. I couldn’t really make out the Scotch but Mr. Bottle thought he detected it. While he also thought there was something off, he believed he could actually drink it if he hadn’t already had his fill of alcohol. As for that peculiar taste at the end, he thought our 10 year old peach schnapps might be bad. I just wondered if Donald Duck brand grapefruit juice might not have been the best option to choose.

Ultimately, my opinion is that the Loch Lomond is just bloody awful.

Overall Rating for the Loch Lomond

Taste: 2  - Mr. Bottle could have drunk it or this would be a solid 1

Presentation: 2  - Starfruit may have pushed it to a 3

Ease of Preparation: 3 - Starfruit might have pushed it to a 2

Drinks Until Blackout: 8 - Only 13% alcohol 

Ingredients

1 oz Scotch Whisky

.5 oz Peach Schnapps

1 oz Blue Curaçao

3 oz Grapefruit Juice

.5 oz Lemon Juice

Day 28: Azul y naranja

Smurfy

Today's drink the Pacific Sunshine is tequila, blue Curaçao, simple syrup, lemon juice, and bitters.  One of the first things we do when making a drink is choose which of our many liquors to use. We have quite a few tequilas so our choice was fraught with risk. We decided to use Tres Generaciones Plata tequila, one of our favorites.  According to their website it is “smooth and light with a clean tingle”.  I’ve been learning Spanish so I know that Tres Generaciones Plata translates to “Three Generator Plates”.  I’m not sure what generator plates have to do with tequila, but I do know that three generators will create a heck of a tingle.

The Pacific Sunshine is our first drink with blue Curaçao. Curaçao's main flavor component is orange. That isn't quite true as it is actually flavored with the peel of the laraha, which is a cousin of the orange.  Its secondary flavor is blue food coloring and it is finished off with a touch of cedilla.  As best as we can tell, the main reason to use blue Curaçao is to make your drink blue since there are plenty of other orange flavored liqueurs from which to choose.  Logic would dictate that normally you wouldn’t purposely make a drink that looks like Ty-D-Bol, but in some cases it makes sense.  The Pacific Sunshine is one of those cases.



Also confused by drink names



As you can tell from the picture, the drink looks just like the sun over the Pacific Ocean, which really is a lucky break considering the name.  I pointed this out to Mrs. Bottle and she congratulated me for discovering the obvious.  Sometimes her words hurt. I got over the bitter sting of Mrs. Bottle's reply and we focused on the drink. In addition to looking great, this drink tasted great.  It was slightly sweet and let you taste just a touch of the tequila with orange overtones.   The salt-rimmed glass was a nice touch, too, and the salt went well with the sweet drink. The only real flaw was that it didn’t fill the glass to the brim. It was so good that we added it to our (very short so far) best drinks list.

We haven't had that much luck with tequila drinks so far, but maybe this is a good sign.  Now if I can just figure out why a Tequila Sunrise is named what it is.

Overall Rating for the Pacific Sunshine

Taste: 5
Ease of Preparation: 2 - Slicing a lemon and salt rimming the glass? That is a lot of effort!
Presentation: 5
Drinks until blackout: 6 – 22% alcohol

Ingredients:

1.5 oz. Tequila
1.5 oz Blue Curaçao
.75 oz. Lemon Juice
.75 oz. Simple Syrup
1 dash Bitters