Drink 173: Frah-gee-lay?

The other day we received a Facebook “like” from Fragoli Liqueur. This was exciting for a number of reasons.  First, we always are happy to get a “like” since it boosts our self-esteem and helps us gain on Lady Gaga.  Secondly, Fragoli is the first company to publicly proclaim their fondness for TBIAW.  It is one thing to have your friend do it, but a company is another level.  I wonder if the Fragoli board of directors unanimously approved the "like" or if there was some dissent? Did they battle it out like in Twelve Angry Men?



Perfection, thy
name is Fragoli



Hmm, I guess there were only two reasons it was exciting, but two is a number, too.  One thing I’m sure of is that we received their coveted “like” because of the blog’s outstanding content. There was no way it was simply because they have some automated bot that spotted the word “Fragoli” in our Economic Stimulus sidebar and just gave us the “like” in the hopes that we would like them back and possibly link to them in our blog.  We frown on that kind of self-promotion. We would never expect them to link back to a post of ours just because it mentioned their product repeatedly and glowingly.

 I also hope that Fragoli doesn’t think that we will compromise our editorial integrity when reviewing their product just because they “like”d us.  We cannot be bought that easily.  Please note that we can be bought.  Just not that easily.  I implore you to keep that in mind as we talk for a moment about Fragoli, an Italian strawberry liqueur. It is a must to discuss since it is an ingredient in our latest drink the Strawberry Sunrise. 

Since we have never had Fragoli before, we tried some straight before putting it in the drink.  I can say without bias that Fragoli is the best tasting thing I have ever tried.  It was the perfect combination of sweetness, strawberry flavor, and alcohol bite.  It was like a strawberry patch exploded into my mouth and I used alcohol nectar to extinguish the flames. Fragoli even has these cute whole wild strawberries in the bottle.  Can you imagine anything more perfect?  I surely can’t. 

We combined the Fragoli with grenadine and orange juice in our Strawberry Sunrise even though we aren’t quite sure Fragoli was the proper ingredient.  You see, the recipe called for strawberry schnapps, not fine delicious Italian strawberry liqueur. Since schnapps is just sweetened flavored liqueur, we decided to use Fragoli since it meets the criteria. Really, you’d have to be crazy to use plain old schnapps when Fragoli is available. We are a lot of things but we are not crazy.

It is sad that you can
barely make out the
Fragoli in this picture

Unlike the L.A Sunrise, the Strawberry Sunrise actually looked like a sunrise with a nice separation of the orange juice from the red ingredients.  Separate, though not equal.  As far as flavor, the drink was quite good.  It was almost like a cocktail version of a strawberry and orange Julius. If there were any complaints, it was a little too sweet.  This was undoubtedly due to the ½ ounce of grenadine and not the Fragoli.  The Fragoli’s sweetness was perfect and it remains blameless in any of the drink’s shortcomings.  The Strawberry Sunrise  also was a bit weak, coming in at just over 7% alcohol.  In this case the recipe takes the blame, since it called for a lot of OJ and not enough Fragoli. 

To conclude, Fragoli.

Overall Rating for the Strawberry Sunrise

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackouts: 12 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Strawberry Schnapps – We highly recommend Fragoli

0.5 oz Grenadine

Orange Juice

Drink 167: Slop Sloppy Joe

Today’s drink is the Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail No. 1, a mix of rum, triple sec, dry vermouth, grenadine, and lime juice. According to the USDA’s MyDrink, a cocktail should never be more than 23.3% lime juice.  This is an improvement over the outdated Tipple Pyramid’s maximum of 34.0%.  Regardless of whether you follow the old-school Pyramid or the new-school MyDrink, the Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail No. 1 exceeds the limit since it is 38.7% lime juice.

Seems strangely specific

Note: I literally spent hours working
on the video in Sunday's blog. Since
no one actually watched it, I decided
to spend no more than three minutes on
any future customized pictures for TBIAW.
This is the type of quality to expect
going forward.

Due to the high concentration of lime juice, the primary taste of this drink was tartness. In fact wasn’t the just the primary taste, it was the only taste.  It was so tart that if we had tried the SJCN1 during the first few weeks of our journey, we would have probably given it a rating of one.  Since we have become more accustomed to these sour assaults we were able to up the rating all the way to a two. There was some extra credit given because the lime juice thankfully overwhelmed the vermouth.

Not Sloppy

It also didn’t help that the drink called for only a quarter teaspoon of two of the other ingredients.  Pouring a quarter teaspoon is kind of a pain. You can almost justify the quarter teaspoon of grenadine since it makes the drink a pleasant pink tint. The quarter teaspoon of triple sec is another story. It isn’t enough to add any sweetness or orange flavor to the drink.  It is as superfluous as this picture:

Image:  scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Overall Rating for the Sloppy Joe’s Cocktail No. 1

Taste: 2

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 2

Drinks Until Blackouts: 7 – 17% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Lime Juice

0.25 tsp Triple Sec

0.25 tsp Grenadine

.75 oz Light Rum

.75 oz Dry Vermouth

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 147: Drinflation

I have spent a lot of time recently worrying about inflation, but I’m not talking about end of Quantitative Easing 2 and how it might impact the future of the worldwide economy. I’m talking about something much more important.  And that thing is the nagging suspicion that there is rating inflation at TBIAW.  Lately it has seemed like we have been giving the drinks higher ratings than we used to and it has become a growing concern.  We understand that the vast majority of the Internet gets its drink rating information from TBIAW and we give our rating duties the requisite amount of consideration.

Since we maintain a complete database of all of our rated drinks, we decided to conduct a thorough TBIAW investigation to determine if the Fed needs to step in to reduce rating inflation or if we should continue to allow market forces to shape the scores. Plus, there are few things on this Earth I love more than making charts.  Also, whenever I can’t think of a post idea it seems like there is some way we can just talk about our favorite subjects, us.

With that in mind, we produced this chart showing the cumulative average of our drink ratings:

You can clearly see that the average rating has been steadily trending upwards, a troubling sign.  I also noticed that the standard deviation of the ratings is shrinking.  At some point down the road all three lines will converge.  This could lead to some kind of poltergeist-like black hole where the world swallows itself.  Probably not, but it is still something to keep in the back of your mind as we reach December.

We also took a look at the running totals for the number of drinks with each rating:

You can see that our twos, threes, and fours were fairly consistent, and then some point around drink 80 our twos start to fall behind.  It also appears that around drink 100 we start to hand out fives like they were free kisses.  The combination of these factors appears to be the cause of our creeping average score.

What is causing these changes?  I can think of three possible explanations:

1. Our tastes are changing. This seems like a likely candidate. As we’ve tried more drinks we have become more accepting of certain flavors and flavor combinations. This became evident when we recently revisited some old drinks and realized that we would have given them higher scores if we rated them today.

2. We are selecting drinks with a “success bias”. That is, Mrs. Bottle has been picking out fewer bad drinks. There is some basis in truth here as well as Mrs. Bottle admitted that she has been avoiding the 371 different varieties of the Martini that Mr. Boston uses to pad its pages. There would be a lot of opportunities for low scores had we tried those drinks.

3. We are trying to raise the drinks’ self-esteem. We love our drinks and we feel bad when we have to give one a low score. Therefore we may have become more likely to give a drink the benefit of the doubt.

4. It can all be blamed on random noise. Maybe we are just on a run of good drinks and over time things will even out. If things do even out, it certainly will not be because I purposely start down-grading drinks to level the score.

You are probably wondering how all of this will impact our latest drink, the Kentucky Blizzard, a combination of bourbon, cranberry juice, lime juice, grenadine, and sugar.  We chose this particular drink not only because it isn’t a Martini but also because Mrs. Bottle’s parents are visiting us here at the Estate and her father is a bourbon man.  He found the drink pleasant enough, but didn’t express a lot of opinion either way.  Of course, he is pretty low key about most things.  When he found out his only daughter was getting married he just raised an eyebrow and proclaimed, “hmm.”   It signaled happiness, disappointment, or indifference.  I choose to believe it was happiness.

When I think "Blizzard" I think bright red with an orange

Mrs. Bottle and I both thought the drink wasn’t bad, especially considering it had 1.5 ounces of whiskey, our least favorite spirit.  If anything, it could have used a little more bourbon because it was a bit too sweet.  It probably could have used less grenadine or sugar, too.  We both thought a little lime juice wouldn’t hurt, either.  Ultimately, we gave it a three.  It may have gotten a four last week before we installed our new rating austerity measures.  The grade of three didn’t stop us from finishing it, though.  Shortly after the last drop was consumed, Mrs. Bottle’s father came into the room and asked where the rest of his drink was.  I guess he liked it more than we thought.

Overall rating for the Kentucky Blizzard

 

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 8 – 14% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Bourbon Whiskey

1.5 oz Cranberry Juice

0.5 oz Lime Juice

0.5 oz Grenadine

1 tsp Sugar

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 134: Unblogging

Last week I was trying to measure the distance between two latitude/longitude pairs. Luckily I learned trigonometry in school so I knew that the formula was:

     R * cos^-1(cos(long₁-long₂)cos(lat₁)cos(lat₂)+sin(lat₁)sin(lat₂))

Be sure to convert your latitude/longitude pair to radians before you plug them into the formula!  Or just use Google maps.

That is a fine looking drink

I learned trigonometry not because I wanted to, but because it was required in my school.  It’s a good thing I wasn’t unschooled (and that my Internet was working) or I wouldn’t have been able to make my calculation.  In unschooling, the kids not only do not attend a traditional classroom-based school, they don’t learn anything they don’t want to.   It is like home-schooling to the n^th degree (that is a math term in case you happened to be unschooled).  I have a feeling that left to my own devices I wouldn’t have learned trigonometry.  On the upside, I probably would have been the greatest Atari player in the world.

I heard about unschooling from a story Mrs. Bottle told me about. The kid in the story didn’t learn how to read until he was 10 because he didn’t have a reason to read before then.  I guess up until that point they used a lot of Mr. Yuk stickers and that  game nights were limited to Candyland.   I definitely wouldn’t want someone who can’t read giving me clues in Password.

Honestly, I don’t think his story makes a very convincing case for unschooling.  His 12-year-old brother “is bored a lot because he's in between interests.”  You know what, when I was 12 I was bored a lot, too, but at least I was still learning stuff.  One thing I distinctly remember from science class when I was around that age is that the six simple machines are the wedge, the pulley, the inclined plane, the screw, and two other ones.  I certainly wouldn’t know 67% of the simple machines if I had been left to only learn what I was interested in.  That kind of simple machine knowledge would be really handy if I ever did work around the house.

My favorite part of the article is where the mom makes the case that you shouldn’t force a child to do something the child doesn’t want to do.  There are a lot of kids in my neighborhood, and based on the number of basketballs abandoned in my yard, I’m thinking maybe sometimes they should be forced to do something they don’t want to do.  Like pick up their basketballs.  Consarn it!

This 50ml
bottle is the max
amount of
coconut rum
allowed at the
estate

Enough about that, you are probably anxiously awaiting our review of today’s drink, the Heat Wave. The Heat Wave is made from coconut-flavored rum, peach schnapps, pineapple juice, orange juice, and grenadine.   It was a bit sweet, but overall pretty tasty.  I was surprised since it has both peach schnapps and grenadine, which are two unwelcome ingredients.  Mrs. Bottle dislikes coconut rum as well, but she liked the Heat Wave anyway.  It probably had something to do with the fact that there were 6 ounces of juices to wipe out the less attractive flavors.  “Volume” and "ratios" are also concepts I learned in school.

If you made it this far, I would like to congratulate you on your ability to read and your ability to do something you don’t want to do. You may also be wondering what unschooling has to do with today’s drink, the Heat Wave.  The answer is “nothing.”  That is because I am unblogging today.  I don’t have to write about anything that I am not interested in, and I am not interested in making a connection between the drink and the rest of the post.

Overall Rating for the Heat Wave

 

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 15 –  5% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Coconut-flavored Rum

0.5 oz Peach Schnapps

3 oz Pineapple Juice

3 oz Orange Juice

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 100: Pump Up The Volume?

Ed Note:  Mrs. Bottle was wearing pants when this was filmed.

Overall Rating for the Limoncello Sunrise

Taste: 4 
Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Limoncello
3 oz Orange Juice
1 dash Grenadine

Drink 96: meh.



Red rum! Red rum!

 I really didn’t feel like writing a blog entry today but Mrs. Bottle said that she would think less of me as a man if I skipped it.  Honestly I didn’t think Mrs. Bottle could think any less of me as a man than she already does.  On the off chance there is still room for her to lower her opinion we present the Robson Cocktail, a mix of Jamaican rum, orange juice, lemon juice, and grenadine.  The drink was good but nothing special.  It had some sweetness provided by the orange juice and grenadine and a strong rum flavor.  Normally I would do exhaustive research and provide scores of links and tidbits about the Robson Cocktail, but I just don’t feel like it.   It's too bad, too, because if I was motivated I could have spun a wondrous tale about trying to figure out the difference between Jamaican Rum and dark rum.



Overall Rating for the Robson Cocktail

Taste: 3 
Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 19% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Jamaican Rum
2 tsp Lemon Juice
1 tbsp Orange Juice
1.5 tsp Grenadine

Drink 87: Bamba Bottle, Bamba Bottle



You dropped La Bomba on me, baby

Mrs. Bottle here to share my thoughts about our latest drink. First, I will only be discussing a single drink as opposed to the last blog which covered 324 minus 321 drinks. We received some feedback that more than one drink is just too much for anyone to process and I think Mr. Bottle and I have to agree. We may be going back to blogging every day but some entries might not be so lengthy. Although we’ll see if Mr. Bottle can hold himself back because I have my doubts. I, however, will continue to create the same amount of prose as usual so here we go.

Today’s drink is the La Bomba. I hope all nine of our readers are now singing the song like I’ve been doing for days now. Because I don’t speak Spanish, I go around mumbling nonsense and then burst out with “La Bamba” at 100 decibels. I think Mr. Bottle will be very happy when this works its way out of my system, but I’ve got music in my soul that just can’t be suppressed. Anyway, the La Bomba is made with gold tequila, triple sec, pineapple and orange juices, and two splashes of grenadine (or a large pour because I can’t do dashes from a big bottle). The drink was good but a little sweet. It called for a sugar rimmed glass and that, coupled with the juices meant that I could barely taste the tequila. Luckily Mr. Bottle was around to drink most of it so I could get back to my wine.

So, some of you quick folks out there may have noticed the spelling difference between the drink name and the song name. The internet taught me that La Bamba has no direct translation to English (even Babel Fish couldn’t help). Apparently in English, it means “bamba”. While that was super helpful, I continued searching and discovered that la bomba actually translates into something that I can get behind: the pump. I don’t know what kind of pump but I was just glad it wasn’t “bomba”. What was really annoying was when I first searched Google for the translation of la bomba (“la bomba Spanish to English translation” was my exact search), every result on the first page was a link to the lyrics of La Bamba. My takeaway? Either the maker of this drink was confused about the spelling of the song or Google is stupid. Doesn’t matter to me because I’m just going to keep singing: Yo no soy marinero, yo no soy marinero, soy capitan, soy capitan, soy capitan.

Don't bring this on a plane
Image from bomba.at which has
naked people on the home page

Overall Rating for the La Bomba

Taste: 4 - Too sweet for a 5
Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 3 - A sugar rim on a giant glass is annoying
Drinks Until Blackout: 8 – 14% Alcohol

Ingredients

1¼ oz Gold Tequila
¾ oz Triple Sec
1½ oz Orange Juice
1½ oz Pineapple Juice
2 dashes Grenadine

Day 78: My Body is a Temple

Shirley Temple,
you can't be serious

Today is a day of great shame at the Bottle Wonderland Estate.  And no it is not because the blog is late again today or because this entry isn’t going to live up to the phenomenally high level of our 88 previous posts (spoiler alert!). It is because today’s drink doesn’t even have any alcohol.

(I’ll pause while you finish gasping)

The Mr. Boston Platinum Edition contains over 1,500 recipes.  39 of those are non-alcoholic.  Mathematically that works out to about one non-alcoholic drink for every 38.5 days. So if you look at it like that, we are way overdue to have a drink sans alcohol.  We don’t look at it like that, though.  When we started this blog, Mrs. Bottle said, “we’re not doing any of those non-alcoholic drinks; they are a complete waste of time.” The waste of time part might be true, but here we are anyway.

As Mrs. Bottle mentioned yesterday, one of our friends turned 40 on Saturday and we went out to celebrate.  We agreed to go out even though we are both much younger than our friend.  I am in my late mid-30s and Mrs. Bottle said not to reveal her age under pain of death.  Regardless, even at our young ages our recovery time from a night out is a bit longer than it used to be.  As a result, neither of us was really in the mood for a drink on Sunday.   We had to provide a post though, so we decided to go non-alcoholic.  The sound you hear is my liver exhaling a sigh of relief.

We decided to go with the Shirley Temple, the classic favorite of cookie crunchers everywhere.  I doubt you were wondering, but a Shirley Temple is made from grenadine and ginger ale.  The Mr. Boston guide cares as little about this drink as I do, since it doesn’t even bother to put measurements for the ingredients.   We did our best to make it anyway.  The drink looked nice I suppose.  I think it tasted like ginger ale but I wasn’t really paying attention.   I would keep going but I’ve already wasted enough of your time.

They should rename this drink the
Miley Cyrus, the modern equivalent
of Shirley Temple's innocence
(Img)

Overall Rating for the Shirley Temple

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: ∞

Ingredients

Grenadine

Ginger Ale

Day 76: Goober ‘til the Last Drop

This is about half a Goober

Last night started off pretty chill at the Bottle Wonderland Estate.  I was parked on the couch watching television trying to relax after an exhausting session of Angry Birds.  Mrs. Bottle was heating up some food in the kitchen.  Then suddenly everything changed.  Mrs. Bottle started assembling bottle after bottle of liquor, liqueur, and fruit juice on the counter.  She frantically pulled dozens of glasses out the cabinet, proclaiming each one more worthless than the prior. She started eyeballing our cocktail shaker with a look of concern and then finally threw up her hands in disgust and shouted “why me, why me?!?!”  I am used to that yell each year on our wedding anniversary, but it seemed oddly out of place last night.

Why the kerfuffle?  It was all because of our next drink, the Goober.  The Goober is a mix of vodka, black raspberry liqueur, melon liqueur, triple sec, grenadine, pineapple juice, and orange juice.  That is lot of ingredients. That is also a lot of volume.  13.5 ounces to be exact.  That is ridiculously large for a beverage not served via drive-through window or convenience store.  We didn’t have a single glass large enough to hold 13.5 ounces.  Unless of course you count our margarita glasses or our massive stadium cup collection or our flower vases, but none of those would be appropriate for a drink as sophisticated as the Goober.  It was also a lot more than our cocktail shaker could hold.  We had to bust out our decorative shaker, but those are the types of sacrifices we make for our art.

Look at the size of that thing!

Once we had filled the shaker with the cornucopia of liquids, it was time to shake it.  Last year at this time Mrs. Bottle might not have been able to lift such a heavy drink, but she has been using her shake weight religiously for months. This gave her the proper upper body strength and technique necessary for a good mix.  The shaking must have worked because the Goober turned out to be very good.  For me the tastes that were most prevalent were the melon liqueur and the orange juice.  Mrs. Bottle thought the raspberry liqueur was the star.  Either way, it was pretty fruity.  Not there’s anything wrong with that.  The one thing neither of us tasted was a goober pea, leaving us slightly confused about the drink’s name. We didn’t let that stop us from downing the whole thing, though.

Overall Rating for the Goober

 

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 10% alcohol.  You’ll never get there, though, since that would be a gallon of Goober

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka

1.5 oz Black Raspberry Liqueur

1.5 oz Melon Liqueur

1 oz Triple Sec

1 oz Grenadine

3 oz Pineapple Juice

4 oz Orange Juice

Day 57: Casting the First Stone

What color is the Gin and Sin, anyway?

The Gin and Sin is a combination of gin, lemon juice, orange juice, and grenadine.  The drink was pretty unremarkable except for the amount of sourness.  The orange juice and grenadine did not provide enough sweetness to properly balance the lemon juice, leaving you with puckered lips and a sad heart.  The Hula-Hula Cocktail has similar ingredients to the Gin and Sin with a far superior taste.

This drink got me thinking about sin, which is something I don’t normally do.  There’s not much reason to since there are no confessions in Pastafarianism.  With sin being so far out of mind, I had to do a little research to bone up.  It turns out there is a widely acknowledged standard of seven deadly sins, just like in that movie, Se7en.  In case you didn’t just click that link (and I recommend you always click our links), the sins are Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey.  Ha! Those are the seven dwarfs.  Just making sure you aren’t skimming.

The seven sins are actually gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, pride, lust, and envy.  I don’t think I’m normally that gluttonous, but I did eat a bag of Hot ‘n  Spicy Chex Mix this week in only three servings even though the bag claims there are eight servings.  I did feel bad afterwards, though, and I don’t mean an upset stomach.   I like money as much as the next guy, but anyone who has seen my money management skills would see that greed isn’t my highest priority.  Sloth? That depends on how you define it.  We have published at least an entry a day on TBIAW for two months, so that shows some kind of drive I think.  Of course I have barely moved off the couch in that same time so that might be a wash.

Sloth and Glutton

The older I get the less wrath I display.  It may not be apparent to the casual observer, but I am practically a Zen master compared to how I was in my 20s.   I don’t know if I’ve matured or if it just takes too much effort to be wrathful these days. I guess that might be another point for sloth.  I will admit that Jimmy Carter is not the only man who has had lust in his heart. That takes a lot of energy, too, though.  I don’t think I have too much envy. If anything I think people envy me and my bon vivant lifestyle.

That brings us to pride, the final sin. According to Wikipedia, pride is the most serious sin.  Uh-oh.  Of all the ones to be the most serious, it had to be pride, my greatest attribute.  Some may be shocked to hear that I have been accused of being a bit too prideful.  Earlier in my career, my manager told me I had a reputation as a prima donna.  Apparently this means I was viewed as vain, egotistical, obnoxious and undisciplined.  This was pretty insulting because I can be reasonably disciplined.

Those sins might be considered the big ones, but I'm not sure any of them compare to the ruining of a nice gin like the Gin and Sin did.

Overall Rating for Gin and Sin

Taste: 2

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 18%

Ingredients

1 oz Gin

1 oz Lemon Juice

1 tbsp Orange Juice

1 dash Grenadine

Day 55: Seek and Ye Might Find

Candy Apple Brandy Cocktail Red

Today we have the cleverly named Apple Brandy Cocktail, a mixture of apple brandy, lemon juice, and grenadine.  Even coming in at over 30% alcohol, this drink wasn't bad.  It had a slight sour apple flavor that wasn't over-powering mixed with moderate alcohol notes. Plus it made my tummy warm when I had a sip. The drink's name is a positive, too.  Don't get me wrong,  I like whimsical drink names like Hula-Hula Cocktail as much as the next guy, but there is something to be said for a drink that just tells you what it is.  If someone brings me an Apple Brandy Cocktail I have a pretty good idea of what I’m getting.  If somebody brings me a drink called the El Presidente Cocktail #1 I don’t know in advance that I’m getting a drink that should be called You Will Be Sorry If You Order This.

In that vein, we here at TBIAW would like to reiterate that the purpose of our blog is to review a drink a day from the Mr. Boston Platinum Edition bar guide.  There seems to be some confusion about that based on some of the terms that have lead people here from various search engines. Some of the terms make sense.  I can see why “Tequila Drink” or “Maple Syrup” would land a Googler at TBIAW.   Even the person who searched for “Snickers Drink” would find something that is at least in the same subject area if not an exact match.  I am positive that the person who searched for “The Bottle is a Wonderland” ended up in the right place.  I am also confident he or she should probably bookmark this site.

Some of the people who come here may end up a little let down, though.  The people searching for “health master blender”, “where is the menu bar located”, or “cocktail dress” will not find what they were looking for here.  Protip: The menu bar is located at the top of the window. 

Was that so hard?

There were two searches that ended up here that left me a bit puzzled, though: “Porno animal and woman” and “girls getting it on with barn animals”.  My first reaction when I saw these phrases was “gross”.  My second reaction was “say wha?” How did those searches bring sickos to TBIAW?  I can only come up with two possible answers:  The first is that some search engines think “cocktail” is two words.  The second is that the long discussion of cows and romance in this entry are confusing them.  Maybe it is the photo of the girl and the cow with the naughty but hilarious caption?  Maybe those Ask Jeeves computers aren't as smart as we thought. I bet Watson would have known not to send those queries here.

I hope the animal lover at least stayed and read an entry or two.  That would probably raise his spirits if not his other bits.

Overall Rating for the Apple Brandy Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 –  32% alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Apple Brandy

1 tsp Lemon Juice

1 tsp Grenadine