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

Day 40: A Citronella Story

Will not repel mosquitos

G’day!  Bienvenue! Goedendag! Konnichiwa!  Welcome!  We are at day 40 of our journey.  The astute reader may notice that there are more than forty posts, but we are only counting the official Mr. Boston drink days as days. Since 40 is a nice round number we thought we would reflect a little on our journey. I took a look at our blog statistics to see the global impact of TBIAW. It turns out that so far we have had visitors from 10 different countries.  We only have relatives in 3 of them, so at least 7 people have visited by mistake.

We’ll have more time for reflection later, so let’s talk about today’s drink, the Citronella Cooler.  It is made from citrus-flavored vodka, lemonade, cranberry juice, and lime juice.  As you might guess, it had a strong lemon flavor, although Mrs. Bottle thought the cranberry was also quite distinct.  I thought it mostly tasted like lemonade with a bit of zing.  This would make an excellent drink on a warm summer’s day.  It certainly kicks the crap out of a glass of plain lemonade. It probably isn’t too manly, but I can live with that.

The Citronella Cooler rated a perfect score of 5.  This is our fifth drink to make our top drinks list. In the same time we have only added three drinks to the bottom drinks list. In the last 40 days we have learned that we have a way to go before we can fully appreciate whiskey, but we are making progress.  We have also had stunning investigations that exposed both Galliano (twice) and My Cousin Vinnie.  In the same time period, the government of Egypt has been peacefully toppled.  We could debate for hours which thing is more important, but I think there is no debate on who had more fun.

Otherwise they can't get to TBIAW

Overall Rating for Citronella Cooler

Taste: 5
Presentation: 4 – A garnish other than a watermelon slice would have pushed it to a 5
Ease of Preparation: 5
Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 10% alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Citrus-Flavored Vodka
2 oz Lemonade
1 oz Cranberry Juice
1 dash Lime Juice

Day 17: It’s Not Easy Being Midori

Not Radioactive

Shooters are fun.  When you are out with friends and someone brings over a tray of shooters, everyone gets excited because they know things are about to get crunk.  With their often sweet and fruity flavor and the ban of Four Loko, shooters also provide the easiest way for non-drinkers to get drunk fast.  Ed. Note: The writers of The Bottle is a Wonderland do not condone excessive drinking. Or underage drinking. Please enjoy responsibly. The Bottle is a Wonderland is produced in a facility that processes tree nuts.

Even when a shooter tastes horrible, you can usually choke it down since it is compact.  If you currently have trouble swallowing something unpleasant, you should learn how to do it, since it is an important life skill.  Luckily with our latest drink, the Green Demon, that skill doesn’t need to be deployed.  Its combination of vodka, rum, melon liqueur, and lemonade tastes pretty good.  We learned that the taste is affected by the way you drink it, though.  If you sip it, you get melon flavor with a strong alcohol finish.  If you shoot it (the way FSM intended), you just get the melon flavor without the alcohol finish. As a bonus, the bright green color is pretty boss.

WWFSMD? Shoot it!

When I saw that the Green Demon used melon liqueur, my mind started racing.  Surely there would be lots of interesting things to write about Midori, the most recognizable melon liqueur. I might observe that “midori” means “green” in Japanese and sarcastically praise the company for such a clever name and mention that I was looking forward to trying their grape liqueur, Purple.  Since Midori is a product of Suntory, I could link to the great Bill Murray’s Suntory commercial from Lost in Translation. I might pretend to be confused as to why a violinist has her own liqueur and hilarity would ensue.  With all of these ideas swirling, I went to the liquor cabinet only to find DeKuyper’s Melon liqueur. 

I couldn’t use any of those ideas. I was so sick I turned midori.

Overall Rating:

Taste: 3 – It is very close to a 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Presentation: 5

Drinks until blackout: 5 – About 27% alcohol

Ingredients:

.5 oz Vodka

.5 oz Rum

.5 oz Midori Melon Liqueur

.5 oz Lemonade