Drink 190: Meet the New Blog, Same as the Old Blog

Why does Mrs. Bottle hate me?  It has been almost a month since we have posted a drink and yesterday she suggested we fire things up again.  “Sure” I said, not knowing what drink she had chosen.  It turns out she had selected the Caruso, a mixture of gin, dry vermouth, and crème de menthe.   It was not good.   The combination of mint and vermouth is the worst pairing since Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

David Caruso does not approve

Honestly, I would have never agreed to resume blogging if I’d known she would make me drink this crap.  The Caruso is bad enough that the Wall Street Journal has an entire article about the perplexing nature of the drink’s origins and longevity.  The freaking Wall Street Journal!  You’d think they would be too busy writing about the collapse of the world economy instead.  I guess in 2009 things didn’t look so dire. Maybe if they had been a little more focused we wouldn’t be in this mess. 

Here’s what they wrote:

A Caruso cocktail survives, dusty from disuse, in the pages of the average bartender’s guide. That drink is compounded of equal parts gin, dry vermouth and crème de menthe [Ed Note: slightly different than ours], and it’s not very good. If no one drinks it, and it’s not very good, what’s it doing in the books? Perhaps the Caruso has persisted for the same reason as most of the cocktails in such compendia—to fill space. If a bad recipe gets printed in one bar guide—especially a prominent one like the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, in which the less than palatable Caruso was listed—it soon finds its way into all the others.

Coincidentally, “filling space” is also the same reason most of NBC’s fall lineup exists.  Unfortunately for me, the Caruso is now filling space in my belly, on our blog and in your brainpan.  Space that could be better filled by other things.  Well, at least the space in my belly.

Overall Rating for the Caruso

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 – 30% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Gin

1 oz Dry Vermouth

0.5 oz Crème de Menthe

Drink 189: Just Like Riding a Bicycle



If your urine looks like this
call your doctor immediately



Bonjour Mesdames et Messieurs. We are back with a new drink, the Moulin Rouge.  It is made from sloe gin, sweet vermouth, and bitters. This drink was fantastic if you like horrible cocktails.  It was extremely sweet and almost glue-like in consistency.  At least it had a healthy dose of awful sweet vermouth to counter the almost drinkable sloe gin. 

Mrs. Bottle really hated it and she practically did a spit take when she tried it. I, on the other hand, found it merely terribly unpleasant.  If I were trapped in a crevasse with my arm pinned by a boulder I could probably choke it down after a day or two.  Mrs. Bottle would rather drink her own pee. I have heard it is pretty good. 

You are probably expecting some tie-in to the movie Moulin Rouge or at the bare minimum some kind of send-up of Lady Marmalade. Unfortunately I haven’t seen the film and I would never criticize such a masterpiece of a song.  Also, I have lost my mojo. After not having written anything for a week I kind of forgot how to do it.  I mean I remember how to write words on a page as is evidenced by the thing you are reading.  What I have forgotten is how to bolg. Or is it blog? Either way, it doesn’t take long to get out of the groove.  Don’t fret, though, or bolg isn’t dead. I’m sure I’ll get my mojo back soon enough.  Until then, if we go too long between posts make sure to check you local crevasses and make sure I’m not stuck. I need both my arms.

"OoooooOOoooOOoo"

Overall Rating for the Moulin Rouge

Taste: 1.5

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Sloe Gin

0.75 oz Sweet Vermouth

1 dash Bitters

Christina Aguilera photo: By Julian from Germany (PC134194) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Drink 181: Son, You Got a Panty on Your Head

Sheer Elegance looks like silk, feels like silk, and even comes in a control-top style, too.  Sheer Elegance looks and feels like silk. From the Orient!



Sheer Elegance, the cocktail.
From the Bottle Wonderland Estate!



The above quote is the first thing I thought of when I saw that today’s drink was called the Sheer Elegance.  In case you weren’t raised by a television or you are not yet middle-aged, here is a YouTube clip that might help give you some context. That commercial is a classic, and I especially like the serendipitous use of an Asian to deliver the message.  It really brings it home when she says “From the Orient!”   Everyone might not remember a 30 year old commercial, but surely everyone understands that silk “from the Orient!” is the best kind.  Those pantyhose must be good, but I wouldn’t know since I’ve only worn pantyhose a few times never worn pantyhose. Mrs. Bottle assures me that pantyhose do not feel like silk, though.  From the Orient!



Also from the Orient!
img



The Sheer Elegance cocktail does not look like silk, feel like silk, and it surely does not come in a control-top style so I'm not sure why it is named after pantyhose. It doesn't even taste like it comes from the Orient.  Instead, its combination of amaretto, black raspberry liqueur, and vodka tasted like it came from the Karo Corn Syrup factory.  It was horribly sweet and it left my tongue coated in a viscous membrane.  That is not something I look for in a drink.  Or in a control-top undergarment for that matter.  The flavor was also a bit strange.  I’m not convinced that almonds and black raspberries are a great combination, although Mrs. Bottle thought it would have been decent had the taste been less cloying.

Part of the problem may be attributable to our 10+ year old bottle of Chateau Monet Liqueur Framboise.  We recently learned that 10+ year old Bailey’s Irish Cream doesn’t taste as good as fresh stuff so there is a tiny possibility that our black raspberry liqueur may not be at its peak flavor capacity.  I am unwilling to put the blame completely on it, though, because we have had plenty of drinks with this stuff and some of them have been not horrible. For example, the French Martini is quite similar to our latest drink, only it was good.  Maybe because it had more vodka.  Coincidentally, Mrs. Bottle suggested the real problem with the Sheer Elegance was the lack of vodka.  Of course that is her answer to a lot of things.

Overall Rating for the Sheer Elegance

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Amaretto

1.5 oz Black Raspberry Liqueur

0.5 oz Vodka

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 170: Who Has Been Putting Out Their Kools on My Floor?

A Stinger is made with brandy and crème de menthe.  We have not tried that and we are not trying it today. Back in February we had the Vodka Stinger which is made with vodka and crème de menthe.  We are not trying that again today.  Instead we have the Scotch Stinger.  It is made with Scotch and crème de menthe.  I think there must be some connection between these drinks since they all have Stinger in the name but I can’t quite put my finger on it.  I may need to set the TBIAW iTeam on it.  We will put that aside for now and move on to the drink.

I used flash in this photo.
It really enhanced the lint
on our backdrop.

Hmm...this is in
all the Stinger
recipes.  Maybe
Mr. DeKuyper knows
the connection.

Anyone who has spent time with Mrs. Bottle knows she is always going on about how mint “makes everything better.”  The Scotch Stinger would really put her mint fanaticism to the test. Why? Because it might have mint but it also contains our most dreaded ingredient (in case you aren’t sure to what I am referring, it is the Scotch).  So far we have had seven drinks with Scotch and their ratings have been 2,2,2,1,1,2,1.  That pattern is like a reverse Fibonacci sequence of suckitude.

 

It turned out that the mint did make the Scotch Stinger almost tolerable. Don’t get me wrong; it was still gross, but probably the least gross Scotch drink so far thanks to the mint. It was kind of like the difference between a menthol cigarette and a regular cigarette.  In either case, I wouldn’t want to kiss you after you had one unless it was extremely late at night.  Anyway, the Scotch Stinger was tasty enough that it allowed us to make it our highest rated Scotch drink (tie).

Overall Rating for the Scotch Stinger

Taste: 2

Presentation: 2 – Kind of looked like a glass of wee

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 2 – 38% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Scotch

.5 oz Crème de Menthe (white)

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 155: Ain't That a Jicama Head

While our drink selections may at times appear completely random it is only because they are usually random. The genius of it is that sometimes they appear random when they are really carefully chosen by our selection committee (Mrs. Bottle).  Sometimes she chooses a drink because it is related to a holiday.  Other times it is because she wants to make sure we don’t have too many good drinks in a row. Today it is because we had an ingredient that she didn’t want to let go to waste.  That ingredient is fresh mint.

If you know what this is it is attractive.
Otherwise it might skeeze you out

We have fresh mint because Mrs. Bottle was going to make a delicious orange and jicama salad this past weekend for the neighborhood 4^th of July blowout.  Not the big blowout down the road, but the one we got invited to.  It happens that the salad includes fresh mint and we had a lot left over.  Why did we have so much mint left over?  Because Mrs. Bottle couldn’t make the salad.  Why couldn’t she make the salad?  Because we could not find a decent jicama within a 30 mile radius of the Estate.

Don’t get me wrong, we found jicama at our usual grocery store (we won’t name it here, but it rhymes with Ferris Jeter); we just didn’t find a good one.  When Mrs. Bottle picked up the first one she found, it had a hole in it and then bug flew out of said hole.  That is considered good luck in some countries, but in America it is considered gross.  She picked out a second one but when she cut it open at home it too had a hole in it cleverly concealed within the center of the root. The non-hole portion was black with rot.  Mrs. Bottle ignored my suggestion of using the rotted tuber anyway and insisted I find another one.  I spent the next several hours trolling every grocery store that wasn’t too inconvenient but still came a cropper. 

Not to scale
Moth

Since Mrs. Bottle also ignored my other suggestion of making an orange and rutabaga salad, we had a lot of mint left over.  We ended up using the mint in the Frozen Mint Daiquiri which also has rum, lime juice and sugar.  This isn’t to be confused with the previously reviewed Daiquiri which has no mint and is not frozen but conversely also tasted good.  Mint and lime is a good combo, but the Frozen Mint Daiquiri was too tart for our liking.  This is likely due to the fact that it called for sugar instead of simple syrup.  I guess no one told Mr. Boston that sugar doesn’t really dissolve in a frozen drink.  We salvaged the drink by adding some simple syrup, making it quite tasty.  If only the recipe called for “simple syrup to taste” like the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1, it would have been a big hit. Then again there are few drinks that are as big as the DSCTn1.

Overall Rating for the Frozen Mint Daiquiri

 

Taste: 2 (4 if you add simple syrup)

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3 – Frozen drinks are an automatic 1 point deduction

Drinks Until Blackout: 12 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Light Rum

1 tbsp Lime Juice

6 Mint Leaves

1 tsp Sugar

1 cup Ice

Drink 151: Something Borrowed, Something Ew

We frequently try to find the origins of the cocktails we review.  It gives us something to write about and it might give you a nugget of knowledge to drop on someone Cliff Clavin-style when the time is right.  We frequently come a cropper, though, due to the inability of Google to give me what I want.  Instead I get a list of recipes copy-and-pasted from each other or a dozen dumb questions from answers.com or Yahoo Answers where one anonymous dummy gets his or her question answered by some other anonymous dummy. 

Today’s drink the Miami Beach Cocktail was no exception. Since its recipe of Scotch whisky, dry vermouth, and grapefruit juice is similar to the Manhattan’s combination of bourbon, sweet vermouth and bitters I thought we might find an answer.  I figure some very lazy Miamian Miamier Miamiite bartender from Miami named Sonny Tubbs wanted to create a signature drink for his city.  Instead of coming up with something original, he just decided to steal someone else’s recipe and change it a little.  “Oooh, I’ll add grapefruit juice. That will really bring home the beach flavor.”

Someone decided to take
the Manhattan's talents to South Beach

Maybe the drink was actually invented by a bartender in Miami, Ohio, because it didn’t seem very Florida to me.  The grapefruit juice did a reasonable job of masking the Scotch, but it wasn’t enough.  The overall effect was tart feet.  I can see why the inventor might want all evidence scrubbed from the Internet. There wasn’t even a maraschino berry garnish to punch it up.  You might be wondering what a maraschino berry is.  Luckily we have the answer.
 

This image which I named
"maraschino berry" is now
the only place on the web
that references a "maraschino berry"
that does not contain a recipe
from the Absolut web site

During our fruitless (heh) search for the Miami Beach back story, we found a (different) recipe for the drink at the Absolut web site.  Absolut’s drink is garnished with a maraschino berry, which turns out not to be a typo but instead is the name they use for a maraschino cherry.  I think it is also a clever plan to find all the web sites that steal share their recipes since the only references I can find to maraschino berries are all just copies of the Absolut recipes. Can’t these web sites do anything more useful than copy someone else’s work?  They are just lucky that you can’t copyright a list of ingredients.

Ingredients

0.75 oz Scotch Whisky

0.75 oz Dry Vermouth

0.75 oz Grapefruit Juice

Overall Rating for the Miami Beach Cocktail

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 19% Alcohol

Drink 148: Throwing Stones

What is up with that orange?

It’s Sunday so that means it’s time for Mrs. Bottle to wow you with another fabulous review of a mediocre (at best) adult beverage. Today’s drink is the Glass Tower, a combination of many, many ingredients. First, you throw in some vodka, followed by peach schnapps. Next comes rum and then triple sec. Finally you add sambuca and finish it off with some lemon-lime soda. In case you haven’t kept count, that’s six ingredients. But don’t forget the last touch of the garnish, which is an orange slice and cherry. So technically you have eight ingredients. I just want to say, that’s a lot of crap to throw into a drink and still expect something tasty to come out in the end. Maybe that wasn’t the expectation, and if that’s true, then it actually DID live up to expectations. Did you follow that logic?

Since my parents are here visiting the sprawling TBIAW estate, I’m going to keep this relatively short. Here’s the reaction from Mr. Bottle, my folks and myself after tasting this drink, in no particular order: “That’s weird”, “It’s just weird”, “I don’t like that. Tastes weird”, “How can this only taste like Sambuca with all these ingredients?? I’m not drinking this weird thing”.  So I like to compare the results of drinking the Glass Tower to a moment from the 70’s blockbuster movie, The Towering Inferno. As he looks up at his Glass Tower building in ruins, Paul Newman tells Faye Dunaway that maybe it should be left as a symbol of all that is wrong in society. What? Maybe that’s a little strong, but at the very least the Glass Tower should remain as a symbol of all that’s wrong with society thinking it’s ok to have so many ingredients in one drink. It’s just too weird.

Overall Rating for the Glass Tower

Taste: 2 – Mr. Bottle said he could drink it if push came to shove

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 2 – You did see the ingredients list, right?

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 17% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Vodka

1 oz Peach Schapps

1 oz Rum

1 oz Triple Sec

½ oz Sambvca

Lemon-lime Soda

Drink 146: Umami Weer All Crazee Now

We frequently discuss our taste buds here at TBIAW.  It is because taste is an important part of any cocktail and when one talks about taste, one will occasionally mention the body part responsible for delivering its sensual experience.  It is not because the blog is in any way repetitive or bereft of new ideas. We do not want to be repetitive.  While repetition is good for learning a new skill or an idea, it isn’t great for a blog.  We are firmly in the anti-repetition camp.  We feel the same why about repetition that we do about redundancy.   I don’t know about you, but when something gets repetitive I start to tune out and I might miss out on something interesting. No danger of that happening here!

For example, we used this picture once before.
We wouldn't use it again because that
would be repetitive

Oh yeah, I forgot the point I was trying to make about taste buds.  For many years, so-called “scientists” told us that the four basic tastes were sweet, sour, bitter, and salty and that different regions of the tongue had receptors for detecting each taste (ed. note: the taste-map thing is one of many lies perpetrated by “science”).  Then along came a Japanese scientist who discovered a fifth taste called umami.   He then dedicated the rest of his life trying to become the next Ninja Warrior.  Umami roughly translates to a “pleasant savory taste”. I am a fan of umami.  You would know this if you ever saw how much soy sauce I put on white rice.



We agreed to never try
this drink again. We
are calling this agreement
the "Warsaw Pact"



Alert readers may have noticed that we haven’t yet brought up today’s drink, the Warsaw Cocktail.  They may also wonder what a drink made from vodka, blackberry-flavored brandy, dry vermouth, and lemon juice has to do with umami.  Everything, my friends.  Everything.  My first reaction when I tried the Warsaw Cocktail was that it tasted like soy sauce.  The umami was strong in this one.  That is not generally considered a positive quality for a cocktail. 

I don’t enjoy drinking straight soy sauce, (unless it is Kikkoman, that stuff is delicious!), but I thought the Warsaw Cocktail was safe for consumption if there were no alternatives.  Mrs. Bottle really hated the drink, though, and called it many things unfit for a family blog.  She thought it was so bad that maybe our blackberry-flavored brandy had gone bad. It is definitely at least 8 years old as it was purchased when we were caught up in the great Rum Runner craze of the early 2000s. I’m not sure how wide-spread this craze was, but it certainly engulfed the previous Bottle Wonderland Estate.  You can be sure that there will never be a Warsaw Cocktail craze and if there is one, we will abstain.

Overall Rating for the Warsaw Cocktail

Taste: 2 – Mrs. Bottle fought hard for a 1, but she got pwnd again

Presentation: 1

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 – 32% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka

0.5 oz Blackberry-flavored Brandy

0.5 oz Dry Vermouth

1 tsp Lemon Juice

Drink 143: Hot Fizz

Sometimes I wish our blog had more comments.  We currently have 159 posts and 59 comments.  I created a spreadsheet and determined that we have less than one comment per post:

See?

Other times I read the user comments on different web sites and I realize that comments might not be the best thing in the world.  In the local paper the editors frequently have to shut down the comments due to abusive posts.  I make a game out of guessing before clicking a link if a story will have the comments disabled. If you want to try, here is a hint: It happens in every story involving a hot-button topic like crime, immigration, pool parties, government, NASCAR, rainbows, or The Bachelorette.

For some reason I can’t help myself and read the comments even though I can feel myself getting dumber with each comment read.  It seems like spelling, grammar, and capitalization rules are mere guidelines when one posts a comment.  I admit that I will flub my righting from time to time, but I at least make an effort.  I guess when you are foaming at the mouth because some anonymous person has the opposite political views than yours that you don’t have time to run a spell check or use the shift key.

Sometimes I can empathize with that urgency, though.  For example, when we tried today’s drink I was fully prepared to immediately take to the Internet and proclaim that the liberal media was to blame.  There is no real basis for that assertion, but I did not like the drink and felt the need to vent. I did not do so because I was kind of tired. 

A glass too big

The drink is called the Pineapple Fizz and it is composed of rum, pineapple juice, simple syrup, and club soda.  It tasted like a big ol’ glass of club soda with a wisp of pineapple flavor.  If you halved the amount of club soda the Pineapple Fizz might be good.  Unfortunately it is one of the many recipes in the Mr. Boston guide that doesn’t have a proportion listed for an ingredient.  It just says to fill the glass with club soda. What kind of a recipe is that?  We need more government regulation on recipes!  No, the free market will take care of it! Or I could just use a smaller glass.

To summarize, I will quote a comment I recently saw on YouTube: 82xfpg 833ec3 78wu5 6437gk b5wg 

Overall Rating for the Pineapple Fizz

Taste: 2

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Rum

1 oz Pineapple Juice

1 tsp Simple Syrup

? oz Club Soda

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 123: Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

Do not be deceived
by its looks

We have a few things to discuss today, so let’s start with our latest drink, the Mamie Gilroy, a combination of Scotch whisky, lime juice, and ginger ale.  This was by far the best drink we’ve had that contained Scotch. Unfortunately that is like being the best Dane Cook joke.  In other words, it sucked.  Even the lime juice and ginger ale weren’t enough to save it.  The only redeeming thing about this drink is that we finally polished off our bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.  I think we will try a different brand for our next Scotch.  Feel free to suggest one in the comments.

Why the pot shots?

The Scotch was only the difference between this drink and our last drink the Mamie’s Sister, which used gin as its spirit.  There was actually one other difference: the Mamie’s Sister rated a perfect five.  Going from the Mamie’s Sister to the Mamie Gilroy is like having a date with Marcia Brady and thinking, “Man, she is cute, I wonder if she has any sisters” and then having a date with the New Jan Brady.  Next time I'll stick with Marcia. If replacing gin with Scotch can turn a drink from Marcia to Jan, it makes me wonder if there will ever be a drink with Scotch that tastes good.  I think a Venn diagram of cocktails probably looks like this:

Finding a drink that both contains Scotch and tastes good is like finding a white buffalo.  Or possibly a unicorn.  Or maybe a leprechaun riding a unicorn.  We won’t stop trying though, because that’s who we are.

This is probably more accurate

The other thing I would like to discuss is our new found “fame.”  As noted, we were the Foodista Featured Drink Blog of the Day yesterday.  We were expecting a lot of new visitors and we were genuinely excited about it.  They might not ever read more than the one featured post, but at least we would get some exposure. I spruced up the place, adding their nifty badge and updating the Top Drinks and the All Drinks lists.  We were ready for the onslaught. It didn’t quite work out that way, though.  The best I can tell from Blogger’s stats is that we got about a dozen clicks from Foodista.  A dozen!  I haven’t been this let down since Mrs. Bottle told me she wanted to do a downward dog with me and I found out it was yoga.

Reenactment
img: hotandhealthymom.com
Formerly known as fitmilfs.com

I can’t blame Foodista, though, since they did put us on their home page all day yesterday.  They also said, “we will also post a couple shout outs on our Twitter and Facebook pages.”  I was shocked that with 110,000+ Twitter followers and almost 25,000 Facebook fans that more people didn’t click through those shout outs.  Except the shout outs never occurred. Maybe I can blame them a little.  Either way, I am keeping the badge.

Overall Rating for the Mamie Gilroy

Taste: 2
Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 5
Drinks Until Blackout: 9 – 12% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Scotch
0.5 oz Lime Juice
Ginger Ale