Drink 201: Balls Well That Ends Well

Are you tired of drinking beverages that are entirely liquid?  Do you believe that America’s decline is due in large part to alcoholic beverages can be made simply by pouring the ingredients into a glass?  Is the prospect of making dozens of jokes about “blue balls” appealing to you?  Then the Cocktail R-evolution Gin Tonic is probably right up your alley.

You may recall from our last post that Mrs. Bottle and I have recently become chemists.  But instead of cooking up meth Walter White-style, we are mixing up interesting new drinks.  Even though our emulsification experiment was a bit of a failure, we remain undeterred.  This week we went with spherification, also know as balling. 

Actually, this looks a lot like Heisenberg meth.

Spherification is the process of turning a liquid into tiny spheres (or balls).  The spheres have the size and consistency of salmon roe.  The good news is that our balls didn’t taste like fish eggs.  Instead they were made with tonic water and blue Curaçao so they tasted like tonic water and blue Curaçao.  But the consistency was dead on.

Turning a liquid into blue balls takes a lot of teasing and a little chemistry.  The first step is to mix the tonic water and blue Curaçao with sodium alginate (NaC₆H₇O₆) powder.  Even though its empirical formula spells “nacho”, the powder tasted horrible on a Tostito.  That isn’t that surprising since it is extracted from brown algae. Its purpose is to create a gelatin-like substance out of liquid.

When Mrs. Bottle mixed the powder in using our last-century hand mixer, she happened to splash some of the blue liquigel onto the counter.  To the untrained observer it appeared to be a careless spill, but the trained observer would realize she was ritualistically pouring some on the counter as a tribute to our fallen homies.  Luckily our countertops are stain resistant since the same tribute happened last time she tried to mix something.

Spherification in action

After the NaCHO was assimilated into the liquid, we used a pipette to drip the mixture into a calcium lactate (C₆H₁₀CaO) bath and make little balls.  Sadly, calcium lactate’s empirical formula spells “chcao” which doesn’t lend itself to any cheap jokes.  I also am not sure what the point of the calcium bath is other that to wash our balls.   I guess it must somehow contribute to the making of the spheres, but our kit came with no details so I’ll just go with ball washing.

That lime slice looks suspiciously
like a lemon wedge

Once we had a sufficient number of balls, we made the drink.  The recipe DVD didn’t have many specifics on the recipe.  It just had us dip our balls into two ounces of gin with some lime slices.  No ice or other tonic water other than that which had been gellified.  Since we are sticklers for the rules we tried it that way even though we know it would probably be horrible.  Much to our surprise, it was indeed horrible.  It was pretty much just drinking straight lukewarm gin with a bunch of fish-egg looking things on the bottom of the glass.  I didn’t get any balls in my mouth and probably would have had to shoot the whole thing in order to get even one.  And not just because it would have relaxed my inhibitions.  Those suckers were stuck on the bottom.

After adding some ice and tonic water
Neato, eh?

We ultimately added some ice and tonic water and turned it into more of a traditional Gin and Tonic, which is delicious.  The balls floated in the tonic and I got some in my mouth in almost every sip. I actually thought the spheres were pretty good and added an interesting textural element to the drink.  Each time I bit into one there was a tiny orange explosion in my mouth.  Mrs. Bottle, on the other hand, did not enjoy chewing her drink and would prefer her next one to be ball free.  It probably will be unless I am feeling mischievous.

Overall Rating for Gin Tonic

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 3 - All gin

Ingredients

Gin

Tonic Water

Blue Curaçao

Sodium Alginate

Calcium Lactate

Drink 200: Mr. and Mrs. Mix a Lot

I hate looking like a jackass.  Which is unfortunate considering the frequency with which I look like one.  I am also kind of a cheapskate.  These two traits are in a constant struggle for superiority each morning when I view my daily emails from Groupon, LivingSocial, AmazonLocal, DealSaver, Vactionist, and Google Offers.  On the one hand am saving money when I take advantage of an offer.  On the other hand I look like a jackass when I hand the cashier my creased piece of paper to save $7 on $14 worth of food and drinks (alcohol excluded). 

Sometimes Mrs. Bottle and I will take advantage of one of these offers to try something new.   It could be a restaurant we wouldn’t normally try or some activity we haven’t done before.  We have an upcoming zip line adventure and we have recently taken an archery lesson and had a Segway tour of our fair city (which really pushed the “don’t look like a jackass” threshold).  These skills will come in handy once the zombie apocalypse finally arrives as I ride at up to 12 MPH and pick off zombies with my bow and arrow.  Just like Katniss Everdeen.

Artist Concept

We recently received an offer that allowed us to try something new, save money (presumably), not look like a jackass (since it was online only), and do one of our other favorite things: drink.  It was for a molecular gastronomy cocktail kit from a company called MOLECULE-R (emphasis theirs).  In case you are unfamiliar with molecular gastronomy, it is when you take food that is somewhat natural and add chemicals to it so it becomes something unnatural.   Think of it like making a Dorito into a taco shell, only with different chemicals.

Our kit recently arrived and we decided to try it out.  The first step was to pick out a drink.  Unfortunately the kit didn’t come with a recipe book.  Instead it came with a DVD.  In case you are unfamiliar with DVDs, they are plastic discs that contain video recordings.  People used to use them to watch movies before FSM invented streaming.  We dusted off our DVD player and perused the choices.  That is, after we watched the mandatory 30 second musical introduction with no option to bypass.

It turns out that many of these recipes require either a lot of time, pre-planning, culinary whippers, or liquid nitrogen.   Since we didn’t have any of those items, we went with something simple, emulsification.  They have several drinks that featured emulsification but we only had ingredients on hand for two: the kamikaze and the margarita.  We have already featured a kamikaze in the blog, but our last two entries were both for margaritas we decided to go with the kamikaze.

Chemistry is messy business

The molecular gastronomy piece of this drink was lime foam. That meant adding soy lecithin to some water and lime juice and whipping it until it became foam. That was the theory, anyway.  Mrs. Bottle whipped the hell out of that stuff but it never really foamed up as much as it did on the DVD. I don’t know if the mix was a little off or if it was something else.  It is possibly related to the fact that chemistry was the only science class I didn’t like.  Too much memorization for my taste.  But I digress.

We were able to salvage a little foam from the top of the bowl and add it to our drink, though.  The rest of the drink is just vodka and orange liqueur.  Mrs. Bottle pretty much hated it.  It is all alcohol and we didn’t chill any of it so she found it kind of warm and gross. I sipped mine making sure to get some foam in each taste and thought it was decent.  If it had been cold it might have actually been pretty good.

Probably should take a lint roller to the backdrop, eh?

We remain undeterred, though.  As soon as my bottle of liquid nitrogen arrives, we will be trying again.

Overall Rating for Kamikaze

Taste: 3

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 2 - From whipping fatigue

Ingredients

Vodka

Triple Sec

Lime Juice

Water

Soy Lecithin

Drink 199: Lovely 'Rita, Easy Made

Recent studies have shown that 100% of Americans are out of shape (see fig. 1).  Other studies have also shown that Mrs. Bottle and I both love margaritas.  So much so that we have reviewed them no less than five times, not counting the Blue Margarita, but definitely including our most recent post.   

Study consisted of survey of one adult
male located on the Bottle Wonderland Estate.
Margin of error +/- 100%

Although we consider ourselves citizens of the world, we are technically Americans and therefore out of shape. Therefore we have been seeking low calorie margaritas.  Something that is easy to make would be nice, too.  Unrelated side note: Laziness and fitness are highly correlated.

Our last drink, the Bud Light Lime LIME-A-RITA, met the criterion “easy to make” but at 220 calories per 8 oz it feel completely short in the “light” category.  Our next entry is Crystal Light Margarita.  In case you didn’t know, Crystal Light is essentially the same thing as sugar free Kool-Aid.  As far as I can tell, the only difference between the two is the mascot.  Kool-Aid has Kool-Aid Man, and Crystal Light has Linda Evans:

I apologize for not posting this early enough for you to get your free Crystal Light Body Workout on record or audiocassette.  The offer expired on June 24.  1984. 

Last time we used fake Instagram effects.
This time it is the real deal.
Also notice the expert use of terrible lighting.

The Crystal Light Margarita has only five calories per serving (a 25% increase over their 1984 recipe!!).  The flavor isn’t bad.  It is a reasonable approximation of a margarita.   Plus it has no sugar, which is apparently destroying my immune system. The only thing I’m not sure about is why it is listed in the “Mocktails” section of the Crystal Light website.  When Mrs. Bottle brings me one it is loaded with tequila.

Overall Rating for Crystal Light Margarita

Taste: 3

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 4

Ingredients

Crystal Light

Water

Tequila (to taste)

Drink 195: The 24 Days of Christmas

Greetings and welcome to the 2011 TBIAW Holiday Gift Guide!  Some poor misguided souls might think that mid-January 2012 is too late for a 2011 holiday gift guide.   Those people do not work for the US Postal Service.  Here in the cosmopolitan Charlotte Metroplex, home of such landmarks as the Bottle is a Wonderland Estate, South Carolina,  and the NASCAR Hall of Fame, people are still receiving mail from November.  This is why I always use FedEx to deliver transplant organs.

Sadly, Mrs. Bottle and I were victims of this horrible tragedy of delayed mail.  I did not receive my December 16^th issue of Forbes magazine until January 7^th.  This was an important one, too, for it contained the annual ForbesLife Gift Guide.  I rely on this each year to help me figure out what luxury items to purchase for Mrs. Bottle.  Had this issue arrived on time I would have known that the Burgundy Persian-lamb Wulling jacket by the Row ($12,000 – Barneys) should be under the tree.  Instead Mrs. Bottle received a White Chinese-polyester jacket by the Wal-Mart ($43.99 – Wal-Mart).  In fact, my issue was so late that Barneys no longer has the clearly superior jacket.  Maybe I can find a different one for next year.

The tree is made from bumble bones
image: Forbes.com

I don’t have time to cover everything.  It is January after all.  I have time to mention a few, though.  For men I was going to recommend the Halston Velvet slippers until I saw that they are “price upon request”.  Something tells me that they will be more than these superior ones.  Alternately you could get this $7,000 ping pong table.  It is actually a good deal because it doubles as a beer pong table dining room table so you are getting two pieces of furniture for the price of one.  Its 900 pounds of concrete could also be useful if you ever need to make sure a body never floats to the surface.  You are practically losing money by not owning one.

For the audiophile in your life they suggest the Basis Inspiration Turntable.  A turntable?  Seriously? People who insist on vinyl can be kind of annoying.  I’m guessing that people who insist on vinyl and own a $54,000 turntable are probably not an exception.  For the same price as that turntable you could buy  a USB turntable to convert your precious records to MP3 and 215 160GB iPods so you can listen to them.

Finally, for those of you with precious darling children, they bring you $1,200 ladybug earrings. I say go for it.  If you think you can't afford it go ahead and use the college fund money.  It will pay off.  When you have to get a doctor to remove thousands of dollars of jewelry from your little angel’s nose it will create a fun story for years to come.  College can’t teach you those kind of life experiences.

Vampire Eric really
wishes he had legs
so he could get a sip

In honor of these high-falutin’  gifts we decided to have the Grand Mimosa, a mix of Champagne,  Grand Marnier, and orange juice.  Since we just spent all that money on gifts, we used cava instead of champagne.  We are not made of money after all.  The drink was okay, but both Mrs. Bottle and I thought that it was not as good as a classic Mimosa which excludes the Grand Marnier.  Even better is plain cava, which excludes the orange juice as well.

Overall Rating for Grand Mimosa

Taste: 3

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: ??? – The recipe did not give champagne proportions

Ingredients

0.5 oz Grand Marnier

1 oz Orange Juice

Champagne

Drink 186: Big Lizard In My Back Yard, Can't Afford to Feed It Anymore

Have a Coke
and a blank
stare

Today we will not be talking about baby scat commercials even though we remain emotionally scarred after yesterday's post. Instead we will discuss the Lounge Lizard, a mix of dark rum, amaretto, and cola.  This is the second best drink we’ve ever had with cola out of the two we’ve tried.  Don't you think it was so cute back then when I had given up drinking soda?  That dark period of my life is over now and hopefully soon forgotten.

The Lounge Lizard’s rating may have been adversely impacted as a result of my soda relapse, since drinking a cola is a normal occurrence instead of a treat. 

For our cola we used Coke Zero, which we thought would work better than our other option, Diet Pepsi.  Why? Because Coke Zero >>>> Diet Pepsi. Also, the Coke Zero was in the pantry and the Diet Pepsi was way downstairs. It turns out the Diet Pepsi may have been a better choice even with the required trek to the dank basement of the Estate.  because the drink ended up being a bit too sweet for either of our liking.  The Coke Zero is already pretty sweet and adding the amaretto pushed it over the top.  If I were to make it again I would definitely leave out the amaretto.  And maybe the rum, too.

Overall Rating for the Lounge Lizard

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 11 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Dark Rum

.5 oz Amaretto

Cola

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 172: All That's Missing is the Asbury Jukes

A little over a week ago we tried the Wallis Blue Cocktail, which we found quite delicious.  It is essentially a gin Margarita.  Surprisingly, that post received a comment.  A reader suggested that we try another gin drink called the Southside because he had heard it was “very tasty.”  He even provided a link to the recipe.  As we have shown by our one reader-requested drink, we are always happy to honor a fan’s request as long as the drink happens to be in our Mr. Boston guide.  In this case the guide does have a South-side but it only bears a slight resemblance to the recipe linked since it ignores several key ingredients.  If the supplied recipe was Alec Baldwin, the Mr. Boston version is Stephen Baldwin.

Prettiest leaf this
side of Leif Garrett

 All hope was not lost though as the guide has a second drink called the South-side Fizz which is a bit closer but still not an exact match.  We decided to have a head-to-head showdown between the two recipes.  Of course another sabot got thrown into the machinery when a third recipe got posted to the comments.  Since this third recipe came directly from the person who claims it is tasty we altered our plan and decided to use her recipe vs. the Mr. Boston recipe.  We did this even though we had already scheduled the other recipe. We hope you appreciate the steps we take to keep things from getting stale at TBIAW.   Seriously.  This is a lot of work for very few readers.   It would probably be more efficient to just send a couple of e-mails or a mimeograph instead of dealing with the blog.

The challenger

Normally when we make a mixed drink that calls for gin we use Tanqueray.  Not this time, though.  Our Southside fan said “do NOT use Tanqueray.”  I’m not sure what she has against Tanqueray (maybe Tanqueray owes her money?) but we honored her request.  She suggested alternatives Plymouth, No. 209, and Hendrick’s. Of those, we only have Hendrick’s, but we decided to go with Bombay Sapphire instead because I didn’t want to use 4.5 oz of Hendrick’s on mixed drinks.  It is only to be used for Gin and Tonics or for getting crunk.

After we retrieved a bottle of Sapphire from our vast gin cellar, we studied the recipes carefully.  There were a few differences so we’ve provided a handy chart to highlight the main ones:

                                              
The differences definitely created two distinct drinks each imperfect in its own way.   The Mr. Boston version was a little too watery in my opinion primarily due to the fact that you are instructed to fill the glass with club soda once the other ingredients are in place.  I hate this type of instruction.  We need precision in our recipes (unless it is telling you to add simple syrup to-taste, as in the fabulous Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1) Right in their own book it says a highball glass is 8-10 ounces. This means that an instruction to “fill glass” could lead to up to a two-ounce variability in the drink.  I double-checked the math.   It is that type of inattention to detail that lead to the financial meltdown.

Mrs. Bottle still preferred the Mr. Boston version to its challenger, though.  She found it refreshing while she thought the reader’s version was a bit too sweet.  I also found it a bit too sweet but I thought the muddled mint provided a more interesting flavor than the Mr. Boston one.  The challenger called for an entire ounce of simple syrup as opposed to ¾ ounce lemon juice which was bit much for us.  We added more lemon juice which helped but still left the drink a bit too syrupy.  In fairness, our reader said that less simple syrup will make it less sweet.  When we make this again we will heed that advice.  I am interested to replace the club soda with champagne as well.

Ultimately, since Mrs. Bottle preferred one and I preferred the other the answer to which is better is as muddled as the mint should be.

Overall Rating for the South-side Fizz

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackouts: 9 – 13% Alcohol depending on glass size

Ingredients

2 oz Gin

1 oz Lemon Jucie

1 tsp Simple Syrup

? oz Club Soda

Alternate Recipe

2.5 oz Gin – NOT Tanqueray
¾ oz Lemon Juice
6-8 leaves Mint

1 oz simple syrup (less for less sweet)
1 oz club soda or champagne (very dry)

In a cocktail shaker: Muddle the mint with the lemon juice before adding the gin & simple syrup. Use a handful of ice and shake until the shaker is too cold to hold. Strain & serve it up (not over ice) into a chilled martini glass. Top with club soda or champagne. Garnish with whole mint leaf.

Drink 171: I Get Stupid I Mean Outrageous

Today we have the Stupid Cupid, a mix of citrus vodka, sloe gin, simple syrup, and lemon juice.  You might think it would make more sense to have had this drink back during Romance Week, but you would be wrong.  A stupid Cupid would show up late, most likely some time in late July or early August.  It has nothing to do with trying to have a bunch of drinks with sloe gin now that we finally acquired some.

All that and a cherry on the bottom

The drink had a prominent lemon bouquet thanks to the lemon juice and citrus vodka.  I didn’t think the flavor was crazy-lemony, but Mrs. Bottle felt the citrus was powerful.  I think my taste buds may have been de-lemonized because right before we had the drink I had just eaten enough enormous lemon cookies to send me into sugar shock.  They arrived in the mail from Mrs. Bottle’s mother and it would have been rude to just let them sit there. I am eating one right now.

37 whole lemons go into every Kroger lemon cookie

As far as the drink, while we disagreed on the lemon, Mrs. Bottle and I both concurred that the drink had a strong alcohol burn. You know a drink is strong when you feel the warmth in your stomach.  That isn’t too surprising when you consider the Stupid Cupid is 37% alcohol. We had a little trouble coming to an agreement on whether it should be a three or a four but we easily concluded that a few of these will make anyone stupid.

Overall Rating for the Stupid Cupid

Taste: 3
Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 2 – 37% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Citrus-flavored Vodka

0.5 oz Sloe Gin

1 splash Simple Syrup

1 splash Lemon Juice

Drink 169: Seven Silver Spiders Swam Silently Seaward

It does look silver

When we first started this blog one hundred and sixty-eight cocktails ago we thought the majority of the posts would just be a description of the drink and a rating of said drink.  Today we finally realize that goal with the Silver Spider, a shooter made from vodka, rum, triple sec, and crème de menthe.  This drink tasted mostly like alcohol with a bit of mint.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything special.  One thing it will do is get you drunk.  There you have it. 

Overall Rating for the Silver Spider

Taste: 3

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackouts: 3 – 33% Alcohol

Ingredients

.5 oz Vodka

.5 oz Rum

.5 oz Triple Sec

.5 oz Crème de Menthe (white)

Drink 168: Sloe Ride

Several drinks in the Mr. Boston guide feature Sloe Gin, most famously the Alabama Slammer and the Sloe Gin Fizz.  We would like to try those drinks, but the problem is that it is tough to find authentic sloe gin.  Most of the sloe gin you see at the liquor store isn’t made using the traditional method of infusing gin with sloes.  Instead, they use grain alcohol.  I’m not sure why they are allowed to call that stuff sloe gin instead of sloeshine. 

I can't tell you the name of
this drink yet because we
haven't gotten to that
 part of the post

We conducted a multi-state search several months ago (true fact) and were unable to locate any real sloe gin.  That all changed recently when Mrs. Bottle finally located some Plymouth Traditional Sloe Gin.  I’m pretty sure she was supposed to be at work at the time, but priorities are priorities.  This was exciting news since it now allowed us a whole new spectrum of drinks.  I became a bit less excited when I saw that the bottle cost over $30.  Maybe sloeshine wouldn’t have been a bad choice after all.

We didn’t want to shoot our sloe wad by bringing one of the more famous sloe-based drinks right off the bat, so today we bring you the Sloeberry Cocktail, a mix of sloe gin and bitters.  The drink tasted a little strange yet somewhat familiar.  Mrs. Bottle thought it smelt of cough syrup, but there was something else there.  After several sips, I figured it out: The Sloeberry Cocktail tasted sort of like prune juice.  I floated this theory by Mrs. Bottle and she could neither confirm nor deny it since she claims to have never tasted prune juice. I actually haven’t had prune juice either, but I’ve been known to enjoy a prune dried plum now and then.

"Slow Barry" is what Robin and Maurice called their brother

We had to know more so we turned to our go-to source for information to learn about the sloe (Wikipedia, making TBIAW possible for over 300 years^TM).  It turns out that the sloe is the fruit of the Prunus spinosa species of bushes. I don’t know if you caught the name…Prunus spinosa. That’s right; the sloe is related to the prune. I am here to tell you that a hint of that pruney flavor is present in the Sloeberry Cocktail, too.  It wasn’t overwhelming, though.  Probably because it cost so much.

Overall Rating for the Sloeberry Cocktail

Taste: 3
Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 5 – 26% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Sloe Gin

1 dash Bitters

Drink 164: Hot in the City

Captions require
effort

Oftentimes when I look at a drink recipe I think, “Whoever created this drink gave it very little effort.”   Sometimes that can work.  Other times you end up with the Sun Kiss, a mix of amaretto and orange juice.  You don’t even put it in a shaker.  You just pour into an ice- filled glass.  The lime wedge only gives the façade of effort.  The drink was unremarkable in every way.  It looked okay and it tasted okay.  It pretty much I suppose if you love amaretto you would probably like the Sun Kiss a bit more than we did. 

Since the drink’s creator gave the drink such little effort, I am going to make up for it by giving this entry very little effort as well.  It is for the best as we here at the Bottle Wonderland Estate are not immune from the heat wave that is both captivating and destroying our great nation.  I never knew it got so hot in the summer.  I don’t want us to expend too much energy and end up with some heat-related malady.  It is supposed to be 98° today with a heat index of 105°.  If the heat index was only 98° you would be nearing the beginning of the third paragraph.  Instead you are nearing the end of today’s post. That extra 7 degrees of perceived heat makes all the difference. 

Overall Rating for the Sun Kiss

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackouts: 11 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Amaretto

4 oz Orange Juice

Drink 162: Too Much Ado

You probably remember when the main road to the Bottle Wonderland Estate was closed earlier this year because of a downed power line.  It was all over the national news.  It caused logistics issues not seen since Hurricane Katrina.  Wait, you don’t remember?  Oh yeah, that’s right, it actually was no big deal.  That’s because every person on the planet who doesn’t live in Los Angeles can deal with a temporary road closure without it being major news for a week.  That said, I was glad to see that Laker Girl tryouts were unaffected.  

Local news coverage

No sunrise and no smog

In honor of the so-called Carmageddon we bring you the L.A. Sunrise, a mix of vodka, crème de banana, rum, orange juice, and pineapple juice.  We aren’t sure why it is called the L.A. Sunrise since the drink doesn’t have a “sunrise effect” like the Tequila Sunrise or its grosser cousin the Hairy Sunrise. It isn’t even covered with a thick haze of smog. Maybe if we had used dark rum instead of the called-for “rum” it would have tinted everything brown and had a more realistic appearance.

The drink ultimately left Mrs. Bottle unsatisfied (insert too-easy joke here (and here)).  She felt the drink too weak and somewhat pointless (also too easy).  I thought it tasted pretty good with a nice pineapple-orange juice flavor.  She noted that she couldn’t even taste the alcohol and said that she might as well just drink some pineapple-orange juice.  To her it is hardly worth writing about, but it is still more newsworthy than a road closure thousands of miles away.

Overall Rating for the L.A. Sunrise

Taste: 4

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 10 – 10% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Vodka

.5 oz Crème de Banana

.25 oz Rum

2 oz Orange Juice

2 oz Pineapple Juice

Drink 160: Never Neverblog

Garnish with a faerie

Lately I have been having a little trouble coming up with topics for the blog.  You may have noticed that the frequency has dipped a little over the last two weeks. The quality, of course, is as sterling as ever. Hopefully I will rally soon and a fountain of fresh ideas will spring forward.  The first step is admitting I have a problem.  Now that we have that admission out of the way I am trying to determine the root cause for the idea deficit.  I think it is either concern over the debt ceiling or that I am over 18 hours behind in watching Harry Potter movies.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person to run into this problem.  In fact, while researching today’s drink the Peter Pan Cocktail, I ran into someone else who seemingly suffered a similar fate.  His name is Jerry and he has (had?) a blog called Drinking With Jerry that is pretty much the same concept as TBIAW (with the same inspiration).  His version of the Peter Pan Cocktail is the same as ours, too with gin, dry vermouth, orange juice, and bitters.  He thought it tasted like “shampoo” but we didn’t.  We didn’t love it, but it was decent even though it contained dry vermouth.  Mrs. Bottle pointed out that gin seems to have a better relationship with vermouth than other liquors do. I think it is because gin is so delicious it can make anything taste good.  In this case it allowed the drink to be more palatable than one might think.  The orange juice probably helped as well. We both felt that the Peter Pan Cocktail had potential to grow on you if you gave it enough time and if you leave your window open.

  

Not Jerry
img: http://pixyland.org/peterpan/



Speaking of time, it looks like Jerry’s blog was pretty time-consuming.  He clearly went to a lot of effort in his photography and I have to say that the design of his blog is nice.  The pictures are certainly more interesting than our “drink with a black background and occasionally a lame prop” motif.  He had initially been writing a few sentences with each drink but that ended after April 21 and on May 19 he stopped his blog for good.  Maybe the time commitment got to be too much.  Maybe the fact that no one was voting on his drinks made him frustrated. Perhaps his lack of Facebook fans frustrated him (the same as TBIAW!!).  I don’t know Jerry, but I don’t want to think that he just gave up.  Quitting is not cool.  I prefer to imagine that he is dead

Overall Rating for the Peter Pan Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4 – It has a faerie!

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 7 – 19% Alcohol

Ingredients

.75 oz Gin

.75 oz Dry Vermouth

.75 oz Orange Juice

2 dashes Bitters