John Collins

Two posts in one day! How amazing am I? Please, in lieu of flowers and gifts, just make a donation to the charity of your choice ;-)

I have to draw your attention to the John Collins photo. Let me tell you, if there were John Collinses sitting elegantly in mountain streams, I would spend a lot more time hiking. I feel like someone took a Coors commercial and photoshop a cocktail in -- taste of the Rockies and all. Ridiculous.

As to the quality of the actual drink, my ability to judge is diminished because I did some sketchy substitution. My soda water was flat, so I borrowed some of my roommate's (sorry B). Would've been fine except that hers was Pomegranate flavored, which didn't mix with the bourbon at all. For other types of Collins, I think the pom would have been fine, but the stronger flavor of whiskey was just really odd and off-putting. If not for my blunder, I'm sure this would've been a good drink just like other Collins.

2 ounces bourbon

splash of simple syrup

juice of 1/2 fresh lemon

soda water

-Add to an iced highball glass, soda water last. Stir and serve.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Beachcomber

My version did look surprisingly similar to this picture, so hooray for me! Unfortunately, I haven't gotten the blending thing down very well yet, and nothing I make comes out with the right consistency of a blended drink. Is it me or is it my blender? The soul searching continues...

Beyond the texture, the beachcomber simply joins the ranks of drinks I don't remember very well and that I took no notes on. Too sweet? Too strong? Boring? Pretty good? No idea. I imagine it wasn't as delicious as the recipe makes it sound or I would've had clearer memories.

1 1/2 ounces light rum

1/2 ounce Cointreau

1/2 ounce lime juice

2 dases grenadine

-Blend with ice and pour into wine goblet.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Martinez

I'm sorry to be such a cocktail failure, but all I remember about the martinez is that it tasted slightly better than I expected. I'm not even going to make anything up. I'll just pack it in and do better next time.

3/4 ounces gin

3/4 ounces dry vermouth

1/2 ounce Cointreau

Dash of bitters

-Stir with cracked ice and strain into cocktail glass.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Delilah

I don't really remember this drink much, but my notes say it was tasty -- imagine a lemon drop with gin instead of vodka. You got it. I'm trying really hard to catch up on writing these up since I forget them very quickly. I could just start making things up perhaps? This drink tasted like a jungle safari from the early 20th century viewed from onboard a spaceship millions of miles away and hundreds years in the future (since it would take a long time for the light to travel there...) by humans who secretly developed the technology to leave earth in the 1960s and who also have super telescopes that allow them to still observe the planet they left while sipping on a futuristic cocktail made from the tears of unicorns (spoiler alert: they exist!), stardust, and yoijno (couldn't even begin to explain that one). The delilah is the closest you'll ever get to this experience, unless you happen upon the time vortex.

ANYWAY, the cointreau is a little wasted in this drink, and I don't see any reason why subbing triple sec would hinder it in any way. Save yourself the money on that one. Otherwise, the only problem you might have is sounding like a sissy ordering this one in a bar: it just sounds like a girly drink in a way that a manhattan or an old fashioned never will.

2 ounces gin

1 ounce Cointreau

1 ounce lemon juice

-Stir with cracked ice and strain into cocktail glass.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Quickie

The drink in which I discover that I really like bourbon, a fact I'm quite pleased about for no better reason than that drinking bourbon sounds cool. Compared to other whiskey I've had, bourbon is smoother, a little less spicy, but not because it seems watered down. I'll report more when I have further experience.

I introduce bourbon because that's the dominating flavor of a quickie, a drink whose name is pretty to the point. This is one to down only if you want to be buzzed in the most immediate of futures.

1 ounce bourbon

1 ounce light rum

1/4 ounce triple sec

-Mix with cracked ice and strain into cocktail glass.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Cosmopolitan

You have no idea how many times I started to write this post but got too bored and gave up. That's kind of where I'm at with the drink itself as well: blah blah Sex and the City blah blah New York blah blah pink yay! The bottom line: it doesn't taste so different than a crantini. Cointreau is really good, so don't waste it on this drink. Go ahead, use triple sec and save the expensive stuff for when it matters.

Honestly, I drank my cosmo easily, in my apartment, while watching some movie or other. Maybe you have to be at some New York hotspot to really appreciate the genius of the cosmo, but somehow I doubt it. Maybe when you're having as much sex as those girls did, the taste : price ratio is irrelevant. Next time, I'll save my 3/4 ounce of cointreau for a different drink and throw this one together for half the price.

2 ounce vodka

2 ounce cran juice

1 ounce lime juice

3/4 ounce cointreau

-Stir with cracked ice and strain into cocktail glass.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Sidecar

The sidecar is a classic that I've always wanted to order, but was always a little more than I wanted to spend. If you have the money, you should definitely go for it because it's a great drink.

The sidecar was my companion the other night as I watched Jonny Depp Jack the Ripper flick "From Hell." It was a good thing I was drinking something good because the movie was not. Jonny, you're pretty to look at and a good actor, but no. Honey, no. I'm sorry, but prostitutes in Victorian London did not look like this:

Age her by 25 years, yank out some of her teeth and infect her with any number of maladies and then maybe she would look like a 19th century Whitechapel resident. Seriously.

Umm...well that was a tiny rant that had nothing to do with the booze. Here's how you can survive mediocre (I won't use the term "bad") movies too!

1 1/2 ounce cognac or brandy

3/4 ounce Cointreau

Juice 1/4 lemon

-Shake in cocktail shake and strain into cocktail glass.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Espresso Martini

I vote that this drink needs to move to the dessert drinks chapter because it was just a cup of delicious. I didn't really get much coffee flavor, just chocolate. Boozy chocolate delicious.

1 1/2 ounce vodka

1/2 Créme de Cacao

-Stir with cracked ice and strain into cocktail glass.

I'm really starting to have a beef with the modernization of the martini, and it's not because I have any kind of fondness for the original. How does the espresso "martini" resemble the classic drink? It's served in the same glassware. Well yes, but so is the sidecar and that's not in the martini chapter. Maybe because it has vodka? There are plenty of drinks that have vodka and are not martinis. Is it the stirring instead of shaking? Nope, you stir old fashioneds and manhattans as well.

I move that it should not be a martini unless it is served in a cocktail glass, contains BOTH gin/vodka and vermouth, and is stirred. The name martini should denote something about the flavor profile, and in it's modern usage it doesn't. When I'm ordering a cocktail, I want the name to tell me something about how it's going to taste, not how it's prepared.

Tequini

Do you want to do shots of tequila while pretending to be classy? Have a tequini. There's a little bit of vermouth (that is almost completely overshadowed by the tequila), but otherwise there's not much difference between this drink and taking a swig from the bottle.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing...I've certainly had much much much worse drinks throughout this project. The downside: I had one tequini and a glass of wine and woke up with a legit hangover the next day. I'm not one to be felled by only two drinks, but I didn't get out of bed until 11 and felt like crap for several more hours. Beware is all I'm saying. Here at LYJIA, we (I) promote functional alcoholism ;-)

1 1/2 ounce tequila

1/2 ounce dry vermouth

-Stir with cracked ice and strain into cocktail glass.

Also thanks to a new blog by my lovely friend Alex (read it!), and a potential new blog from El (who's still working out the details), I've been reinvigorated with drink project enthusiasm! (Also I had enough money to actually go to the liquor store and buy some new stuff). Get ready to hear about some fantastic new drinks, and hopefully the halfway point in the project!

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Sapphire Martini

I have a to do list for today, and I will get it done. It's not even that long or filled with distasteful things, I've just become so so so lazy. Definitely a reason I'm eager to re-enter the world of academics before my body shrivels until only my eyes, ears, hands, mouth and stomach work. Those will never atrophy because you need them to watch things on the internet and eat food. Brain? Size of a pea. Stomach? Reaching out to the outer edges of the universe and expanding along with it.

But today, today I have showered and have almost finished cleaning my room. And now I'm blogging, which has unfortunately turned into something I put on my to do list. A couple of days ago, I realized I was actually behind in my drink making. For shame. I've completed 77 recipes when I should have 80 done. It's getting tough because I need to make a trip to the liquor store but I'm trying to save money for my trip to the East Coast. At least I have three jobs now, if only I could get hours at two of them.

So all of that was basically just prelude to me not really remembering the drink that I'm supposed to be writing about. I think it was okay, much better than I thought it was going to be and certainly drinkable, but nothing to write the folks at home about. Do what you will with that. Thanks for reading my drivel to get two wishy washy sentences about the actual drink. Here's the recipe:

1 1/2 ounce Bombay Sapphire gin

1/2 ounce blue Curaçao liqueur

-Stir with cracked ice and strain into cocktail glass.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Mind Eraser

Confession: I've been drinking and not blogging. I barely remember the drinks I'm going to be writing about in the near future. Here's what I do know:

1. I still can't do floats, despite reading about them on the internet. Need more practice.

2. This drink tasted rancid until I added a bit of grenadine to it...I'm sure simple syrup would work as well.

3. That's pretty much it.

1 1/2 ounce vodka

1 1/2 ounce Kahlúa

Soda water

-Pour Kahlúa into an iced old fashioned glass. Add vodka slowly to create a float. Fill with soda water but don't mix.

Enjoy and bottoms up!