Slow Comfortable Screw and Sloe Gin Fizz

My most recent trip to the liquor store (the one downtown that is kind of shady but easiest to get to) resulted in the purchase of two new items: Southern Comfort and Sloe Gin. SoCo I've had before, mostly in the form of SoCo and Lime shots over the summer. Is alright. Sloe gin, however, is a completely new experience. Despite the name, it's actually not gin at all but rather a liqueur made from slow berries. It looks all purply in the bottle but makes most drinks look pink. The bottle I have looks something like this:

As for the taste, it wasn't bad when I just had a tiny taste by itself. Pretty sweet and syrupy but I could imagine it tasting good when mixed with other things. Kind of like a naughty Italian Soda.

The first drink I had, the Slow Comfortable Screw, is first of all a ridiculous name for a drink and a member of that completely unhelpful category of drinks in my book: drinks with naughty names. I still don't understand how that is a useful category to a bartender. Anyway, the drink is so named because it is basically a screwdriver with Southern Comfort and sloe gin added. Cute, eh?

1 ounce vodka

3/4 ounce Southern Comfort

3/4 ounce sloe gin

4 ounces fresh orange juice

-Shake with cracked ice and strain into iced highball glass.

I found this similar to a Sex on the Beach - very fruity and girly. However, since the fruity flavor is achieved more through booze than juice in this drink, it doesn't have that freshness and lightness of SotB. It's almost too sweet like strawberry and grape soda.

The sloe gin fizz is basically another version of a collins, and is one of the few that actually tastes substantially different than the original. I found it okay, but again the sloe gin is a little too sweet for me and left me feeling that my drinking palate had developed a bit beyond sweet pink drinks with fizz.

2 ounces sloe gin

1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice

splash of simple syrup

soda water

-shake all ingredients well in cocktail shaker and strain into iced highball glass. Fill with soda water.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Mimosa & Bucks Fizz

The breakfast drinks of champions! Nothing beats a mimosa with bunch on a hungover Sunday morning -- although that was not the setting for me this time. They are bubbly, sweet, and go well with sweet breakfast foods like pancakes or french toast. Yummy yummy.

But, what's the difference between Bucks Fizz and Mimosa? Grand Marnier. Mimosas contain Grand Marnier, which is expensive. Frankly, I liked my Bucks Fizz better, so I don't think I would go to the trouble and the expense to make a proper mimosa.

Mimosa:

Champagne

Orange juice

Dash of Grand Marnier

-Use more champagne than orange juice to taste.

Bucks Fizz:

Champagne

Orange juice

-Use 3 parts champagne to 1 part orange juice.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Petit Zinc

1 ounce vodka

1/2 ounce Cointreau

1/2 ounce sweet vermouth

1/2 ounce orange juice

-Stir with cracked ice and strain into cocktail glass.

I looked at these ingredients and had such high expectations. I thought it would be like a leap year or new fashion, but it tasted more like Sunny D and vodka. The orange juice I bought (not Sunny D but also not freshly squeezed) was probably to blame, but I shouldn't have to juice my own oranges to make a decent drink. This one also wasn't very much liquid in my glass. Good because I was going out after, but bad if I were staying in and that was my one drink for the night. You can always double I suppose ;-)

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Tequila Sunrise

I've not been writing here for the past couple of days because I've been S-I-C-K. I actually drank the tequila sunrise quite a bit ago, right as I was heading down for the count (and not on account of the tequila). I don't even remember very well what it tasted like, just that my throat was sore so I didn't want to swallow it.

On the cocktail project more generally, 1) I'm a little unenthused these days which is leading to 2) bad bartending. I've become such a poor pour that I often end up with a significant portion of the booze on the counter. I'm also a little tired of just making drinks for just myself, so hopefully having people back during the break will reinvigorate me!

Well, the roomie and I are putting up the Christmas tree tonight finally, so that should be yay! Happy holidays!

1 1/2 ounce tequila

6 ounces orange juice

1/2 ounce grenadine

-add tequila and orange juice to iced highball glass. Float grenadine.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Orange Blossom

So, do you remember that time I made a screwdriver? Do you remember how I fresh squeezed the orange juice to make it extra spectacular but how it turned out really bland and unremarkable? Well, that didn't happen this time! I squeezed my own orange juice from valencia oranges at Market of Choice and there were fireworks!

This is still a pretty basic drink, but you can never underestimate the power of a simple drink made well, and I think I did it this time! Here's how you can too!

2 ounces gin

1 1/2 ounce orange juice

splash of simple syrup

-Stir with cracked ice and pour into chilled cocktail glass.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Screwdriver

It's time for the freshman year classic: the screwdriver. I have to say that I was not terribly excited to make this drink. Things like the whiskey sour and the rum and coke are classic drinks that don't take a lot of thought, but I feel like the screwdriver, at least in my life, has been the no-bartending-skills drink of choice. It's in the book, so I made it anyway:

2 ounces vodka

orange juice

-Add vodka to iced rocks glass and fill with o.j.

In order to add an element of novelty for myself, I decided to make it with freshly squeezed orange juice. I made orange juice the other night as part of the mulled wine, so I thought that it might make the screwdriver a better drink as well. Unfortunately, the orange I used this time wasn't as good (same brand, valencia organic, just not well-chosen) so it wasn't nearly as flavorful. Too bad.

I should state for the record that there is nothing wrong with a screwdriver per se. It's just a little safe as drinks go. If you're in a situation where you're not looking to impress, just looking to not offend, making screwdrivers for people will generally get the job done.

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Classic Martini/Sex on the Beach/Cape Codder

Okay, so this the drunkest blog so far by a mile. There will likely be typos and droning on and other forms of confusing nonsense. A predictable flaw when blogging about drinking.

My first cocktail began when I realized that vermouth is a type of wine and can therefore be purchased in Oregon grocery stores, forgoing the annoying trip to the liquor store. I should mention that I do not have a driver's license and the liquor store is not exactly walking distance. I consider it simply another challenge to be overcome along my road to cocktail glory.

I was at local grocery store MoC when I spotted the vermouth for a price I could afford and decided it was time to put a check mark in the chapter dedicated to martinis. I will give you a condensed version of what said chapter has in its introduction: gin or vodka blah blah lounge lizards blah blah purists blah blah 1960s blah blah cold cold COLD COLD! Yep.

The moral of the story is that the traditional martini is made of gin and vermouth, but vodka is often substituted for gin, which is what I did since I haven't purchased gin yet. Also, I hate gin. The less vermouth (or more gin/vodka) a martini has, the drier it is. Over the years, the zeitgeist has moved toward a drier martini. Also, everything involved in a martini, from the glassware to the alcohol to the utensils should be cold...from the freezer where appropriate.

The version I made tonight is the "Classic Martini." There are many different ratios in my book, and I will explore them in the future. There are also other flavors of martini that I will explore. Blather blather here's the recipe:

1 1/2 ounce vodka

1/2 ounce dry vermouth

-Ignore Bond and stir don't shake. Stir over ice cubes, not cracked ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.

I have heard stories about how terrible martinis are, and I don't think I would have enjoyed this at an earlier point in my drinking career. However, tonight it was pretty alright. It's definitely not a yummy yummy I-can't-even-tell-this-is-booze type of drink, but I liked it. I drank it while re-watching "Goodnight and Good Luck" and eating pasta, which I recommend as a mighty fine trio. Fab film. I used Absolute vodka and Boissiere extra dry vermouth.

Sex on the Beach, however, was a delicious experience, and one that I wasn't particularly expecting. As follows:

1 ounce vodka

3 ounce cranberry juice

2 ounce pineapple juice

1 ounce orange juice

1 ounce peach schnapps

This is pretty much the definition of girly drink. I couldn't taste the alcohol at all. You can also do either all pineapple juice or all orange juice if you aren't mixer rich like me. I couldn't even tell how cheap and terrible the peach schnapps were. Also, was watching From Justin to Kelly while drinking this one. I really think the stars aligned for my movie/drink combinations tonight, haha.

My last drink of the evening was a Cape Codder. I mostly made this because I invested in some cranberry juice the other night and this is an easy drink. Now, I'm usually not such a cran fan, but it's a pretty popular mixer so I made the leap. I stood in the aisle having the debate with myself: cran cocktail or proper cran juice. Cran cocktail seems terrible, but it's cheap for a college student. Cran juice doesn't add sugar: who doesn't want sugar? In the end, despite myself, I went home with the real thing: L&A's 100% no sugar added cranberry juice. BEST DECISION EVER. This drink was about 10 million times better than I thought it would be and I think the quality of the mixer had everything to do with that.

2 ounces vodka

4-6 ounces cranberry juice (I went with 5 personally)

-Mix in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice and pour into iced glass. Can add a bit of lime juice if desired (I definitely desired).

Enjoy and bottoms up!

Fuzzy/Hairy Navels

Entry #1 in my cocktail adventure! I will try to write an entry every time I make a new recipe from my Little Black Book of Cocktails. Today it was Fuzzy Navels and Hairy Navels:

Fuzzy-
2 parts peach schnapps
4 parts orange juice
Serve over ice

Hairy-
Same as above, add 1 part vodka

The important lesson I learned from this boozy adventure is that quality matters when it comes to peach schnapps! There is a difference between the $5 and $10 bottle! I've had these before and they've tasted much better because the peach flavor on this one was not so hot -- sweet in a not good way. Also, I'll put the main ingredients for all the recipes in my tags so if you're every looking for a drink to make with the booze you have sitting around, you can just search for the tag and see the recipe and review.

So not a brilliant start to my project, but a start nonetheless. I guess since pretty much everything else went swimmingly, I can't really complain. I moved in with Betsy today and setting up the furniture was pretty simple (I somehow tricked Betsy and my dad into putting together my complicated desk/shelving unit while my mom and I drank wine/were useless). I really like my space and think I will be happy living here with mi mejor amiga!

One flaw to the whole blogging the drinking plan is that I will likely be either drunk or really really sleepy for every entry I write for the next year. It could be interesting if not coherent. Okay, now to bed with me.