The Booze Thread

[PhillyPhreak54]

To me it was like drinking peroxide or some shtein...when I drink goose or titos or even absolut it has a smooth taste. The el cheapo stuff is a chore to get down.

[smeags]

Ketel one and titos are bangin

[ice grillin you]

yeah i get that a 40 dollar fifth of vodka is better than a handle for ten bucks.....breaking news

but i have never had a vodka that when mixed with cranberry or whatever i couldnt drink and drink without even a small problem...thats unfathomable to me and became even more so when the person who told me about it is a mans man when it comes to drinking

to me a shot is where the struggle starts to get a little real

[smeags]

Sounds like you have a real dilemma on your hands.

Personally I haven't had vodka I couldn't drink when mixed. May have been nasty but I could still drink it.

To your point, shots are the real test.

[Susquehanna Birder]

Yeah, I would certainly drink it if I didn't have any better alternatives in the house. It's the boy who was most offended by the stuff.

[PhillyPhreak54]

This has been a very boozy holiday season for me. I polished off my bottle of rum last night that was leftover from my spiked egg nogs on Christmas. Also drank as many Molson's as I could get my hands on.

But I finally tried the Not Your Father's Root Beer and Ginger Ale tonight at my cousins house

His girl said it was $48 for a case of the root beer and you guys were right. It was good but very sweet. I had one and that was about it. It's definitely a novelty drink and she said its best over ice or with vanilla vodka and ice cream to make a float.

The Ginger Ale i didn't care for. It was very gingery - like almost spicy but yet sweet. I love regular ginger ale but I wasn't digging this one at all.

[Don Ho]

To funny!  I almost bought a 6 pack of the Root Beer tonight.  It was on sale for $8.29 and actually called my nephew to get his advice but the little prick never picked up.  Ended up drinking a nice bottle of Kendal Jackson Chardonnay.  Way to much Jack Daniels Double Barrell the previous two nights.

[PhillyPhreak54]

Yeah I've had my hard liquor fill for awhile. It's rare I drink it but this week and a half I've hit it. Time to go home a detox.

I've never been a wine guy - I've tried a few but just couldn't enjoy the taste

[Eagaholic]

We had a party and BBQ'd up a coupe of briskets over about 8-9 hours. I made a sauce from scratch using some of that not your fathers root beer. Hit it out of the park with the brisket and the sauce. Tender, juicy, not quite fall-apart slices, with perfectly crisped blackened bark over a thin layer fat, then made burnt ends from the point. The sauce made a perfect match if you wanted to use it. Needed to break out the Pappy Van Winkle bourbon for a meal from heaven. But that root beer became a great secret ingredient for the sauce. Damn good holiday eatin.

[Rome]

I had this yesterday:



Deliciousness.

[Susquehanna Birder]

Someday I'll get to try that. I had the Black Barrel this weekend (a present to the wife from her brother). Not bad.

[Eagaholic]

I have about 4 cases of Bourbon County variants I picked up this season. If that isn't enough I have 200+ bottles of bourbon/rye in the bar to fall back on.

What??  My liquor shelf has one bottle, which I am currently drinking, and when it's gone I replace it.  What's the point in buying 200 bottles of whisky all at once? 

I'll put it another way...I'm not wasting money spent on alcohol.  I buy it I drink it.  I buy it.  I drink it.  When I die, the kids aren't getting a cabinet full of booze, because I farging drank it all.

I mean, apart from the flagrant display of wealth, I don't get it. 

You must jest.

A few points. When I buy a bottle I often drink maybe 1/4 of it before I get another. That way I eventually build up a large bar, which has a lot of advantages.

I don't just slug down alcohol to get drunk. I genuinely enjoy the spirit in the same way many people savor a fine meal. I love learning about it - the art of crafting a whiskey, the traditions and storied history (at Mt Vernon Geo Washington was the country's largest producer), even the chemistry behind it. Much of our trade law today for example has it's roots in the early bourbon industry. It was awesome for me going to a distillery and learning how the pot still vs column stills work and are engineered.

Some of these bottles are investments. I've bought numerous bottles just in the last year or so for $69 to $229 that went for $550 to $2000+ this past holiday season. Just a handful of them will more than pay for all my other bottles, including the ultra-premium ones that I will be basically be drinking for free. Yet others I will try to trade up for different bottles that I speculate will go up even more in value. So it's playing a commodity secondary market, and I thoroughly enjoy it. Ultimately I want to trade up enough the get some of the most prized and rare bottles that I regard as works of art. I collect them the same way others collect stamps, baseball cards, cars or football jerseys. Except these you can actually consume and therefore enjoy in a far more unique way than other genres of collectibles. Last year I bought 3 bottles called Pappy Van Winkle 23 year old for under $250. Now the empty bottle routinely sells for $300 - $350 on Ebay. Call it ludicrous, call people idiots all you want - a market is a market. And when I create a strategy and out maneuver other buyers to score one of the nearly impossible to find prizes, the victory feeling is every bit as good as, for example, an important division win for the Eagles.

Having friends over for a blind tasting is a blast. Different bourbons have different "mash bills" or recipes. Learning to taste which ones are high rye or to differentiate wheat from barley in the recipe to me is fascinating, the same way a craft beer enthusiast will blend in citra hops for example to add a tropical citrus aroma to try and create a particular flavor profile in making their home brew. This is of course lost on lead-palate booze guzzles and it brings hipsters to the point of jizz but whatever.

I'm not real big on cocktails in general but in the winter I sometimes get on a Sazerac kick. I've tinkered and experimented with about 30 versions. Sometimes the smallest change can make a big difference, and when you get it just right it goes to an entirely different level, hit it out of the park and stadium good. If I didn't have a number of ryes and several bitters to experiment with I couldn't play like this. The Sazerac also has a great history to it btw (arguably the first cocktail) but that's another story.

Even if you don't get into learning all there is to know about bourbon, there's a simple friendly deliciousness to it as well as uniqueness to the different producers. IGY gets this and I think Sarge is a fan of wheated recipe bourbon, but I don't think it's for everyone. To me, having a selection that I can choose from is as basic as having different foods I can decide to have for dinner each night.

I could easily write another 10 paragraphs but I'll spare you and everyone else. We just live in different worlds.

[PhillyPhreak54]

Damn I had no idea that there was a market for empties!

Interesting stuff

[Eagaholic]

Unfortunately it's not just collectors who want a cool bottle. That was about $250 ago. Now it is likely bought for creating a forgery. Bourbon nerds are unlike any other, and can be kind of militant. There's already been multiple suits filed against huge producers like Templeton and Diageo which, remarkably, the companies lost.

There's probably over 100 active bourbon blogs out there and one activist type guy went to a high end bar where they served this stuff, probably at $75 a shot. He noted the fill level and laser code on the bottle. Next time in, the level was lower. Next time the level was higher that it originally. He asked to see the bottle and it had that same unique laser code, so obviously the bar was scamming partons with a probably nice $50/bottle bourbon poured into an empty super premium bottle.

[PhillyPhreak54]

And I learned on Bar Rescue that's illegal!

Militant bourbon dudes...I've heard it all now. That's crazy!