Not An Alcoholic

  El Presidente Cocktail Review     Absolutely beautiful color. I don't know how well it really shows up in the photo, but in real life it is a spectacular and rich orange color. Looks a bit more amber in the photo, but it really is quite red in real life. I'm not really a great photo editor, nor did I want to spend too much time on it, but in real life, it looks a bit more like this. It really is vibrant.      It smells of the sweet demerara rum (I'm using Appleton Estate 12 Year Rare Cask) with a bit of the oak coming through as well, but there's also some florally grape notes from the lillet blanc. I've started freezing my citrus lately in order to preserve it for longer, and thawed citrus doesn't like to peel very well. But traditionally, this would have a swath of orange peel as well. The mouth feel is considerably more full than I was expecting. It looks rather thin imo, but it is actually pretty full. The first flavor I get is oranges, but those oranges g

Paloma Cocktail Comparison     Lets start off by identifying the differences between these 2 Paloma's. The one on the left was made with 2oz of grapefruit juice, 2oz of sparkling water, and about an oz of simple syrup. The one on the right was made with about 4oz of pink grapefruit soda. They both have 1.5oz of Tequila, a slice of lime (and a little bit of lime juice squeezed in) and a Tajin rim. I'm aware that the ratios are a bit off, so this is not a perfect test, I should've added a bit less tequila to the one on the right to make the ratios a bit more correct, but I just forgot.     So lets start with the one with actual grapefruit juice, it feels great in the mouth, it's incredibly easy to gulp down. It doesn't really taste like too much while you're sipping or gulping, you can tell it's sparkling, but the taste is maybe a tiny bit citrus-y, but not much else. Once you're done gulping however, you get a big wave of that bitter grapefruit flavor, wh

Charbay Clear Vodka Revisit     Very clear nose, almost no smell at all, there's a slight wheat note, but it's very minor, fantastic as far as the vodkas I've had. Smooth mouth feel, not too thin, no bite at all. In larger gulps, I get a slightly sweetened chemically taste, but it's not bad at all, and especially sipping on it, I'd never notice. Nearly perfect vodka, 9.5/10 original rating stands  

  Old Grandad Bonded Bourbon Whiskey Revisit     I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm not the biggest bourbon fan. I have tried multiple brands of bourbon now, and I have never enjoyed bourbon quite as much as I've enjoyed Rye, Scotch, Irish whiskey, or even my Straight corn whiskey. Bourbon in my personal and humble opinion, feels like it's trying to sit somewhere between a rye and a straight corn whiskey, and it doesn't fill what I want from either. I will try to give an objective review, but I wanted to clarify my stance and biases first.     Lots of peanut in the nose, I also get some corn, a bit of vanilla, and a sweet chemical note. Before I even got a mouth feel, I immediately got peanut flavor, then I started to detect it's a bit thin on the mouth, with a bit of a bite to it, then get some rye heat, mellows out to corn and vanilla finish. I gave this a 7/10 originally, I think you could raise that to a 7.5/10, it's fine, it's useful in my

  Appleton Estate 12 Year Rare Casks     This evening's review will be the first of many full revisits that occur over the lifetime of this blog. There's many reasons to revisit reviews, for example when I first reviewed this rum, I was still doing these reviews entirely on  Twitter , leaving me with a 240 character limit. In addition to the character limit, my palate has also grown tremendously in that amount of time, and I should be able to appreciate finer details now. With that being said, as I revisit older reviews, if I'm not proud of the older ones, I'll likely be reverting them to draft on blogger, so they're no longer available here. If they were published on twitter, and you're in my twitter circle, you should be able to find them there.     Rich and sweet nose, I get maple, walnut, a little bit of dark chocolate, and a whiff of ethanol, but it's small. The mouthfeel is almost deceptively thin, the flavor is incredibly full, but rounded with aging,

  Moscow Mule     Normally a Moscow mule would call for a bouquet of mint to garnish the drink, enough to almost entirely take over the smell. I am going to purchase a mint plant soon, but at this moment, I do not have a mint plant, and therefore, there is no mint garnish in mine. Devoid of mint, it's mostly an effervescent ginger smell, maybe slightly more muted than just the ginger beer I'm using, but it's roughly the same smell, I can't distinguish any lime or vodka. It's very cold, light, tart lime forward, followed by a bit of vodka, and finishing with the slow creeping ginger burn. I suspect that a different ginger beer would yield a very different result. I'm using fever tree, and fever tree is an incredibly slow burn. Definitely easy to drink, refreshing, but ultimately simple. I also used my "good vodka" (the brand is literally "good") which is made from spent coffee grounds. It has a bit of a weird note that I just can't quite g

Tullamore Dew Old Fashioned     I was looking for an excuse to use my lovely Tullamore Dew which I reviewed  here  and it occurred to me that I've yet to make a whiskey Old Fashioned. I've made one with rum, but haven't done a proper whiskey variant. Admittedly, this is still breaking from tradition slightly, in using an Irish whiskey instead of a Bourbon or Rye, or anything American really. But this is not too far off base.     Unfortunately, I didn't have any oranges to get a swath from, but this is a brighter whiskey, so I think we should be okay. The angostura bitters are very forward on the nose, there's some appley notes as well from the whiskey, but it's a lot of nutmeg and cinnamon and maybe a little allspice, it all leads to a very pleasant baking apple smell. Sort of a moderate mouth feel, not thick or thin, not sharp or anything, but I've had smoother, and then as you're dissecting the feel of the drink, the flavor creeps up on you, like warm

  Havana Club Añejo Clásico Puerto Rican Rum      Before we get started, I'd just like to briefly explain why I picked up this bottle. Simply put, you cannot legally acquire a true Cuban rum in the United States at the moment because of the trade embargo dating all the way back to the 60s. This is a horrible shame in Tiki drink culture, and rum culture in general, because cuban rum is called for a lot in drinks, and has it's own characteristics that lots of people look for. Havana club claims this rum to be made with a 1934 Cuban formula, but now manufactured in Puerto Rico. This would more or less allow you to get a very Cuban styled rum in the United States. In addition to that, this was a very reasonably priced bottle at my local ABC store.     Now that my rum has had time to chill as I type that, let's get to the notes! A little rubbing alcohol on the nose, but also some nutmeg, a little banana, maybe a bit of a nutty sweetness, like a pecan pie or something in that vei

  Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey     Previously I did a review of another Irish Whiskey, Jameson  available here . That review is incredibly short, because it's literally just copy pasted from when I was still doing reviews on twitter. However, even though it's brief, I stand by the notes I gave in that review. I bring this up because I will probably reference it a lot when reviewing this whiskey.     The nose is sweet, but more cereal-y than the Jameson, still has a crisp note, like an apple or something. I would describe the nose of the Jameson as a bit more full bodied, but the smell of the Tullamore Dew is still very pleasant. Mouth feel is thin, and it has some bite that the Jameson doesn't. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I actually find the bite of this whiskey to be very enjoyable. But very cereal forward, with a bit of bite, almost like an American rye whiskey. The finish on this is a bit more unified than the Jameson. The Jameson almost goes step by step on t