Stuff

So one day I was telling my friend Jay about the Bacon Beer that they made over at Grocery Eats, and he told me that he’d seen Skittles flavored vodka on the internet.

I said: “That’s an amazing idea!”

So the day before Cinco de Mayo, I gathered up the supplies and decided to spend some time making an amazing drink.

This is how you make skittles Vodka:

What You Need: 1lb bag of skittles, Vodka (at least 30 ounces minimum), coffee filters, bottles for mixing, some funnels, and more bottles for the finished drink.

Step 1: Separate the different flavors of skittles.

You’re going to need roughly 10 skittles for every ounce of Vodka. I used around sixty skittles and six ounces of vodka per mixing bottle.

There’s going to be some extra, I added a few extra skittles to each bottle and used the remaining pieces in an extra bottle and made a mix of all the flavors.

Step 2: Put separated and counted skittles in mixing bottles. You’re going to need one bottle for each of the five flavors

I just used normal plastic water bottles for this. I got a 12 pack at WalMart for like 2 bucks, and had enough bottles for the entire project.

Step 3: Use a funnel to pour six ounces of Vodka into each mixing bottle, seal, and shake well.

There’s a bit of emphasis on the shaking. It’s what is going to help the vodka dissolve the skittles. Shake each bottle well, then come back later and shake it some more, then do the same even later.

I let mine sit overnight, and then did some more shaking in the morning. The longer you give the Skittles to dissolve the better your results shall be.

Step 4: Grab your remaining, unused bottles, a funnel, and some coffee filters.

In this step we’re going to filter out all the remaining Skittle particulates. Because even though the Skittles are mostly dissolved, the currently liquid is a little on the chunky side, with various sugary pieces throughout. Not exactly the best consistency.

Place your funnel in an empty bottle, and then place a coffee filter in the funnel. Slowly pour the drink out of the mixing bottle, into the filter, and let it filter through.

I used two coffee filters at a time, to ensure that the skittle particles didn’t end up in the final mix, thought the number of filters you’ll need is dependent on the type of filter you use.

The process isn’t very fast, and you need to repeat it for every flavor. But this is the step that will get you a nice quality drink consistency.

I’d recommend washing your funnel after every flavor, to avoid flavor contamination.

That’s essentially all there is too it.

Once you finish thing get awesome.

Cause it’s drinkin’ time.

STEP 5: Chill.

I feel that the drink is best served in the form of a freezer chilled shot. That way you can have all five flavors.

The shots themselves come on sweet, then kick you with the vodka burn, but finish with Skittles sweetness.

The liquid itself is a little bit syrupy. Each flavor has varying degrees of strength, Lemon being the strongest, and Green being probably the best tasting

I hear if you mix them with Sprite, or a club soda they’re pretty good.

I can heartily say that making some skittles of your own is a great idea. It’s fun, colorful, and bound to be popular at any party you’d go to.

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I’m gonna start this one by putting it all out front.

I love Waffle House.

El Casa De Waffle-o.

Their waffles are on the list of my favorite, mouthgasmic foods. I love the sketchy atmosphere, the sometimes creepy employees, the questionable sanitation, and the crazy songs about raisin toast they have on their jukeboxes.

It was a little after midnight when Drew, Alec, and I went to waffle house for some late night foodstuffs. I remembered reading a post on Grocery Eats about a biscuit and gravy cheeseburger. Essentially a cheeseburger with a biscuit for a bun, with some gravy on it.

I figured that would be worth trying, but unfortunately the waffle house we went too isn’t the best with having it your way and wouldn’t just make me a biscuit with a hamburger patty. So I just ended up getting their dollar cheeseburger with tomato and a side of biscuit gravy, cause I figured I like buns more than biscuits anyways.

So it was pretty much just a cheeseburger with onions, tomato, a smidgen of mayo, and biscuit gravy.

In a word: AWESOME.

I don’t know why they just don’t offer this as an actual menu item. It’s like a wonderful combination of lunch an breakfast, all in one sandwich. It tastes like what you’d expect biscuit gravy to taste like on a cheeseburger, but it’s one of those things, where you just can’t believe it isn’t more prevalent. The tomato though, really holds together the whole thing, it provides a nice mellow base to an unhealthy item.

Why don’t they just add this to the menu and call it the Country Breakfast Burger or something like that?

The world may never know…

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So I first heard of Chartreuse in the early half of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. Huh? What?

Yeah there’s a quick part when a bunch of characters are hanging out at a bar, before Kurt Russell car-murders a bunch of innocent girls; Tarantino pours everyone some shots of a green liqueur, and says “Chartreuse, the only liqueur so good they named a color after it“.

Yeah I know, it’s a part that’s easy to miss given that Rose McGowan and Jordan Ladd are busy being hot, and Kurt Russell is busy being awesome.

Some time later I heard of it again in passing from my friend Casey, I don’t quite remember the context, but I remember remembering it from Death Proof then.

Having my interest piqued, I did some interwebs research and read all about how it was made from a secret recipe by French monks, and all sorts of neat stuff. It sounded kinda cool and mildy sophisticated, and so I added it to the short list of booze that I had any interest in trying.

I’m honestly not much of a drinker, don’t much care for the taste of most types of alcohol, can’t stand beer, and don’t really enjoy being drunk. I don’t really run much chance of becoming an alchy anytime soon. So take my opinion of this classical drink however you want.

I purchased a bottle of Chartreuse from my local neighborhood liquor store back on March 5th, and had planned on drinking it that night, cause I’d been anticipating the experience for a while. As a bottle of the stuff costs upwards of fifty dollars, it wasn’t something that I could really go out and get on impulse, well at least and not feel bad about it. I waited till I got my tax return this year and then used my extra money.

Didn’t get around to actually trying the stuff for another month though, cause the night I got it I got sick, and well ended up just waiting for a time that I felt like boozing. Like I said I’m not much of a drinker, I say boozing for God’s sake.

Chartreuse is 110 proof; 55% percent alcohol by volume. For those not in the know, that means it’s pretty strong stuff. The first thing you notice besides, the wonderful hue, is the smell. It smells GREEN. You know, in the sort of way that some foods are color based, like Jello. It just smells green. The closest comparison I can come up with is that failed 7up soda from like 2003; DNL. That’s was the last thing that I’ve consumed that just felt certifiably GREEN.

It’s kind of hard to describe the aroma, but the taste is even stranger. My first taste was just a straight shot of the stuff, the first poured from the room temperature bottle. I reacted much the same way I usually react to hard drinks, with a amusing grimace and a Keanu-esque Whoa. I really wasn’t prepared for it. It’s the sort of drink that tingles your insides all the way down, and burns quite well. The taste is this strange mix of herbs, spice, sweetness and burning. It’s quite powerful.

It almost reminds me of liquorice, but like a weird liquorice, I don’t know kind of like that but more herbaceous, with some minty-ness. The flavor changes with most every taste. I guess the fact that it’s made from about 130 various plants and flowers would explain that quite well.

My friend had some Mountain Dew, so I tried a bit of Chartreuse in my Dew, and have to say that it was a combo that worked rather well. I’m the sort of person though, who feels that Mountain Dew goes quite well with lots of various types of alcohol. I’ve yet to try Chartreuse with Mountain Dew Throwback, but I shall, cause I imagine that it’ll be somewhere between amazing, and boozy boozy heaven. The Tabasco Sauce you see in the picture there was an idea inspired by various recipes for mixed drinks found online, and it wasn’t a good idea.

So my initial reaction to my expensive bottle of liqueur, was that I was confounded. It was kinda harsh, but then revealed a more mellow aftertaste, with varying degrees of sweetness thrown in. Complex is the best way to describe the stuff. Complex.

I’ve read that the drink is best served a rather cold temperatures, so before starting this little appraisal, I put a single shot in my freezer for about a half hour. When it was nice and cold I grabbed it, took a deep breath and gulped it down. The tingle throughout my body was still there, but the taste itself had changed some, it was a little milder, less violent. It went down considerably smoother.

Having studied to the last drop the contents of my shot glass over the past little while, I still can’t really place a great description of the taste, but have to admit it is interesting. I’m going to have to go ahead and recommend Chartreuse as a drink, cause for one it’ll make me look suave and sophisticated. Also cause this stuff is strong, take a few shots of this, and you’ll be feeling it, and that helps compliment the complexity of the taste.

Chartreuse is a French Liqueur that provides a herbal, sweet mosaic of different tastes to the pallet, and hits ya hard at the same time, I’d say it’s worth a try.

Next Stop Absinthe

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