alcohol

BAILEY’S IRISH CREAM—emulsification, coagulation, inebriation

My Fellow Inebriates,

The recycling truck just passed by (we missed it and are stuck for another week with sky-high paper and corrugated cardboard). The house looks like a tornado hit it. What is all this holiday loot? Will it enhance our lives? Or is it tomorrow’s litter?

A few favorite things…

Last fall the four-year-old acquired Nacho the Chihuahua, complete with hook for attaching to keys or a child’s backpack. Miss V quickly elevated the animal to near-godhood, its presence necessary for sleep, bath, and all special occasions, including its own twice-weekly birthdays for which cakes are baked and decorated. For Christmas Santa brought the next-size-up Nacho, prompting an ecstatic family reunion for the two of them and, not least, Miss V.

I don’t mind Chihuahuas, but they make me think of tequila and our lack of it. Despite Nacho’s status as favorite pre-K Christmas present, it makes me really thirsty.

The six-year-old’s fave gift? An Easy Bake Oven. I was relieved to see the small opening in this frightening appliance as well as the exhortation to parents to participate in its use. This means I probably won’t get cooked in it, although the smaller Nacho might.

For my dad? A T-shirt. I don’t know if this was his favorite gift, but anything that prevents my dad from walking around shirtless is okay in my book.

And my mum? She got the best gift of all: BAILEY’S IRISH CREAM. Yes, it’s ass-expanding and heart-squeezing, but ahhhhh, there is nothing like Bailey’s (although, come to think of it, Carolan’s and Feeney’s are pretty good substitutes). Decadent and silky, BAILEY’S on ice is the best end-of-day reward for putting up with kids parenting. It’s gentle enough for whiskey novices to appreciate, and for those who still find it strong, a little milk dilutes it nicely.

Supposedly the BAILEY’S recipe wasn’t perfected until 1973 because whiskey and cream don’t naturally mix together. Plenty of DIY Irish cream chefs have experienced having to shake up their separated home versions. Gilbey’s of Ireland homogenizes BAILEY’S with the aid of an emulsifier, which is why theirs stays together and yours doesn’t. (But I wonder which tastes better? I still haven’t tried the DIY version.)

Brain Hemorrhage

The best thing about BAILEY’S is its versatility. It can be drunk straight, over ice, as part of a cocktail, or poured into coffee. A number of shooters call for BAILEY’S specifically because it coagulates when combined with acidic mixers, creating foul-looking drinks intended to be shot for sport and gross-out factor. It’s important to down these shooters really fast or the texture will make you toss your cookies.

What did you get for the holidays? Will it get you drunk? Or will it enhance your life in some other way?

THIRSTY BEAVER AMBER ALE

My Fellow Inebriates,

After ripping into our gifts, packing our tummies and killing our brain cells (or “cell,” as my mum refers to my neurological supply), we’re left with a lull in which to contemplate other things besides seasonal shopping mayhem and gluttony.

It’s amazing how much crazy shit happens in a 365-day space. The magnitude-9 earthquake in Japan; Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gadafi, and Kim Jong-il all toast this year; floods and natural disasters; political movements both violent and nonviolent; economic bailouts; scandalous document dumps; surreptitious bomb-grade uranium shipments—how do we make sense of it all?

It’s true that current events generally just confuse me and my little brain cell. So I thought I’d google what the Internet considered most important in 2011.

And check it out—solidly in CBC’s top 10 stories: Angry beaver roams through N.W.T. town.

According to Jason Mercredi, who filmed the animal holding up a main street, “He’s pissed.” Witnesses said the beaver was the size of a dog, zigzagging through people’s lawns and confronting their dogs with a wild, hissing noise.

What the hell is a beaver anyway? These wet, nasty-looking things were the basis of the Canadian fur trade and still grace the back of the five-cent coin. Sexual parlance, explicably or not, happily incorporates the beaver, as do literary magazines, sporting organizations and youth groups.

Basically beavers are not bad things, unless they are romping through your town scaring the pets. Emblematic on a broad spectrum, the beaver represents the ideal dichotomy of wholesomeness/debauchery.

Which leads me to THIRSTY BEAVER AMBER ALE (Tree Brewing). Admittedly it’s been a long time since I had some of this lovely dark amber nectar, but that rampaging beaver reminded me of it.

THIRSTY BEAVER is crisply carbonated, with a nice layer of foam that doesn’t dissipate immediately. Caramel and nut aromas float gently to the nose. The taste is malty with neither excessive sweetness nor bitterness, an easy drinker that quenches thirst but makes you pause to explore its character. While it’s less hoppy than some amber ales, it still asserts itself as a serious beer contender and would be welcome in my fridge again.

And with a classy name like THIRSTY BEAVER, how could such a beer disappoint? No wonder it’s Tree Brewing’s top seller.

With enough THIRSTY BEAVER in me, current events become meaningless, as do New Year’s resolutions. Isn’t that a wonderful way to end the year?

GRAY FOX CHARDONNAY (2010)—choice of sociopaths

My Fellow Inebriates,

Last year my mum caused me spasms of horror by pouring a bottle of Henkell Trocken over the roasting Christmas turkey. (Henkell Trocken is really not for that, people—it’s citrusy and dry with good acidity.) I died inside when she did that, so this year she had a little mercy on me and opted for a dirt-cheap bottle of chardonnay instead.

Gobbling up a hand

I did try to persuade her not to do it at all. But my mother can be very cutting. Her eyes narrowed, and she said, “Sometimes I look at you and suspect you’re inanimate.” Then she opened the oven and poured a bottle of GRAY FOX chardonnay all over the bird.

I did get a small glass before the culinary sacrifice. But I wasn’t optimistic; $6.99 is just about as cheap as wine gets at my local booze shop, and at that price I expect a tastebud offensive, a chorus of plonky mismatched notes with manure and hell-knows-what-else in the background.

So it was a relief to find that GRAY FOX chardonnay tastes like…white grape juice. Really.

With orchard fruitiness dominating the nose and very little of the excessive oak that’s typical of a try-hard California chardonnay, GRAY FOX qualifies as mostly harmless. It won’t make you retch, nor will it appeal to you with complexity and butteriness. At 12% alcohol it sure kicks Welch’s Grape Juice’s ass, yet it seems like too much of a kissing cousin to that kid-friendly beverage. Forgive me, but it doesn’t taste done. Now, you guys know I’m an idiot with a furry mouth and not a ghost of an oenophile’s qualifications, but this wine tastes like it needed to ferment a little longer. It’s grapey, and I’m not sure how intentional that was on the part of the vintner.

I told my mum GRAY FOX would make a good gateway wine for children, only to get the obligatory reminder that I mustn’t encourage irresponsible drinking. So I’ll put it this way: Kids would really like this wine, but don’t give it to them.

But don’t throw it all over a turkey either—OMG, what a waste of alcohol. The fact that my mum thought it made good gravy doesn’t make it okay. But when a sociopathic hausfrau covered in giblets and poultry grease seizes a wine bottle, you just have to let her do her thing.