Reviews

CHAIRMAN’S RESERVE—the spiced rum for hedonists

My Fellow Inebriates,

This morning’s drink recommendation comes from Taylor, who writes:

Husband and I recently visited St. Lucia, and quickly fell in love with their home brew, Chairman’s Reserve Spiced Rum. The normal Chairman’s Reserve Rum has a vague taste of whiskey to it, but the Spiced is this amazing blend that is tasty enough to drink straight.  It is made with nutmeg, cloves, vanilla, cinnamon, and richeria grandis…which is perfect to mix with eggnog.

I had some minor hesitation about circulating this information, principally because I don’t go in much for husbands. A husband takes Taylor out of the running for LB-style stalking, not because of any well-defined boundaries I have but because I am totally chicken-shit.

Still, this rave review is impossible to ignore. CHAIRMAN’S RESERVE Spiced Rum is by its own admission hedonistic, and egg nog’s seasonality electrifies pleasure seekers with a mad urgency to combine it with any and all varieties of hooch before it exits the market.

I get the sense that Taylor went all-out with her egg nog adventures. One of my favorite things about the Internet is that it prompts sharing:

All I did was pour 1 part rum, 4 parts nog, and shaved fresh nutmeg on top. The result is an orgasm-worthy performance of flavors in your mouth. 

I hope Taylor will forgive me, because when I first read this I had just ingested a skullfull of vodka, and things were a bit blurry on the page…er, screen. So I just saw RUM NOG SHAVED FRESH ORGASM-WORTHY PERFORMANCE FLAVORS MOUTH.

Whoa!

Obviously I have to get myself some CHAIRMAN’S RESERVE.

I’m really grateful to Taylor for peppering her booze review with keywords that will probably generate a decent spike in readership for me. I hope you’ll all visit her site as well—it’s lots of fun.

Okay, now what word can pull me back from the gutter? Let me think. Oh yeah—husband. That takes me back to booze, and the rest of Taylor’s recommendation:

Chairman’s Reserve Spiced is also amazing with ginger or root beer. My favorite combo (outside of the eggnog, of course) is Barq’s root beer. The bite of Barq’s against the spicy-sweet taste of Chairman’s is just an exhilarating combination. I’ve already converted a plethora of friends who only swear by beer to convert to the dark side.

These are awesome ideas for rum! So when you’re shopping for egg nog, pick up some Barq’s as well—that way you won’t have to mourn the departure of egg nog at season’s end. Maybe you too will be a convert just like Taylor’s friends (and I’m not surprised she has a plethora, are you?).

DUCHY ORIGINALS ORGANIC OLD RUBY ALE

My Fellow Inebriates,

Others have reviewed this nice organic ale much more thoughtfully than I, and even taken their own pictures. My mum bought it because it was $3.50 and she didn’t feel like using her debit card “to bootleg for animals.”

The label and marketing remind me a bit of Marks & Spencer; the bottle has that generic big-corporate-entity feel to it, like the beer you can buy at Trader Joe’s or Costco in the States. It’s not totally evil though—the beer is organically produced on land administered by Prince Charles as part of a charity project now 20 years strong.

I was a charity bear once, so I’m gladdened to know some of the profits get skimmed off to help people in need. And just as cool, OLD RUBY ALE is produced sustainably. Even a hedonistic bear with an apocalyptic bent can appreciate that no one’s raping the land to create beer.

It’s also nice to know that if I get a head-splitting hangover from OLD RUBY ALE it’s because I drank enough to get thoroughly shitfaced—not because of chemical additives.

But how does it taste?

My tastebuds are Canadian, so essentially they’re ADHD tastebuds—they need beer to crackle and fizz and spark in the mouth like so much microscopic bubble wrap. I can’t crack a beer without automatically anticipating fizz. So when our bottle of OLD RUBY ALE opened not with a burst but a sigh, I sighed also. But I still wanted to drink it very badly. I had some bad-ass DTs to manage or at least get down to a dull roar.

The low carbonation was less disappointing than you’d think. After all, a lot of Canadian swill needs to be hyper-carbonated to mask its offensive flavor, so you have to hand it to a less fizzy beer like OLD RUBY ALE for strutting its stuff without that effervescent crutch.

It had a lovely auburn color in the glass. It wafted malt and slight breadiness in nice harmony. First sips hinted initially at bitterness but morphed into sweetness—a bit simple on the palate. It felt thin in the mouth and, while never offensive, failed somehow to deliver much beyond those first impressions. And, of course, it was flat.

SINGHA Lager

My Fellow Inebriates,

After spending the afternoon wondering if a can of light beer was going to drop out of the sky and clock me in the head, I decided to stop wishing and buy some beer myself.

My pal Stevie O had recently enthused:

SINGHA from Thailand. Epic refreshing quality; the head is thick and sticks to the glass. Really mature; crisp taste with a herb-like dance on the tongue to finish. Hats off to SINGHA. GOOD STUFF.

So SINGHA was top of my procurement list today. But I had some distractions. Red Bear, one of the other bear denizens in the house, had a sudden realization, upon being dressed in a ravishing green frock by the little people here, that perhaps she had been a girl bear all along. What a mind-bending discovery after three years of hanging around the house commando like us boy bears.

You just can’t tell with bears.


I’ve been hunting for my junk for a long time, people, and I’d be lying if I said I knew for sure it was under my southern fur. I figure it’s there, otherwise I wouldn’t get so excited watching Megan Fox. That and the fact that I like hockey, even when the Canucks are getting reamed.


Today’s toast is to Red Bear’s sexual self-actualization and fashion metamorphosis, as well as my own offensive oversimplification of gender stereotypes. You’re welcome. Red Bear rocked that dress and made me start thinking about arranging a hook-up with Blackie Bear, if I can get him off the couch. And for our toast, here’s SINGHA from Thailand.

At 5% alcohol it’s a little stronger than some lagers, and very refreshing. Pale and ephemerally fizzy, SINGHA is best drunk icy cold and in large quantity.

Photo gallery: Thailand crowns its newest transgender beauty queen