Mixology Monday (Barely)

It's about a quarter till Tuesday right now, actually, but hey...

Gin... I actually bought a bottle specifically for this. I mean, I've always wanted to try it, but (as I am the world's best procrastinator, when I get around to it), I had to wait until I had a "deadline" to actually get some. Sick, isn't it?

I wanted to try a Pegu, but I spent so much money on booze this last week (8 six-packs of Bridgeport IPA, two bottles of vermouth, a bottle of Bombay gin and a bottle of Maker's), I couldn't bring myself to buy Cointreau too (sorry, Doug). Maybe next week. :)

What I did try, I was happy with... which brings us to the drinking part. My favorite.

London Dry Gin (Neat):
A little bit of Bombay (Original)
Glass

Interesting. Not bourbon... but what is, really? I grew up in Juniper country, so the aromas were... nostalgic, I guess. Very interesting.

Dry Martini:
1.5 oz. Gin
.5 oz. Dry Vermouth (M&R, until I go to the city, or get off my lazy you-know-what and buy something nicer online)
Lemon peel garnish

Not exactly my new favorite drink. I love (LOVE) sweet Vermouth, and I don't mind Gin, so it must be the dry vermouth that throws me off this one. I made it pretty wet; maybe I'll try some different ratios, but I can't see this as a regular. Just like in my Manhattans, though, I love the aroma from the lemon peel. No orange bitters yet... see the note about laziness; I could see how they could round out the drink, though.

Sweet Martini:
1.5 oz. Gin
.5 oz. Sweet Vermouth (M&R... see above)
Dash Angostura bitters (no orange bitters yet... see above)
Lemon peel garnish

Much better. I still prefer the Manhattan, but this is going into the rotation. There's something about red vermouth... Maybe it's complexity, maybe I've just got a sweet tooth, I dunno. But it's good stuff. The Angostura, as in any drink, adds a nice je ne sais quois... It may've helped the dry martini, but I didn't want to fsck up my nice clear drink.

Gin and Tonic:
Highball full of ice
1.5 oz. Gin
Top with Tonic water (Schweppes here)
Lime (or Lemon) wedge

Now we're talkin'! See last week's post for more of my feelings for the Gin and Tonic. Love it, love it, love it. Here in the summer (roughly 4/5ths of the year) it'll be a BIG regular. I think God made bourbon and beer on the first day... on the second, He made Gin and Tonic (they really, naturally, go together... every other Gin drink is simply a bastardized G&T). Good stuff.

I leave you tonight (this morning, now) with, again, a quote from The Man:

It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.
--Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

G'night.

Edit: I can't believe I was too tired last night (this morning) to remember to give a *ahem* "shout out" to the host of today's (yesterday's) MxMo... so, thank you, Jay at Oh, Gosh! (best url EVAR!).

Don't say I didn't warn you...

I told you I procrastinated...

Anyway. Recent blogworthy things:

Flying: I got to ride in one of these yesterday. Very, very cool. I enjoy fixed wing flying (and to tell the truth, once we were in forward flight, there wasn't a lot of difference), but I've always been fascinated by choppers; the way they move, the places they can get into, the fact that someone actually was able to make machines like that fly. Love 'em.

Drinking: Finally got some gin, and have been experimenting with that. I'll probably participate in next week's MxMo and expand on my experiences then, but for now I'll say that the Martini isn't bad, but it's not my favorite drink, and the Gin and Tonic... well, I'm thinking of running off with the Gin and Tonic, maybe raising a little family. Get a dog.

"... then I decided that I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept myself amused all that time jumping in and out of a gin and tonic."
Arthur cleared his throat, and then did it again.
"Where," he said, "did you...?"
"Find a gin and tonic?" said Ford brightly. "I found a small lake that thought it was a gin and tonic, and jumped in and out of that. At least, I think it thought it was a gin and tonic."
"I may," he added with a grin which would have sent sane men scampering into the trees, "have been imagining it."
--Douglas Adams (aka The Man): Life, the Universe and Everything

Politics (Why does Firefox mark "politics" misspelled?): Wendy McElroy had a blog entry the other day about the Free-Market News Network bitching about the Cato Institute running favorable articles about Fred Thompson instead of supporting Ron Paul. Two (supposedly) libertarian organizations disagreeing on which Republican is the best. I haven't worked that one out yet.

It doesn't bother me all that much, since I'm a non-voting anarchist, but it still boggles the mind a bit. I mean, I don't know much about what's going on in the LP lately, but I can only assume Kubby's leading, and I've only heard a bit about him over at Tom Knapp's place. It seems like all the libertarians in the country (even some of the "non-voters") are lining up to punch Paul's name on a ballot. These people joined the "Party of Principle"... why, exactly?

It's all very strange; I'm not ready to get out my tinfoil hat yet, but like the man said, I smell a rat. Especially after the "Portland Purge" last year. Very weird happenings. Ah, well.

Later.