Gin tastes like sap

[AndreiChekov]

of a pine tree.
No really, it does.

This is really for posting how to mix drinks.

I'm a big fan of the white canadian, and the whiskey sour.

For a white canadian, milk and whiskey 50/50. It curdles, but its like cottage cheese. Just drink it fast. It tastes good, but feels funny.

Whisky sour, you should know about. 50/50 lemon/whiskey.

[K]

Gin tastes like sadness. Mostly old-timey sadness with a slow jazz or blues background soundtrack.

[Josh_Kablack]

Higher end gin will taste better. Lower end gin will taste like the needles from a pine tree.

[Meikle641]

Well, makes sense. It's made from juniper berries, as I recall.

Drank a gin and tonic for the first time a year or so back. Never again, gin.

[Koumei]

I can't remember what gin tastes like, but I can't remember because I drank an awful lot of it, so it must have been nice. It was decent quality, mind you.

[fbmf]

Whisky sour, you should know about. 50/50 lemon/whiskey.

You should start with a glass full of ice, and you should shake it before serving.

Game On,
fbmf

[fectin]

...It's really more flavored with juniper berries. It's still mostly grain alcohol. That said, I still like it.

There are two schools of thought that I've heard on gin: people who want it to be juniper focused, and people who like more botanicals (roughly, the difference between Bombay and Bombay Sapphire).
If you're the first kind (all juniper, all the time), I recommend Broker's (http://www.brokersgin.com/). It's cheap, British, and you're not likely to find anything better at all, let alone in the same price range. It also has a fancy little hat, so it's easy to spot.
Otherwise, you have a lot more options. My favorites are Bombay Sapphire (generic, and not too pricey), Bluecoat (http://www.bluecoatgin.com/, far and away my favorite, and it looks spiffy too. 'MURICA!), and Hendricks. Hendricks is kind of odd; It's made from cucumbers, which gives it a unique flavor, but it's great in milder martinis and in a few specialty drinks.

Many people like gin with fruit juice. Generally, I think that's waste of both: still good, but less than the sum of the parts. It's probably a better plan with worse gin.

Gin and tonic is a classic. Remember that most tonic water has a crap-tonne of sugar in it. When you move up to boutique tonics and such, that sugar is gone, so the "higher quality" versions have wildly different flavors from what you might expect. (Also note that the origin of gin and tonics was British troops dumping their quinine ration into gin, to make both more palatable. Be skeptical of getting too authentic.) With decent tonic water and some lime, Seagrams makes a perfectly acceptable gin and tonic, and is much cheaper than good gin.

Martinis are the highest and best use for good gin. Generally though, once you're out of the rail, martini quality is determined by vermouth quality, not gin ($15 bottle of vermouth makes more difference than going from Bombay Sapphire to Bluecoat). Someone once expressed to me that Martini and Rossi is the reason that Western Europe likes its martinis dry, and if you try something better, you'll understand why. It's not that M&R is horrible; it's quite good for a well liquor. I like Dolin Dry for most things (their Blanc is good too, but it's too sweet for general use), but YMMV. Noilly Prat has a good reputation that I feel is entirely undeserved.

A quick note on martini glasses - the iconic martini glass (the "up" one) is a relatively recent innovation. Traditionally martinis were served in something much more like slim rocks glasses. So don't feel that you're 'doing it wrong' if you serve them that way.

Maybe this evening I'll talk about recipes and techniques.

[MisterDee]

Ah, gin and tonic. The perfect law conference drink, because you can pass it off as sparkling water (and look professional with the firm partners) while still getting plastered (the only way to actually enjoy a social event with other lawyers.)

Apparently, Ungava gin is the first actual world-class liquor made in Quebec (we're top-class in beers, like everybody else we do our own shitty, only-good-for-mixed-drinks vodkas, and our wines compare favorably with motor oil.) I haven't tried it yet, mind you, but it's apparently really really good.

[Josh_Kablack]

But since we're talking about mixing Gin, I give you the Peppi Late Night:



plus

[ACOS]

Commandment (of gin) the First: Gin shalt not be drank, unless it be cut with copious amounts of olive juice.

[PoliteNewb]

My primary use for gin is the Tom Collins, which is one of my preferred drinks.

As for whiskey sours, I only like them with honey bourbon (I find either the Beam or JD variety to be palatable).

[Mord]

Generally I prefer clear liquors to brown and gin over most else. I use diet tonic water in my G&Ts because I'm a hypocrite and have no taste.

As fectin alluded to, different qualities of gin vary in the degree to which they taste like a car air freshener. If you don't like the pine-sol flavor of cheap gin, either buy something better or add simple syrup and lime juice - and baby, you got a gimlet going.

[Koumei]

"You have to be really careful with gin. Also you have to be a thirty year old female sitting on the steps outside, sulking because nobody likes your shoes." - Dylan Moran.

(He's also quite wise about other drinks. "Tequila isn't so much a drink as a way to get the police around without needing to call them". "Vodka... very dangerous, it sneaks up on you. 'This is rubbish, I can't taste a thing it's fucking water! This is... wh- why are we on a traffic island?")

[AndreiChekov]

I actually like the pine needle taste. I chew pine needles when I'm bored, or sewing because they is am yummified.

I don't mix my Gin, because I just drink 2 beers first.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Never got a pine taste from gin. Hmm. And gin is really good for a modified Singapore sling (modified by taking out most of the pineapple juice).

[AndreiChekov]

There is another drink that most people don't know about.
The Seattle Sun
1 12 oz. Pabst Blue Ribbon
1 shot of the cheapest hairspray revolting vodka around.

They cancel out the gross in each other, and make for a cheap drink that gets you wasted and isn't dreadful.

[Koumei]

It's sad, so many cocktails (particularly from Drunken Moogle) require some weird drink called Hpnotiq. Apparently without the y, and with a q rather than a c. As far as I can tell, that is not available outside America.

Anyone who has tried it, can you name an acceptable substitute?

[Josh_Kablack]

The big deal about Hpnotiq is that it is pricey and blue. The blue you can get with Curacao or by adding blue food coloring to vodka. And I'm sure you can figger your own way to get the pricey.

According to wikipedia the actual deal is just a mix of vodka, cognac and "fruit juices". So you could probably get pretty similar results for half the price by using your own mix of vodka, cognac and blue raspberry kool aid.

[Username17]

Hpnotiq is made in France and totally available throughout Europe in addition to the US. But as Josh says, the main draw is that it's blue and fruity. So Blue Curacao is your go-to replacement. Despite the fact that Curacao is actually from the tropics while Hpnotiq was designed in New York and is produced in France, Hpnotiq has what people would describe as a more "tropical" taste. Hpnotiq is 17% alcohol, and Curacao varies from 15% to 40%, so check your bottle carefully. You may want to water down your curacao with a bit of "tropical punch" or jazz it up a bit with some vodka to get to a comparable alcohol mixture.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Thanks, that seems pretty reasonable. Many pokemon-themed drinks require it. I guess because so many of them can learn Hpnosis.

[codeGlaze]

There is another drink that most people don't know about.
The Seattle Sun
1 12 oz. Pabst Blue Ribbon
1 shot of the cheapest hairspray revolting vodka around.

They cancel out the gross in each other, and make for a cheap drink that gets you wasted and isn't dreadful.

We did that with Red Dog beer and a shot of After Shock (cinnamon liquer... terrible stuff).

It was a lot like drinking cinnamon flavored water.

[ACOS]

I've been throwing Blue Curacao in to my Screwdrivers for years; I didn't even know that it was a thing, I just know that I can suck those down all night.

[RobbyPants]

The only time I've ever had gin was mixed with Squirt (grapefruit soft drink, for those of you who've never heard of it). It was okay at best. I had it a few times in a period of a month or two, and I haven't gone back after more than a decade.

Gin never sounds good to me. I almost always drink beer. If I mix, it's almost always whiskey and ginger ale with a slice of lemon.

[Whipstitch]

Frank and Josh are right. Hpnotiq is this generation's Alize, another liquer that was $20 dollars for some reason even though you could whip up an as good or better substitute with some lower shelf stuff and fruit juice.

I don't know what happened to me but i drink tequila like all the time now. Just a steady stream of tequila and whiskey sours.

[Koumei]

I mostly drank tequila back when the goal was getting shitfaced, as opposed to enjoying the drinks. So back when I... wasn't enrolled at Uni but rocked up every day anyway. A group of us would wander up to the bar around lunchtime and do a line of tequila shots (with salt and lemon). Pretty sure a bottle of tequila was consumed at my 21st, but that's amongst a great many other things.