A few months ago my buddy Jeremy and I made it a mission to find a bar we could call our own. We’re both graduates of the University of Florida and if there’s one thing college taught us, it’s having a place to knock a few cold ones back on Friday night is a requirement. By the way, Jeremy is the one who introduced The Drunk Pirate to Firefly vodka for all you fans out there. But I digress.

If you’ve read my Top 15 Ways to Save Money When Going Out, then you know that finding and building a solid relationship with your bartender is the key to strong drinks and prompt service all night. Well, following my guidelines we have indeed solidified ourselves as regulars and now enjoy some of the strongest, longest lasting drinks at the bar thanks to our two oh-so-favorite bartenders Matt and Meredith. Our recent accomplishment has convinced me that people need to know more about the people that put the happy in happy hour. Here are some answers to frequently asked bartender questions.

What tricks do bartenders use to cheat lousy customers?

Auto-gratuity – Many under-appreciated bartenders will turn to the auto-grat button on the cash register to ease the pain of dealing with an especially annoying customer. By automatically charging them gratuity, knowing they’ll be too drunk to notice when they go to pay, the bartender can usually guarantee a respectable tip from even the stingiest jackass.

A$$hole Tax – Run your mouth too much and that $10 Long Island might go up a dollar or five as the night wears on. Knowing that you have no idea how much a drink costs anyway, the bartender overprices the drink and pockets the difference.

Watered Down Drinks – The easiest way for a bartender to own a lousy customer is to make sure the H20 content of his or her drink is kept sufficiently high—ensuring that his or her fun level stays sufficiently low.

Oops All Gone – Sorry, all we had left was Patron—that’ll be your first born son please.

What’s a bartender’s least favorite type of customer?

1. People who snap their fingers – Nothing says please ignore me, I’m a jackass and will likely be a stingy, whiny, pompous jerk when you finally do come over here like someone snapping their fingers.

2. The guy at the bar who thinks he’s the only one who needs a drink – There’s 25 people all waiting to get a drink and all this guy can do is keep yelling out “I need a drink down here!”

3. People who order Amstel Light – You can’t be serious.

4. The guy who orders one drink followed by 6 waters and a napkin – There are people climbing on the ceiling to get another drink and then there’s this guy taking up two seats at the bar—one for himself, the other for all his damn napkins and water glasses.

5. People who don’t have the money ready. – It’s like showing up to a sorority formal without an industrial-size box of condoms—mistakes will be made and consequences will follow.

6. Whiny girls who order twenty cosmos and tip a dollar. – Sorry sweetie. Not even your boyfriend is willing to put up with that kind of treatment without a little payment.

Drinks that will get you laughed at:

1. Fuzzy Navel – Unless you’re a 17-year-old girl with a fake ID, that’s just embarrassing (The Drunk Pirate does not support underage drinking, because that’s just less alcohol for us).

2. Buttery Nipple – Repeat after me. “Just because it sounds funny doesn’t mean you should order it.” This rule also applies to Jägerbombs.

3. Michelob Ultra – Save your dignity and just a order a water with extra lemon—pansy.

4. Sex on the Beach – Like the act it’s named after, this drink is only a good idea in theory.

5. Red Head Slut – As if the name wasn’t warning enough.

6. Anything Blue – Do you really want to start down this path?

7. Anything Pink – The only people I should see carrying around a pink drink are sorority girls and Care bears. And if I’m seeing Care bears, then I had waay too much blue in my drink to begin with.

8. Anything that takes more than 30 seconds to make – Anything taking longer than 30 seconds to make and the bartender is just making shit up as he goes.

What’s the best way to get your bartender’s attention?

1. Call their name – Not to be confused with calling them a name.

2. Smile and make eye contact – Unless you’re a single guy over 50—then you’re just going to creep everyone out.

3. Look sad and in desperate need of a drink – Good alternative to the smile and make eye contact for the single and over 50 crowd.

4. Hold up some dollar dollar bills – The key here is more than one.

James also wanted me to make a note for all our fans out there that this is post number 100. So if you haven’t read the 99 posts before this one, well then get on it, because at this rate it’ll be another 3 years before we make it through the next 100.

        

It was a Saturday in late September 2008. I had several people over to watch Florida stomp the shit out of whom ever they were playing as usual, and Nathan and Rachel were two hours late. As usual. I think there was an issue with Rachel’s jeans or something. I cant really recall.

What I can recall is when Nathan finally arrived, we made our way to Springhill Liquors – My favorite liquor store in the whole world. The reason it’s my favorite, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, is because the owner will mark really expensive bottles of whatever down by as much as 50 percent just to move them or get people to try them. This is how I found jewels like Zaya Gran Reserva Rum and Sonnema Herb Vodka.

As we walked down the isles we discussed the possibilities each bargain-priced bottle of affluence held for the night. We were looking for something unique. Something neither of us had ever tried before. Then we saw it.

Awkwardly nestled on the top shelf of an isle between the Jager and the After Shock was a tillish, slenderish, green box with a brass spoon looking thing attached, and gold and green writing that looked as if it had been scribed by some ancient sect of alcoholic yet artistic monks thousands of years ago.

In large letters it read: “Grande Absente.” Under that the words, “Absinthe Originale – 138 Proof,” glowed like a bug zapper in a trailer park and Nathan and I were the bugs. The coup de gras was the bright yellow sunburst label that had been attached with a liberal helping of scotch tape that read, “Absinthe! Only $69.95!” (It was originally priced at $85.99)

I had two flashbacks almost instantaneously.

The first was of a story I read years ago in the very first issue of Maxim magazine. It was an account of the editors experience with some illegal absinthe he had purchased from a guy out of the trunk of his car. I remembered how he described the night and also remembered thinking that one day I absolutely HAD to try absinthe for myself.

The second was of an article I had read a few months earlier talking about how Absinthe had been made legal in the U.S. and how we were actually getting better (and safer) stuff than you could in Europe because of the stricter FDA regulations.

So there it was in front of us. The very spirit that made Van Gough thing cutting off his ear and sending it to a girl was a pretty good idea. After about thirty seconds of deliberation we decided to split the cost to see just how twisted this stuff was.

After making our purchase we went next door to the Publix supermarket and bought sugar cubes along with all the other football-party cookout stuff we were supposed to get. Then we headed home so that everyone else could bask in the glory of our discovery…and to not tell my wife and Nathan’s girlfriend that we just spent more on a bottle of alcohol than we did on either of their birthday presents.

We decided to hold off on the big reveal until after the game was over and we had everyone’s undivided attention. That and we figured it would be easier to get drunk people to drink something that was supposed to make you hallucinate and also tasted like licorice made from dirty socks.

Everyone gathered around the big pub table in my kitchen and took turns smelling and otherwise thoroughly examining the bottle of bright green fairy juice while I gathered everything I needed to make enough traditional absinthe drinks for everyone.

I had everything I needed. Sugar cubes, filtered water, martini glasses and the brass spoon that came with bottle. It was time to get weird.

It’s All In The Mix

If you’ve never made or seen someone make a traditional absinthe drink, it’s actually quite simple:

First you need a clean glass. I prefer a martini glass just for aesthetic reasons but any type will do. Pour two ounces of Absinthe in the bottom of the glass. Place the Absinthe spoon over the glass and place a sugar cube on the spoon. Next SLOWLY drip chilled water over the sugar cube. (If you pour too fast the sugar won’t dissolve properly.) The amount you use depends on how strong you want your drink to be. I prefer a 1 to 1 ratio. Finally stir the mix until it turns milky-white and the sugar has dissolved.

If you don’t have a fancy absinthe spoon or time for tradition,  you can combine the Absinthe and water along with granulated sugar and ice in a shaker just like you would a traditional cocktail.

Now as far as I can remember, back in the day if I told my friends eating a horse turd would get them totally whacked out of their gourde, they would have found a way to get past the taste. My how times have changed.

Don’t get me wrong, I HATE licorice. Of all the candies in the world, licorice is the most vile and disgusting one ever dreamed up by some half-cocked candy fiend. But for the sake of science, a good post and the possibility of having a mind-altering experience, I’m willing to put aside my differences towards licorice.

My friends, in the now older, married and wiser states were not ready to concede their palettes’ proclivities toward things that didn’t taste like the sweat from a licorice makers ass crack. . I could see the girls turning their noses up due to the sheer fact that I had given each of them a 4oz drink with 2 of those ounces being 69 percent alcohol. However, I wasn’t going to let the guys off that easy. I made each of them have at lest two and of course I made Nathan have three or four.

Nathan and Rachel would later tell me that after they left they were on a completely different level than everyone else at the birthday party they went to. Oops… I forgot they told me they had to go to a birthday party afterward. My bad. I bet the party was waaayyy more fun though.

Talking In Circles

One by one everyone said their goodbyes and made their ways to whatever other late-night obligations they had. By then it was late and Laura headed off to bed leaving me alone and wide awake with more than 3/4 of a bottle of Grande Absente and a pyramid of sugar cubes.

I made myself another drink and and began to look around my kitchen for other liquids that might mix well with Absinthe as to mask the taste of licorice. A taste I had quickly grown tired of but as mentioned earlier was enduring in the name of some half-ass journalistic doctrine I feel the need to adhere to. That and of course, in the name of the science of getting hammered.

I looked everywhere. I sorted through the various jars of pickle juice, jalapenos and pickled okra and decided it would be a waste of good booze to try any of those. I continued my search and finally came across a bottle of orange juice when I remembered the time I mixed cheap tequila with orange juice and it had completely masked the taste of the tequila.

By this point I had finished my drink I mentioned earlier and made another with equal parts Absinthe and OJ. Heaven. Although there was indeed a licorice aftertaste, the initial taste that once dominated the glass was all but gone.

I continued drinking my new discovery and began coming up with some of the most profound insights and thoughts. I had the foresight to write them down but when I finally came across the notepad several days later, even I couldn’t make much sense of the alcoholic shorthand i had scribbled all over the pages. I had even drawn diagrams of what looked like a hammock similar in design to those chairs that fold up and fit into bags.

There was also a rudimentary drawing of a computer with a mouse plugged into it  that looked like a CB radio mic with the words “Trucker Mouse” scrawled across the top. (I actually still think that one was a good idea)

I was definitely playing a different sport than usual when my wife came out of the room and said, “How much longer are you going to be walking around the house talking to yourself?”

I remember being confused. According to her I had been walking in a circle from the kitchen to the living room to the dining room and back to the kitchen while talking to myself for more than 2 hours about all the ideas that were flooding my brain. I can’t say for certain what I was talking about, but I’m pretty sure I solved one or two of the world’s problems. I just wish I could remember any of it.

After that I decided to slam as much Gatorade as I could and then call it a night.

Conclusion

So did I see green fairies and have an out of body experience? No. But I will tell you this; not ever before, nor ever since, have I had such an inspiring drunken experience as I did that night or have as good of a time as I did that night all by myself. That night, my thoughts were all the entertainment I needed. I could have worked out problems and thought up cool shit until the sun came up if I had been left to my own devices.

So would I recommend trying Absinthe? Absolutely. If not for the strange and entertaining drunk, go in with your buddies and buy a good bottle just to say you’ve done it. Because no matter how much the bottle costs, the story about the time you drank Absinthe will be priceless.

        

I’ve tasted the watermelon-flavored Four Loko and it tasted almost completely, but not entirely unlike pink battery acid. The Four Loko orange blend however, tastes a little more like a reputable street whore worth spending your money on.

It’s a little lighter with not so much of the bite as its pink whore of a sister counterpart. It actually tastes a lot like Sunkist with some vodka or 151 mixed in it. Which is great if you’re into that kind of internal S&M liver-destroying thing.

But seriously, the overall taste was more than tolerable and the effect of the 12 percent alcohol content on my writing ability was more than negligible on the positive side. In case you’re as drunk as me that means it made me a more suave and debonair writer for at least an hour or two.

I do however have one gripe…2.fucking99? Are you serious?! This stuff should be no more than $1.99 . Granted one or two cans will get you shit-housed but it isn’t like a pill that’s had $300 million spent on marketing on it. I don’t know. Maybe if it were a Friday night and I had a few of these in me I might think differently. But It’s not and I don’t. So $2.99 is too much for this flavor of Four Loko. Youd probably be better off buying a 1.75 of Popov Vodka for $6.99 vodka and 3 liter of warm orange soda from the Quickee Mart for $.99. Basically the same thing.

        

Some of the greatest food and beverage discoveries were born out of either necessity or just good old fashioned curiosity. I mean seriously, who was the first guy to eat an oyster? Was it out of necessity to avoid starvation that he decided to eat the giant snot-like creature he found living in a rock he found growing in the mud of a coastal saltwater marsh, or was it a decision born of blatant human curiosity to see if he could eat the same stuff the otters were eating?

Either way, people have been eating, drinking and mixing things – that arguably should or should not go together – since the beginning of time.

That being said, one of my favorite things in the world is a good black and tan. You may recall another post I did some time ago, where out of necessity, I mixed together Natty Light and Steel Reserve to create what I called The Poor Man’s Black and Tan. Yes the original PMBT was created out of necessity due in part that I had been drinking and couldn’t drive myself to the store to retrieve the materials for a proper Black and Tan.

The newest iteration of the PMBT however, was the culmination of centuries of the aforementioned human curiosity. In other words I had some Steel Reserve and a bottle of Yuengling Black and Tan and I wanted to see what would happen if I mixed the two.

As I reached in my freezer I opted not for my usual vintage A&W Dog n Suds mug, but rather for my 32 oz Cheers mug I stole from the Cheers bar in the Cincinnati airport on my honeymoon.

Assuming the Yuengling was the heaviest of the two, I poured it in first. I tried my best to use a big wooden spoon to marry the two in such a fashion as to render a distinct line of separation but now in retrospect think that a nice metal spoon would have been a better choice since the coarse wood caused more mixing by the roughly flowing beer than it prevented.

Once both bottle and can had been emptied, what I was left with almost completely but not entirely resembled a genuine black and tan. There was a separation between the two which obviously could have been made more apparent with a little more patience and the proper equipment (as stated earlier) and there was a nice head of foam.

I was amazed at the utter beauty of the cross-bred brew I had created but didn’t expect what came next.

It tasted AMAZING!

I’m not kidding. The Steel Reserve lightened the Yuengling Black and Tan up while the Yuengling B&T took away the bitterness and overall skunkiness of the Steel Reserve. I even tested it on my wife before telling her what it was and she said she really liked it. And as with any Steel Reserve creation it pack enough punch that after two I even thought Dane Cook was funny.

I can say with all honesty that I’ll be drinking this version of the Poor Man’s Black and Tan on a regular basis. Try it for yourself and tell me what you think. If you can actually get it to separate nicely, take a picture and send it in and I’ll post it on the site.

        

Now I’ve never really been a fan of mint in general because with most mint-flavored affairs the only thing you taste is the mint. I don’t even like those little mints they leave on your pillows at hotels. My utter disdain for mint made me extremely skeptical of Firefly Vodka’s mint-flavored sweet tea vodka.

I fully expected the mint to completely overpower the sweet tea flavor of the vodka leaving me with something that resembled the bastard child of a Mint Julep and a Mojito. Not wanting to throw another variable into the experiment I strayed away from my normal Spiked Arnold Palmer of half Simply Lemonade and half Firefly and opted to replace the lemonade with plain water.

I was very surprised to find that the folks at Firefly had opted to hold back on the mint so it didn’t seem as if I had shoved a mint candy cane up my nose. To the contrary the aroma was present, but not overpowering, and the was really no initial mint taste. Instead it left a nice clean after taste. One could describe it as being a little more of a mature and sophisticated drinking experience.

After playing with my mixers a little more I found the best combination was to use crushed ice with half Simply Lemonade and half Mint Firefly Vodka. You get the great sweet tea taste with a fresh minty after taste that actually clears your head quite nicely.

Like the raspberry-flavored version, this flavor is perfect for after dinner or just lounging around on the back porch. And as with the original Firefly Vodka and the raspberry flavor, the mint definitely has a place in my cabinet.

        

I had heard of Four Loko from my northern-southern counterparts for some time and have been anticipating its arrival. Hell, I’ve even been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal’s alcohol division on the subject of malt liquors with caffeine in them. As a matter of fact, some of our readers were interviewed for the same article and are now famous. Seriously, they all got drunk on a Joose and Four Loko concoction and stole the bikes of every Mormon missionary on Denver.

But I digress. This is a review of Four Loko Fruit Punch Flavor Premium Malt Beverage. The first thing I noticed is that it looks and smells exactly like Max Vibe. It’s pink and fruity. It even tastes similar. However, it doesn’t have the same wangey bite to it. It actually doesn’t taste almost completely unlike fruit punch. Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t anything that could be farther from the taste of actual fruit punch, but it is a reasonable facsimile. BTW this is what I’m listening to right now and it rocks. Kiss my ass.

It actually tastes like what you would get if you put a Jolly Rancher in a Zima (Remember that?),topped it off with 151 and did a line of coke off a hooker’s ass. (I am wide awake right now and wish I had a motorcycle)

Actually this stuff is GREAT! I feel like I could wrestle a gorilla. It doesn’t help that I’m listening to this either. I bet This flavor of Four Loko would be great mixed with some Smirnoff or Kettle One Vodka.

I’m not kidding. I’ve been nursing this 24oz can for almost an hour and I am buzzing like a crackhead locked in a evidence room. This stuff is definitely worth the $2.50 a can price. I think I’m going to give some for my kid and send him to my parent’s house as payback for them getting him all hopped up on candy and sending home every Sunday afternoon.

I hope I can get my hands on every flavor:)

        

I’m going to assume since none of these people look like they know each other that these 40 photos were taken on 40 different nights hence the name, 40 Nights of Drunk.

And yes I know there are some pictures taken in the daytime. Work with me here. Or at least send me in your drunk pictures to james@thedrunkpirate.com. I might send you some free stuff.

[View with PicLens]

        

Like most great bourbons I’ve sampled, Eagle Rare comes in a very simple bottle with a cork. The smooth aroma when I first opened the bottle made me want to wear the stuff as cologne. Or drink it straight. Which I did.

Eagle Rare is the bourbon equivalent of Pyrat Rum or Zaya Gran Reserva Rum. Not too expensive, but willing to take the Pepsi challenge with any of the “ultra premium” brands on the market. Even after I emptied the bottle I looked like a glue-sniffing addict taking long, slow smells out of the bottle. Seriously, they should bottle this and market it as aftershave you could drink.

I also tried Eagle Rare with several different mixers with whom it did great with. Coke, Sprite, Diet Coke, etc. However, this is definitely a bourbon you could drink on the rocks, thus making you look like a total bourbon connoisseur to your friends or coworkers.

This is definitely one of my top bourbons now and am counting the days until football season gets here so I can tell these dog days of summer to go to hell and leave me and my bourbon be to watch football till we pass out.

A bottle of Eagle Rare 10-year-old will set you back about $29-$39 depending where you buy it. The company also has a 17-year-old version that I can’t wait to try.

        

Up until now the champion in the high ABV race has been Jungle Joose with 9.9% ABV. I had heard of another beer called Four Loco, which is touted as supposedly having an alcohol content of 11%. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find it so it has remained unconfirmed. However, this past Saturday my cousin who works for Anheuser-Busch informed me they were going to start distributing my white whale in a few weeks right here in North Florida. I was giddy.

By last night I was thinking about everything BUT finding the Four Loco when my wife sent me on another one of her prego-craving runs to the BP station down the road. This particular BP has a Dairy Queen in it, so I placed my order and decided to roam around the store to see if anything caught my eye.

I did my usual scan of the coolers not expecting to see anything of any consequence when I came upon a 240z can I had never seen before. It read: Max Vibe – 12% ALC/VOL. I heard angels sing.

I quickly picked up the can and studied it. According to the label it sports all the same ingredients of Joose and Jungle Joose. Ceffeine, Ginseng, Taurine and artificial colors. I was fixed on the label when the craggly voice of the woman making my wife’s Heath Bar Blizzard broke my gaze. She stood there holding it upside down with a spoon in it to show me how thick it was. “Blizzerds ready,” she said. I grabbed the Blizzard, paid for my new treasure and headed home.

It was late, and I didn’t want to drink the Max Vibe in case having Caffeine listed as the first ingredient meant there was a shit-load of it in this 24oz can. So I waited until tonight. I figured I would write the review while I drank it.

I decided to do a little research on Max Vibe and the Max beverage Co. On the back of the can there was a web address: www.drinkmax.com. Unfortunately there was no site. Just one of those sites that says “this domain has been parked.” That should have been a red flag. Then I Googled every combination for Max Vibe and its brewer I could. Not one single article or image came up.

The only thing I DID find was a document form the state of Ohio’s liquor approval board stating that Max Vibe had been approved for sale under in May, 2009. The approval was given to the United Brands Co. The same company that owns/distributes Joose?

Anyway. Enough of the investigative reporting crap. I came to get bent. You can research the Max Vibe / Joose conspiray on your own. On with the review.

Now because the pure existence of this beverage is so sketchy and I couldn’t find a photo of it, you’ll have to be satisfied with my description and pics from my iPhone.

The can has a very modern feel to it. If Max Vibe and Jungle Joose were cars, Jungle joose would be an orange ‘63 Impala with hand-laid pinstripes and max Vibe would be a 2010 Scion. Any model Scion. You get the idea.

The real difference between Jungle Joose and Max Vibe is in the can. Not on it. Where Jungle Joose looks like green radiator fluid and pretty much tastes like it, Max Vibe is hot pink. Yes. Hot pink. And it pretty much tastes like a wine cooler or Boone’s Farm’s Strawberry Fields on steroids. I could actually see girls mixing this with vodka or Bacardi Limon at night clubs across the country. It might be pretty good.

As I write this I’m almost done with the whole can and I have to say I feel pretty good. I’m buzzed and wide-ass awake. The taste is so tolerable that I would probably drink another one if I had it.

The Verdict:

If you can find this stuff, drink it. The first few sips are a little harsh, but after that it’s on like Donkey Kong. I think this will do especially well with the female crowd since it’s pink and tastes all fruity. Hmm. I wonder if that’s who they’re targeting? Discuss amongst yourselves.