BoozeReview.co.uk – Cheap drinks for cheap drunks

This edition of Drinks That Aren’t Drinks is slightly different than usual. It’s slightly more expensive, but I decided to include it because it is made out of things I had in the cupboard and wanted to use up and therefore still carries the spirit of Booze Review. This drink started off as a Bermuda Rum Swizzle, but I’ve bastardized it so much that it is now a completely different drink

The unassembled Rusty Bishop

Ingredients:
Vodka
Club Orange or any kind of fizzy orange drink (I have also used Sprite with good results)
Grenadine
Angostura Bitters
Lemon (optional)
Lime (optional)
Crushed ice (optional)

Not all screwdrivers are racist

Start by mixing vodka, orange and ice. You’re pretty much making a screwdriver here, except the orange is carbonated. I guess you could call it a power screwdriver or maybe a sonic screwdriver but that isn’t really important. This drink doesn’t taste too strongly of alcohol so don’t skimp out on the vodka. I’ve made a few of these using Sprite instead of orange and it also tasted pretty good so it’s entirely up to your personal preference. The orange looks better when the grenadine is added but if you’re reading Booze Review then you probably don’t care how beautiful your drink is. I guess I could add umbrellas and coat the rim of the glass in coloured sugar, but for now I’m going to keep it simple and only include 7 ingredients.

Kind of like a Tequila Sunrise without the tequila

Next add a splash of grenadine. I’m fairly shitty at pouring grenadine and always end up pouring far too much into the glass but this time it went pretty well. Adding too much leaves a really sweet syrup at the bottom of the glass so try to avoid fucking it up if you can. I’ve been trying to use up my bottle of grenadine for quite some time but unfortunately a little goes a long way and you can’t just add lots of it like you can with vodka. I’m hoping that at this rate it might be finished by Christmas but I’m worried that by then I’ll have developed a taste for it and the whole cycle will start over again.

Almost finished!

Now you add bitters. I’m not really sure how to use bitters so I probably use too much. I usually add about 6 dashes which was originally enough to make an entire pitcher of Bermuda Rum Swizzles, but as long as it tastes fine I don’t really care. The bitters will float at the top, so give it a quick stir. You can just give the top a quick stir if you want to keep the Tequila Sunrise appearance or you can stir the whole thing if you don’t give a shit. I once sniffed a bottle of Angostura Bitters and felt extremely light headed, so you might want to try that while you’re at it.

The Rusty Bishop in its native habitat

The drink is pretty much finished now, but I’ve been adding slices of lemon and lime recently because if I’m going to all the effort of making this drink then I might as well go all the way and have plants floating in it. When I was buying the lemon and lime, the woman behind the counter looked at them both and said “A lemon and a lime” in a really disappointed tone as if she knew damn well they were going into some poorly thought out drink. I guess I had the last laugh since I’m drunk and she isn’t.

Overall the Rusty Bishop is a surprisingly good drink for something thrown together from unwanted ingredients. It takes most of its flavour from the orange and grenadine. It tastes slightly of those orange flavour vitamin tablets which dissolve in water, but it’s best if you try not to think about that while drinking it. The end can get pretty sickening from the grenadine which sinks to the bottom, but I suspect this is because of my shitty pouring. If you begin to get sick of drinking Rusty Bishops, you can start dropping a few of the ingredients, probably the grenadine, and have a normal drink. The Rusty Bishop is kind of time consuming, but it’s good for cleaning out the cupboard. It probably isn’t a great thing to order at a bar, but for drinking alone where you can hide your shame, it’s quite tasty.

Booze Review rating: 8/10 deliciouses
★★★★★★★★★★

The only ingredients you need

Hello and welcome to another episode of Drinks That Aren’t Drinks, the place to find out about the latest and greatest drinks that probably shouldn’t have been made to begin with. Today we’ll be indulging in our own version of the classic drink Sangria, which has been dubbed “Snagari”.

I had originally wanted to make Sangria, but upon reading the Wikipedia article I soon realised that I would need more ingredients than I cared to gather. After very little thought and consideration I decided that I could achieve the same results by mixing vodka with fruit salad, and so it began.

Not a huge variety…

At first I was unsure if I should buy several fruits and make my own fruit salad, but upon seeing a large can of “Fruit Cocktail” in Lidl for 80p, I knew that the pre-made fruit mix would be easier and cheaper than fucking around with fruit and knives. The can contained peaches, pears, pineapples, grapes and cherries, although in the whole can I only noticed two cherry halves. I would have preferred a better selection of fruits such as kiwi and apple but at that price I couldn’t really complain.

Top tip: Use a jug bigger than the can you’re pouring from

Upon opening the can of Fruit Cocktail I instantly realised that I hadn’t thought it though at all. The can appeared to be 90% the same fruit and I had underestimated the fruit:juice ratio. It was clear that this was going to be a drink I would be chewing. Next, I emptied the can into a jug so I could mix everything together. This was my second mistake. Halfway through transferring the contents of the can into the jug I realised that the jug wasn’t anywhere near enough, but for some reason instead of stopping, I continued pouring the Fruit Cocktail into the jug. This meant I now had most of the fruit in the jug and had no room to add vodka.

Not enough liquid to call a “drink”

Luckily I realised I could pour some of the fruit into a glass and prepare the first drink that way, so I dumped the rest of the can into a glass and then added some of the fruit and juice from the jug. I then added a healthy dash of vodka before realising that there was far too little liquid in this drink and soon became concerned that I would be drinking my Snagari with a fork. I had considered adding more of the juice from the jug but that would mean the next drink would be even more terrible. The drink was then saved when I remembered I had some 7 Up and adding it would probably make the drink taste better than it would with only fruit and vodka. After a splash of 7 Up and a quick stir, the Snagari was complete.

A nice tasty Snagari for a hot Summer night.

In the picture the drink looks like a cloudy mess, but it looks much better in person. The contents of the jug look a lot clearer, so I’m guessing I smashed up the fruit by stirring it too hard. Surprisingly Snagari doesn’t smell of anything. I was expecting it to smell very fruity but I guess the canned Fruit Cocktail isn’t very fresh. Disappointingly, there isn’t much taste from it either. It tastes very faintly of melon and vodka. You can tell the vodka is there, but it doesn’t taste too strong. Upon reaching the end of the glass, I was left with a pile of fruit. I was able to eat them with the help of a fork, but I noticed the fruit pieces tasted a lot more strongly of alcohol than the juice did. I’m not sure why this is but maybe eating vodka soaked fruit would be a better idea next time.

Overall the Snagari was good although somewhat bland. I probably shouldn’t have filled the glass with fruit and I probably should have just made Sangria, but as a cheap summer drink it could be pretty good. Ideally I would have left the fruit soaking in vodka overnight but I have no patience for such things. Using better quality fruit would probably make Snagari taste a lot better and so I’ll probably try refining this drink in the future.

Booze Review rating: 7/10 deliciouses
★★★★★★★★★★