Soul Boxer Brandy Old Fashioned, ready-to-drink-cocktail

Before we get started, I have a severe case of Covid-Brain brought on by a relatively minor bout of Covid…please excuse, well, everything.

Last month, my wife and I decided that we were going to participate in Dry January this year. Not for any real reason, it just seemed like something to kick us out of our rut. Because of that, I needed to look ahead and see what I could find that I could taste ahead of time. I had a couple of things hanging around that I hadn’t gotten around to writing about yet, but that wasn’t enough for an entire month. So I went to the liquor store, set myself a price limit of $150, and bought everything I was going to taste for the coming month. What follows is one of those purchases.

Although I now claim Minnesota as my home state, I spent the first thirty years or so of my life in Wisconsin. I was born there, grew to adulthood there, got married, graduated college and started my career there. I also learned to drink there. Which is especially relevant to tonight’s discussion mostly because somehow, I managed to miss out on one of the state's iconic libations—the Brandy Old-Fashioned. In fact, I’d never even heard of it until I started getting into spirits and cocktails about fifteen years ago.

It's a tad perplexing, since it wasn’t like I avoided places that would serve them. I’ve been in Wisconsin bars and taverns that range from dive bar to upscale, small town local joints to places that cater to sophisticated tourists. I just never noticed it. I was a beer drinker, along with the occasional glass of wine, why would I look at the cocktail menu? If the place even had one, most didn’t when I was younger.

So when I went looking for things to taste for this month, I saw this ready-to-drink cocktail at my local liquor store. It is from Soul Boxer, a company specializing in ready-to-drink cocktails from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Honestly, I picked it up, knowing that I have no idea how a properly prepared Brandy Old Fashioned should taste. I just figured that folks in Milwaukee probably would, and I hoped that would be enough.

From my research a properly made Brandy Old-Fashioned is served a number of ways. It starts out much like any other Old Fashioned, with a sugar cube and bitters. To this they add a cherry and an orange slice and muddle those together. So far this is fairly normal though muddled fruit in an Old Fashioned has fallen out of favor in many places…including in my home. Then they add brandy and ice. Still pretty normal, but then things get weird. At this point, you top it with one of a few things. If you want it “sweet,” you add Sprite, if you want it “sour,” you add either sour mix or Squirt, and if you want it “press” you top with either a mixture of club soda and Squirt or just club soda.

All of this info comes second-hand from recipes on the internet, though. As I said, I have never had one of these prepared by anyone who knew what they were doing. If it is wrong, feel free to correct me in the comments. Here is a short video on the subject from the folks at Drink Wisconsinbly.

One day I will order a proper one, but in the meantime, you are probably wondering how the ready-to-drink version tasted. It has all the sugar, bitters, fruit flavors and brandy in it already so let’s dig in, shall we?

Soul Boxer Brandy Old Fashioned

Purchase Info: $19.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Viking Liquor, Prior Lake, MN

Price per Drink (50 mL): $1.33

Details: 31% ABV.

Nose: Orange, cherry, baking spices.

Mouth: This tastes like you'd expect. Its got orange, cherry, and bitters at the onset with fruity brandy notes underneath.

Finish: Medium length. Notes have been the same throughout and continue here in the finish.

Thoughts: I'm really digging this. You could pour this over a ball of ice and be very happy. But, of course we need to try it in the more “authentic” way too.

So I tried four variations: Sweet (Sprite), Sour (Squirt), Sour (sour mix), and Club Soda. Out of all of them my wife and I both preferred sweet if we were adding soda to it. Though to be honest, we much preferred the pre-mixed cocktail over ice with a cherry and orange zest garnish over all all of the soda versions. The flavors were already good enough that I didn’t think it needed to be covered up with a favored mixer and adding club soda to give it carbonation just watered it down. All in all, I’m happy with this purchase and am even more determined to try a proper one one day when I’m back visiting family and out for diner.

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Tempus Fugit Spirits and the Wisconsin Grasshopper Cocktail

I think that my appreciation for alcohol started early in my life. In Wisconsin, it is legal for your parents to serve you alcohol, so I was very young when I had my first sip of “Grandpa’s Pop.” I apparently liked it because, well, there is a photo of me as a baby where I was trying to steal a swig from Grandpa’s returnable bottle of Old Milwaukee. I only know this because there was a county directory that was printed shortly after I arrived in this world, and that photo ended up being printed there.

The 1970s were a weird time. Not that I remember much of them. (Because I was young, not because I was drunk…geez.)

My family has never shied away from alcohol at family gatherings. To this day, my stepmother will mix up an ice-cream pail-sized batch of “Grasshoppers” for the family to have as we exchange gifts. Now, unless you are from Wisconsin or deal with folks from there a lot, you might have the wrong idea about what I am talking about.

In most of the country, a Grasshopper cocktail is an after-dinner cocktail made from equal parts Crème de Cacao, Crème de Menthe, and cream. In Wisconsin, they have their own spin on it. Theirs uses ice cream instead of the cream and is basically a boozy milkshake. How boozy is up to the person making it. The “official” Supper Club recipe is a half ounce each of green Crème de Menthe and clear Crème de Cacao mixed with three scoops of ice cream and blended well. While I don’t know for sure what my stepmother’s recipe entails, I do know that she includes vodka if not serving it to the kids.

Rural northern Wisconsin is also super weird.

So, Frozen Grasshopper Cocktails make me think of Christmas. And when I saw a Crème de Cacao and a Crème de Menthe, each for over $30 per bottle, I decided to make some for my own Christmas celebration, even if it is just going to be my wife and I and a bunch of dogs. I’ll be honest as far as I know, I’ve never had a Grasshopper made with anything but Phillips or DeKuyper brand liqueurs. The bottommost-shelf of bottom-shelf brands. I had to know what one using booze that cost more than $12 per bottle tasted like. Hell, I needed to know what the liqueurs themselves, at triple the cost, would taste like. Could I actually drink them on their own? Would I be disappointed? Enraged? Excited? No idea. But it’s Christmas, and I was on a mission to try and make a better version than the one I grew up with.

OK, before we get into the meat of this, let’s take a moment to look at the purveyors of these upscale liqueurs. According to their website, Tempus Fugit Spirits is a California company that started out importing European Absinthes when they became legal in the US again in 2007. Along the way, they expanded…you know what? Let’s just let them tell it:

Along with the world’s finest absinthes, Tempus Fugit Spirits was determined to seek out fine rare liquors that were once staples in classic pre-prohibition cocktails, but have been lost in time. In most cases, we re-create these liquors ourselves, using historic 19th century protocols, many cross-referenced in several languages, to arrive as close in taste to these forgotten spirits as is possible, or surpass them – rare fruit, flower and plant liqueurs, bitters, amari, vermouths and chinati – we pride ourselves in finding out what’s missing from the back-bar that our cocktailian friends are searching for.

Our focus is on what is often called a cocktail ‘modifier’; those spirit-based ingredients used to transform whisky, gin, rum, etc. into a cocktail. We find today this category abused by industrial methods of production, artificial flavors and colors. We know these liqueurs were created in the past to be drunk alone, as aperitifs or digestifs, and were made with great pride and care by the best distilleries and liquorists.

So yeah. That sounds exactly like what I was hoping for when I picked up the bottles for my Christmas Grasshoppers. Here are the tasting notes, and then I’ll get to my own recipe.

Tempus Fugit Crème de Cacao

Purchase Info: $37.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Viking Liquor Barrel, Prior Lake, MN

Price per Drink (50 mL): $2.53

Details: 24% ABV.

Nose: Nutty and chocolatey. Think of the best gourmet chocolate bar you've had.

Mouth: Thick and sweet with a wonderful taste of cocoa nibs.

Finish: Sweet and gentle with the lingering flavor of a good candy bar. Notes of milk chocolate, caramel, and vanilla.

Thoughts: This is the best Crème de Cacao I've ever had. It's nutty like Cacao nibs, obviously chocolatey and sweet. Much better than the cheap stuff I used to buy. If it weren’t so sweet, I’d drink this on its own.

Tempus Fugit Crème de Menthe

Purchase Info: $46.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Curiada.com

Price per Drink (50 mL): $3.13

Details: 28% ABV.

Nose: Straight candy cane peppermint

Mouth: Liquid candy cane.

Finish: Long, very minty, and cool.

Thoughts: Very sweet and minty, just like you'd want from a mint liqueur. It is very tasty even if it is less complicated on the palate than the Crème de Cacao. I’m very happy with this as well. Both of these taste like what you’d want them to taste like, not like there are a bunch of artificial flavors in there.

Ok, now, after all that, here is my base recipe for a Frozen Grasshopper. This is just a base. You can adjust all of the ingredients as you wish and even leave some out, or be like my stepmother and add even more booze to it. This is the most forgiving cocktail recipe you’ll make.

Arok’s Frozen Wisconsin-Style Grasshopper

• 3 small scoops of a good vanilla bean ice cream (about 150-200 grams total)

• 1 fluid ounce Tempus Fugit Crème de Cacao

• 1 fluid ounce Tempus Fugit Crème de Menthe

• a splash of coffee or coffee liqueur

• green food coloring (optional, if you want the traditional Grasshopper color that would usually come from the green-colored Crème de Menthe. I tend to leave it out, but I wanted the picture to be accurate)

Blend the ingredients on low to medium-low to mix well but not melt the ice cream. Pour into a suitably vintage glass. Garnish with a mint sprig and/or a crushed-up York Peppermint Patty. And enjoy!

I’ll be taking next week off to enjoy Christmas with my family, so I hope each and every one of you has a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

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Campari Negroni, Ready-to-Drink Cocktail

I used to scoff at ready-to-drink cocktails. I like making cocktails, so I couldn’t understand why anyone would settle for a sub-par, overly sweet drink from the store when they could just make their own.

Yeah, I was kinda dumb.

Look, I get it. There are plenty of times I really want a cocktail, but I have zero ambition to make it. In such cases, I have three options. Drive to a place that makes cocktails, see if my oh-so-beautiful wife will make one for me, or just settle for a pour of bourbon in a glass. All three options come with their drawbacks.

The first one, obviously, means I need to leave the house, and I’m going to be honest with you here: if I can’t muster the ambition to go make a cocktail, do you think I’m actually up to putting on “real clothes” and leaving the house? Not a chance. The third one is what happens most of the time. I just pour a glass into a pretty cup and call it “good enough.” And it is, but sometimes I really want more than just a pour of bourbon. In such times, I turn to option two: ask my wife to do it for me.

Now, as I said at the beginning, I love making cocktails. My wife, however, does not. If I ask her to do it, I will most likely get an Old Fashioned. One bottle, a couple shakes of bitters, and one squirt of a sweetener such as honey or agave nectar. Which is great. Except sometimes I want something that isn’t an Old Fashioned. Something like a Negroni, for example. In the past, I’d just get up and do it myself. I’m not the kind of person who asks someone to do something for me when I’m feeling lazy and then critiques what they do for me.

Notice the “in the past” in that previous paragraph? Yeah, I found something online that intrigued me as I was trying to spend enough to get free shipping (spending more than shipping would cost in order to qualify for free shipping is totally logical, right?). I was buying a bottle of Wyoming Whiskey’s National Park No. 3 from Reserve Bar when I saw a 375 mL bottle of Campari Negroni, a ready-to-drink version of the Negroni cocktail. And last night, I put it through its paces…which is just a fancy way of saying I drank two cocktails. One ready-to-drink and one that I made fresh using Beefeater 24, Noilly Prat vermouth, and Campari. Here are my notes.

Campari Negroni, Ready-to-Drink Cocktail

Purchase Info: $26.49 for a 375 mL bottle from ReserveBar.com. It sells at Total Wine near me for $23.99 for a 375 mL.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $3.53

Details: 26% ABV

Nose: Chocolate and cherry

Mouth: Oxidized wine notes along with citrus and baking spice.

Finish: Short and deliciously bitter with notes of cherry, citrus, and chocolate.

Comparison to freshly made: The freshly made is brighter, but the bottled is more complex. Both benefit greatly from an expressed orange peel over the glass.

Thoughts: If I have the ingredients and I make the cocktail, I’ll prefer the freshly made version. It allows me to change the gin I'm using to whatever I'm in the mood for on that day. And with the Beefeter that I used, I prefer the brighter, less oxidized taste of the freshly made. That said, I very seldom have vermouth in the house, as a Negroni is the only cocktail I make where I don't swap the vermouth out for an amaro. So, I can totally see a place in my life for the bottled version. This way, I can have a Negroni on nights when I convince my oh-so-beautiful wife (whom I dearly love) to make cocktails, or there is no vermouth in the house. It’s close enough that I wouldn’t have noticed in a non-head-to-head matchup.

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My Wandering Eye: Laird’s 12 Year Old Rare Apple Brandy

My Wandering Eye is an ongoing series reacting to the rising prices in the bourbon world. We’ve reached a place where even average products have hit the range where they compete price-wise with other types of aged spirits. If I’m going to be asked to drop $40 to $70 on a mid-range bourbon, I might as well see what else I can get for that money. I hope to see if another spirits category offers something downright tasty in that price range. The goal isn’t to find cheap spirits but to maximize the quality I’m getting at a particular price point. The reviews in this series will all be written through a bourbon drinker’s lens.

I hope everyone had a fun Halloween! I took the day off and spent it wth my wife. We went out for lunch, did some record shopping, did a Costco run, stopped off at Fleet-Farm and then came home to hand out candy to the kids. While we manned the door for the nine kids that braved the cold to wander down our practically lightless street, we put together a puzzle and listened to a few of the records that we had purchased during our day off.

It wasn’t until bedtime that I realized that I had forgotten to write this.

Do you ever do that? You’ve been doing something on a schedule for over a decade and then you just…space it out? Happens to me a lot. I’ll blame it on getting old, but I’m pretty sure those that know me well will attest that this is something that I’ve been doing for decades now. I’ve been a space cadet for almost as long as I’ve been alive.

Anyway, let’s move away from my failings of memory and over to tonight’s…brandy? Yes brandy. I’ve been sitting on this one for a bit now (purchased mid-July) as I worked through all the samples sent to me. Though I love my local liquor stores, not everything is distributed to Minnesota so when I learned about Curiada a few years back (coincidentally while buying another Laird’s product) I’ve kept it in mind as a way to purchase things that either are not distributed here, or are distributed in such low quantities that you need to win a lottery to purchase it. And this 12 year old Apple Brandy fit the bill for that.

Here is what the distillery has to say about it:

Laird’s Rare Apple Brandy is the finest, most elegant expression of the Laird’s Apple product line. The aged barrels used in this exclusive brandy are carefully selected by eighth generation Larrie Laird and Master Distiller Danny Swanson for their exceptional taste and character. When first conceived in 1995, tasters agreed 88 proof was the optimum alcohol percentage to highlight the rich and complex flavors of this fine spirit. After peacefully ageing for a minimum of 12 years in our New Jersey barrel-ageing warehouse, the product is then bottled by hand. Each bottle bares a handwritten batch number, date of bottling and bottle number.

So now the I’ve put this off for about 6 months, let’s see how it tastes, shall we?

Laird's 12 year old Apple Brandy

Purchase Info: $122.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Curiada.com

Price per Drink (50 mL): $8.20

Details: 12 years old. 44% ABV.

Nose: This reminds me of a baked apple. Notes of brown sugar, caramel, baking spices, and sweet apple.

Mouth: Baking spices and barrel notes predominate with just a hint of apple underneath. After a couple of sips notes of caramel and brown sugar appear.

Finish: Warm and on the longer end of medium length. Notes of floral apple and cinnamon blossom after swallowing.

Thoughts: This is a wonderfully apple-forward brandy. In the past, I've had a few apple brandies that were very dried fruit forward, but this is more like a sweet and floral apple note. And 12 years in a barrel has allowed sweet caramel and spicy cinnamon notes to develop and come through even at a relatively low 88° proof. I really like this. And due to the cost, it will be going on the special shelf for sure.

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Celtic Honey Beekeeper’s Blend

I’d like to thank ByrnePR and Lux Row for providing this review sample with no strings attached.

A reminder that I am on vacation to the Pacific Northwest this week. If things go as planned, as you read this, I should either be walking along an ocean beach, enjoying rainforests, driving, or relaxing in a room at Lake Crescent Lodge in Olympic National Park. Obviously, this was written ahead of time.

Though I’d never heard of Celtic Honey prior to this post, the press release assures me that it has been around for long enough that the bottle you see in the photo above is both reformulated and has had a packaging update. When I saw the email come across my desk, I thought, “This could be a delicious addition to a whiskey cocktail.” But I didn’t ask for a sample. I wasn’t sure if it would appeal to you guys, being a liqueur and not even one made from bourbon. But when the PR guy came back explicitly asking if I wanted a sample, something made me say yes. I mean, the worst that would happen was that I would have a sample of honey liqueur to find a use for.

So what is Celtic Honey Beekeeper’s Blend? According to their website, it is a blend of grain neutral spirit, Irish whiskey, and honey, though the press release mentions the “flavors of native Irish flowers, plants, and trees.” This reformulated version is sold at 80° proof and “is set to reach retail shelves across the country by August at a suggested retail price of $24.99 per 750 ml bottle.”

But how does it taste, and most importantly, should you pick up a bottle?

Celtic Honey Beekeeper's Blend

Purchase Info: This sample bottle was sent at no charge for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $24.99.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $1.67

Details: 40% ABV

Nose: Not nearly as sweet as I would have expected. The main note on the nose is herbal honey, but not super sweet honey.

Mouth: Sweet, but not cloyingly so. Notes of honey, cinnamon, clove, and mint.

Finish: Short and sweet with notes of sweet honey, delicate spice, and a pleasant nuttiness.

Thoughts: I expected this would be a decent cocktail ingredient, but I didn't expect it to be very good on its own. Yet here we are. I plan to finish the tasting glass once I'm done with tastings tonight, something I don’t often do when I’m doing multiple tastings at one time. It's obviously much sweeter than a bourbon, but not nearly as sweet as I would have expected from a product reformulated from a honey liqueur. More than anything, it reminds me of an Old Fashioned where the bitters had been left out. I could easily see myself enjoying this with a dash of bitters over ice or as the sweetener in an Old Fashioned or whiskey sour. In fact, I'll probably try that later and will include the results below.

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So it’s now the next day, and I can 100% tell you that it makes a wonderful addition to cocktails. My wife loves a whiskey sour, so I made her a riff on that using equal parts fresh-squeezed lemon juice, Maker’s Cask Strength, and Celtic Honey. I shook that with ice with a small squirt of Agave Syrup (because it wasn’t quite balanced without it) and mint and garnished with a mint sprig. She really enjoyed it and asked for another, which I was happy to provide since today is her birthday. I made myself a much simpler drink. Equal parts Maker’s Cask Strength and Celtic Honey with a dash or two of bitters over ice. It was also quite tasty, though I realized later that I could have been even lazier and just left out the Bourbon altogether. When I tried just Celtic Honey and a dash or two of bitters over ice, it was just as good, though quite a bit sweeter.

So, should you pick up a bottle? Well, if all of this sounds good, I would. I’m certainly enjoying my bottle and will continue to as long as my (adult) daughter doesn’t finish it while she’s housesitting for us while we are gone.

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Angostura Cocoa Bitters

I’m a big fan of cocktails. As such, even though I usually use my own house-made bitters, I also keep an extensive collection of commercial bitters on hand as well. Either because a cocktail that I want to make calls for a specific ingredient or because I was wandering down the store aisle that had bitters in it when something caught my eye.

Such was the case with tonight’s bitters. I was wandering through the digital aisles of curiada.com, looking at a collection curated by one of my favorite YouTube cooking and history shows (Tasting History with Max Miller), when I clicked on a link that took me somewhere I didn’t expect. Among the many items on that new page were Cocoa Bitters from Angostura. Honestly, I didn’t even know Angostura had released a third product in their line of cocktail bitters. Though since it happened during the summer of 2020, I can probably be forgiven for missing the news. I have a vague recollection of something more important going on during that time. So after searching online to make sure no local stores carried it, I added it to my cart and had it shipped to me (along with a few other deliciously tasty treats).

Before we get into what I thought of it, here is what the company has to say about its relatively new product.

Few flavours delight one’s palate in a way that leaves you wanting more. None more so than the rich taste of cocoa! ANGOSTURA®, celebrated worldwide for its rich history in creating aromatic and orange bitters, has expanded its renowned collection to include ANGOSTURA® cocoa bitters. We only use the world’s finest, the Trinitario cocoa from Trinidad and Tobago. This paired with 200 years of unparalleled bitters expertise have resulted in this truly decadent, indulgent new flavour.

So…how is it? Let’s find out. First, we’ll try it on its own.

Like most Angostura bitters, Cocoa Bitters is delightfully spicy on the nose. Bright minty notes pair with earthy clove and spices. Under that, there is nutty depth provided by the addition of cocoa nibs. On the mouth, it’s just like a delicious spicy chocolate cookie. There are strong chocolate fudge and cinnamon notes that would make a candymaker weep. The finish is pure, rich dark chocolate. Honestly, I could drink this on its own. It’s really good.

Now that we’ve seen what we are dealing with, let’s try it in a few applications. I love to drink soda water with a few dashes of bitters in it as a refreshing, non-sweetened drink. In this case, the bitters weren’t quite right, though. The intense dilution of the drink highlighted the nutty flavors and pretty much lost the chocolate. Maybe I just don’t like acidic and carbonated chocolate, though. So let’s move into more traditional uses.

The whiskey cocktail I consume most often is an Old Fashioned. It’s not my favorite cocktail, but it is the easiest, so when my wife asks if I want a cocktail, she usually makes that one. And let me tell you, Angostura Cocoa Bitters make an excellent bourbon Old Fashioned. It pairs so well with the aged spirits, making it richer and more balanced. After looking on the Angostura Bitters website, I found an unexpected use for Cocoa Bitters that I also had to try. The After Eight Mojito uses white rum, lime, mint, sweetener, cocoa bitters, and soda water. I was blown away by how good that was. I didn’t have Angostura white rum, but the white rum I had on hand had a bit of funk to it and the chocolate notes played so well with it.

Overall, I love it. And if you haven’t tried it yet, maybe you are like me and missed its release in the midst of the VID, give it a try. It’s well worth the $12.99 I paid for it.

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CleanCo Clean G Gin Alternative

I really like a gin rickey on a hot day. We’ve discussed this in the past. And since it has been extremely hot so far this summer, I was looking for something that might allow me to have all the deliciousness of a gin rickey without drinking quite so much of the…gin. Just because it is hot out doesn’t necessarily mean I want to wake up the next morning with a hangover.

So as I was wandering through the aisles of my local grocery store, I noticed a line of non-alcoholic spirit alternatives in among the mixers. Now I’ve tried rum and whiskey alternatives before, and none of them were even close to the real thing. Most tasted like they were made by someone who had actually never tried the spirits. But I had a thought that maybe gin might be different. It isn’t barrel aged, so you wouldn’t need to try to figure out how to mimic that. And it’s flavored with botanicals. My theory was that you could do that by making a tea. I just never got around to doing it myself.

This means that when I saw the Clean G Gin Alternative on the shelf, I decided to save myself the effort of recipe creation and try it instead. Let’s see what the company has to say about its product before I tell you my thoughts:

Our take on a traditional London Dry Gin, Clean G features a crisp flavor with notes of balanced botanicals. That's because we carefully source and distill aromatic botanicals, like real juniper, to create a non-alcoholic spirit with a very fine finish.

Thoughts: Boy, am I ever disappointed in this. On its own, it tastes like 7-up that has gone flat. I get no hint of juniper, just a delicate citrus note. Definitely not making a martini with this thing. So I tried it in my favorite, the Gin Rickey. My Rickey was good. It just didn’t taste like gin. It tasted like fizzy water with lime in it (I might need to try just lime and soda more often, though, because it was delicious). After that, I tried a gimlet. Basically, limeade, sweetened and diluted lime juice. Finally, I decided to see how it held up in a low-alcohol cocktail by making a Negroni with the Clean G, Campari, and Vermouth. It tasted very flat. No vibrancy at all. The flavors of the liqueurs were present and tasty, but the “gin” just didn’t add anything to it.

Overall, for as much hope as I had for this, it just isn’t doing it for me. The one flavor I expect from Gin is Juniper. And this had none of that. I even tried infusing it with my own juniper berries to see if I could boost that flavor, to no avail. This is a pretty bottle. But it’s also $32 down the drain. If any of you know of a gin alternative that actually tastes like gin or even a nice juniper bitters, let me know. Otherwise, I think I’ll stick with lime and soda when I want a non-alcoholic rickey.

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ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic Drink

Liver: Ummm…what are we doing?

Me: testing something.

Liver: Testing…what? Because that looks like a lot more alcohol than you usually bathe me in…

Me: I saw a thing on YouTube and thought we’d give it a try. If it works, we might be able to help some folks on the internet.

Liver: And if it doesn’t work?

Me: It’ll work. Trust me. What’s the worst that will happen?

Liver: …I have a bad feeling about this.

And that is how my weekend went. I’d seen something called ZBiotics advertised on a YouTube BBQ show that I quite enjoy. They talked about science and breaking down something called acetaldehyde. And how that substance is the one that gives you the hangover. (They go into it in-depth on their website.) Well, this seemed just too good to be true for me.

But I thought, what the heck? I mean, I hate hangovers. Not that many love them. But I seem to be unusually susceptible to them. My Wisconsin forbears could drink all night and wake up to go fishing at 5 am the next morning with no noticeable effects. Me? If I have a third bourbon on an especially jubilant Friday night, then first thing Saturday morning, I’m reaching for the bottle of Advil and trying to sleep as long as possible. So I thought that even if it had a chance of working, it would be good to try. And then I spent the weekend testing it out. Here is how it went.

On Friday night, my wife and I cracked open one of the little bottles of ZBiotics each, just after she got home from work. We had a pre-dinner cocktail. Ate supper. A little while later, we had a bourbon. And then another before bed. More than I usually have, but not so much that it would be too out of the ordinary. And then, I went to bed fully expecting that there would be grogginess and a slight headache when I woke up Saturday morning.

But…no. I felt great! I was rested and ready to get on with my day. Same with my wife. So, does that mean it worked? Or was it a coincidence? I thought it worked. But it’s possible that I might have done something else that would help prevent a hangover without meaning to. And so I decided to try again. And this time, I kindly asked my wife not to have any as I wasn’t sure how this was going to end up and wanted to make sure that there was at least one responsible person in the house. I was going to try for four. Not because I particularly wanted four bourbons on a Sunday night, but if I was going to do more than spout marketing blurbs at you, I wanted to do this in a deliberate way.

So, once again, I drank the little bottle. Had a beer with supper. And then had at it for the next few hours. Man, was I happy. Just laughing and smiling. The doors were a little narrower than normal, but things were good. I was feeling great. Once I reached my fourth bourbon, I was done. Even in my oh-so-happy state, I knew that four bourbons and a beer in one night were at least a few too many. Then, my poor, suffering wife poured me into bed, and I went to sleep.

Monday morning was…not nearly as good as Saturday. I was certainly reaching for the Advil bottle. I slept as long as the dogs would let me, which wasn’t long enough. Then, I nursed coffee for the next few hours before trying to get some work done. I had a full-blown hangover. I joked with my wife that this entire post was just going to be “SEE WHAT I DO FOR YOU PEOPLE?!?” over and over again. And then I sighed and went back to feeling sorry for myself.

Final thoughts: I think that this worked well with a moderate over-indulgence. I really hadn’t felt that good after a third bourbon in a long time. But as far as pounding them down while pretending that you were still in college? Not really. Maybe it put a dent in it? If so, I hate to think what the day would have been like otherwise. But it certainly didn’t prevent anything, at least not for me. So my verdict is this: for $9 to $12 per little bottle (depending on the quantity you buy), I’d probably pass on it. It’s quite expensive when the alternative is just to drink less (which also works out to spending less on bourbon, too).

Once again, it turns out that the easiest and cheapest way to prevent a hangover is just to drink responsibly and not over-indulge. No matter what the YouTube BBQ guy is paid to say. That said, I’ll probably toss the remainder into my bag when I go on vacation this fall. I mean, maybe it does work if you practice moderation, and heck, I’ve already paid for them.