Crash Cart Cocktail

A long time ago, we put together a little black book of cocktail recipes for our friends and family for Christmas. It was elementary, a bit amateurish, and some of the recipes are, as the boys would say back it the day, ‘hard on the parts.’ It was also a lot of fun to put together. Now that we are a lot older, smarter, and better looking, we like to stun you with outstanding unique cocktails illustrated with top-of-the-line photographic excellence. Sadly, it has come to our attention that not all the Lounge Lizards can pour the cocktails we post because they are not privy to the contents of the Lounge. Point taken. Therefore, we dipped back into our little black book for an original that you can all pour and will keep you partying all night. Not only is this drink one of our truly favorite originals (we still pour it all the time), it’s the only drink in the little black book whose recipe was wrong! Why? Well, M.J. pointed out that we forgot the Mountain Dew!

Crash Cart Cocktail
Holly's Original

2 parts Desert Island Long Island Ice Tea Cocktail Mix
1 part orange juice (we use Simply Orange)
1 part Red Bull (or your favorite energy drink)
Splash of fresh-squeezed lime juice
Splash of Mountain Dew
Spash of 7up

Combine all ingredients in a vessel of your choice. The original Triple C was invented in a hurricane glass. Because this is made whopatooli-style, stir instead of shake.

Karben4 Block Party

Finally Karben4 has a second beer in a bottle. The best young Madison brewery has been wowing restaurant goers for a couple of years now with its little beauties like Lady Luck and NightCall on tap but had resisted bottling until last years offering Fantasy Factory IPA. While Fantasy Factory is good, we at the Firewater Lounge had been waiting for what Karben4 is known for: a big malted draught. Look no further because Block Party is here (although you may have to wait a bit since we took the last six-pack from Woodman’s and left a huge hole in the rack labelled ‘Karben4’).

Block Party is a medium-bodied American Amber Ale. It pours out a hazy, dark amber-red with a finger-and-a-half head that dies quickly. It smells full of bread with hops underneath with a bit of citrus. Drinking Block Party is easy. Smooth and clean, less hoppy than even its muted aroma, this beer is all about biscuity malts and a tint of floral citrus. On hot days, you’ll drink a growler in no time and look for more. It’s wonderful clean flavor makes it a great partner to food, but not cocktails, since it would become lost quickly. Our recommendation is to enjoy it with pretzels, pizza, and tacos.

Lake Louie's The Twins

If there’s one thing that completely irritates us in the Firewater Lounge about greenhorn bandwagon beer snobs in the popular craft beer scene, it’s the idea that the hoppier the beer the more sophisticated and good it is. So these so-called connoisseurs choke down an extra Indian, extra pale ale with extra, super-modified hoppy hops and proclaim how awesome it is, while holding back bitter tears and a gag reflex that would impress Katie Morgan. It would be akin to us handing a Firewater Lounge Lizard a cocktail composed of Angostura and Peychaud bitters alone, promise its tastiness, and promptly watch said Lizard spew it back over our virtual bar, screaming, ‘What is that crap!'

Bitterness is a characteristic that is rarely the star; to get it to intelligently perform in your beverage, you need to know your craft. To drink bitterness intelligently, you need to understand what balance in a drink means. That means you must drink more than IPAs to understand and appreciate good beers. So let’s point you in a good direction.