The Drunken Tailgate

Drink Like a Champ: Das Boot

Unfortunately, we didn’t find out if this Georgia girl knew to turn the boot and make sure she didn’t spill. If you want to impress random tailgaters who also loved Beerfest you can pick up a 67oz. Glass Beer Boot from Amazon for just $25 (and add the DVD for $10 more).

Thanksgiving Tailgating

If you’re tailgating for the Texas/A&M game next Thursday on Thanksgiving or just looking to use some leftovers as part of your fare, we’ve got a couple of links and suggestions for you.

Beeriety has a post on pairing beers with your Thanksgiving meal. They also have a more general post on how to pair beer with food.

Turkey – Oktoberfest (Paulaner), Biere de Garde (3 Monts), Bock (Anchor Bock).

Sweet potato – Brown Ale (Newcastle), ESB/English Bitter (Fullers), Pumpkin Beer (Dogfish Head Punkin).

Stuffing – Rye Ale (Founder’s Red Rye).

Pumpkin pie – Dunkelweiss (Weihenstephaner Dunkel), Dopplebock (Ayinger), Cream Ale (Sam Adams), Pumpkin Beer (Dogfish Head Punkin).

Green beans/veggies – Pale Ale (Sam Smith).

Cranberry sauce – Lambic (Lindemans Framboise).

The Georgia Sports Blog made a Turducken for their tailgate a few years ago. A Turducken consists of a chicken that is stuffed inside a duck which is then stuffed inside a turkey. Read about the recipe and planning and the aftermath.

The Real Simple website has a recipe for using your leftover turkey to make Reuben sandwiches that you can serve hot by grilling over a campfire stove.

Turkey Reuben Sandwiches

1. Spread 4 slices rye bread with Dijon mustard and another 4 with Russian dressing.

2. Dividing evenly, top the mustard-spread bread slices with 8 slices roasted turkey, 1 cup sauerkraut, 8 slices Swiss cheese, and the remaining bread.

3. Pan-fry the sandwiches in olive oil until the cheese melts.

Tailgating Vacation: Kentucky Bourbon Trail

If you’re attending a road football game at the University of Kentucky (Lexington) or Louisville you should definitely work a bourbon distillery tour into your plans for the weekend. It’s also possible that you could work this into Cincinnati, Western Kentucky, or Bowling Green games. The Kentucky Bourbon Trail includes Buffalo Trace, Four Roses, Woodford Reserve, and Wild Turkey in the general Lexington area. Tom Moore, Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, and Heaven Hill would be closer to Louisville. Hitting up a Friday tour is the perfect way to kick off a football weekend. Even if you’re not a big fan of drinking bourbon, the distillery tours are interesting because of the complexities and magnitude of the process.

I just visited the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. It’s about 30 minutes from Lexington and an hour from Louisville. This is the longest continuously operating distillery in the US. They were one of four distilleries that were allowed to continue producing bourbon during prohibition for medicinal purposes. The distillery has had several owners and has been previously known as the George T. Stagg Distillery. In 1999 it was renamed Buffalo Trace and they started producing bourbon under their own name. Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon is 90 proof (more than most) and is aged for 9 years. Theoretically it’s on the same basic level as Wild Turkey, Maker’s Mark, etc. Buffalo Trace has won a variety of awards like the Double Gold at the 2009 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. In the last couple of years I’ve been more of a Scotch drinker, but I drank Buffalo Trace for three straight days and would never turn it down. It seems to have a smoother taste than the bourbons I’ve had recently like Wild Turkey and Jim Beam. At the normal prices, it’s also an amazing value.

In addition to Buffalo Trace, the distillery creates, ages, and bottles an insane number of other bourbon brands. The list includes Van Winkle, Blanton’s, W.L. Weller, Elmer T. Lee, George T. Stagg, Rock Hill Farms, Eagle Rare, and more. These run the gamut of spending amounts. Buffalo Trace is in the $20 range, Blanton’s is in the $50’s, and Pappy Van Winkle 23 Year Old Family Reserve is upwards of $200. If you get the chance look for these at your local liquor store. And by all means, if you get the chance, visit Buffalo Trace or another bourbon distillery during your weekend tailgating vacation.

The Smell of Fall

During the winter I frequently enjoy a nice scotch to close out an evening. It’s an indoor drink that provides the proper warmth (physically and emotionally). As the weather improves I usually kick off the spring drinking season with Gin Weekend. Then eventually gracing the sweltering heat of summer with tequila. But as September comes and brings a nip to the air, it’s time again to meet bourbon’s sweet embrace. If you grew up going to football games in the South then you recognized the smell of bourbon before you even knew what liquor was. I remember being completely confused as to why people were putting the end of their spirit shakers in their souvenir cokes and mixing them. Even for the biggest beer drinker, bourbon become a necessity during tailgating season. It’s a lot easier to sneak a couple of miniatures into the game than trying to conceal a six pack of cold ones.

With all of these autumn induced feelings about bourbon swirling through my head, it’s with great pleasure that I’ll be attending the Buffalo Trace Distillery’s White Dog Days Celebration this weekend, Oct 15-17th, in Frankfort and Lexington, Kentucky. On Friday, Buffalo Trace is sponsoring the Franklin County Stakes race at Keeneland race track in Lexington. On Saturday, Buffalo Trace is opening their distillery in Franklin up for a day of music, tours, Bourbon Boot camp, and corn hole and barrel rolling contests.

As every avid drinker is advised to slow their brown liquor roll during summer, so does Buffalo Trace, who does not distill during the summer. White Dog Days is the kickoff to the new distillation season. White Dog itself is the name Buffalo Trace has given to the clear distillate that is made before it’s placed in barrels for aging to create bourbon. They have decided to bottle a small batch of White Dog, which can be purchased from their gift shop. One should note that White Dog is “not a sipping drink” since it’s essentially moonshine. So yes, I’m going to Kentucky this weekend to drink bourbon, moonshine, and bet on the ponies. If you are anywhere within driving distance you should take part in the festivities. If you can’t make it by, look up the closest retailer of Buffalo Trace Bourbon to you and give it a try tailgating this weekend.

Whisky Flavored Condoms

I’ve seen niche products before, but Scotch flavored condoms may have set a new benchmark. I mean, what are the odds that these will ever be needed.

Bud Light Speaker Box

As part of their Tailgate Approved commercials, apparently the Bud Light Speaker Box is for sale now. I spotted the display below at the Sherlock’s on Barrett Parkway. I guess the ideal use is to hook up your ipod to the speaker and use it for an away game tailgate. Of course, you still need to get the beer cold, so essentially it’s a birthday card quality speaker attached to an empty cardboard box for most of the day. But it is disposable.

Your Spicy Guide to Drinking

All summer EveryDayShouldBeSaturday has been delighting us with their Digital Viking: Guide to Spicy Living. The setup is two people discussing a notable drink, food, explosion video, car, and book, movie, etc. And though I’ve enjoyed all of it (and bought several recommended books) the true gem is Orson Swindle”s inspired writings on drink. It’s lead me to a new favorite liquor drink (Tequila and Tonic) and to try out Rosé in front of disapproving male in-laws. It is superb. I’ve included below what I believe to be the five best of these dipsographical writings in order from merely awesome to happysuperfantasticallymegasweet. If you’re not drunk by the time you get done reading this… well… then we don’t know each other as well as I thought we did.

#5

Fat Tire. Amber beers have the shortest half-life from the tap/awesome to suck/bottle. Abita Amber remains the premiere example of this, as it’s strictly meh from the bottle but guzzleworthy from the tap. When in Baton Rouge, I will drink draft Abita Amber from a gutter filled with decaying nutria, so long as it’s just been poured, and someone promises to feed me fried meat of some sort immediately afterward to kill the resulting bacterial infections and general -itis.

Fat Tire is here somewhere in Atlanta, and by Cthulhu it will be mine tonight. I’m going to drink three of them, play Team Fortress Two, and pass out like a gangsta in a wrinkled t-shirt at 9:30. Oh, beer snob? There are better Belgian beers? Really? I’m fascinated by your opinion, and would love to hear more about it why don’t you come closer and WRENCHES YOUR COCK IN A DOORJAMB AND SLAMS UNTIL SATISFIED. My child will be baptised with Fat Tire and a vial of Tim Tebow’s blood Dan Shanoff siphoned off him for me. It is delicious and oh my yes you know a lot about beer pet hug points stroke SLAP.

#4

Champagne. Remember that hip-hop is actually the whitest, stiffest, and least imaginative music in the world in one respect and one respect only: while early rock and roll came from white kids trying to act as black as they possibly could, rappers through the 90s seemed to rapidly accrue every fixin’ of the English upper classes as possible: Burberry, Bentleys, and ultimately the swilling of cognac and champagne as the role model for hip-hop fashion slowly degenerated from a Kangol’d Rakim to a melaninized version of Bertie Wooster. Who knew that the preferred watching in black households in the late eighties was Jeeves and Wooster, and that Fry and Laurie would help define a generation of top-shelf luxury brand whoring rappers? Tip of the hat, gents. You were more influential than you realized.

Digression concluded, and bringing the camera back over here to delicious, intoxicating Champagne. Like Tequila, Champagne is one of the few alcoholic beverages possessing genuine and impressive powers. A fizzy white wine with a mineral edge, Champagne can be consumed throughout the year, and occasionally throughout the day as US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan did, often drinking a bottle he kept on ice in his desk starting around noon or so, and progressing throughout the day. It doesn’t have the tannic afterburn effect red wine has, doesn’t get you as sloshed as hard liquor will, and skirts the often crippling bloat beer brings to the party. In short: the choice of sneaky and efficient drunks for years, champagne is the child you choose for the “bring your booze to work day” prize recipient, and it sits quietly in your office admiring your collection of business cards without trashing the place like vodka or whiskey will.

It does have its costs, mind you, but the Hagman diet can work for decades before you have to actually pull the other “Hagman” and get a new liver. Hell, even then Hagman didn’t seem that disappointed over his insane champagne consumption, as it helped him get ridiculously famous, and only cost him $50K a year for four bottles a day:

He was such a happy drunk that if the booze hadn’t rotted his first liver he would still be on the stuff today.

“If there hadn’t been any side-effects on my health, I would have been happy to go on,” he admits. “I never was drunk. It just gave me that little click. My wife never minded. We were making so much money at the time that $50,000 a year on champagne really didn’t matter.”

Winston Churchill, though a whiskey and soda man, kept champagne as his mistress, and was so fond of Pol Roger the vineyard made it in pint bottles for him. The cheap stuff, particularly your Oregon labels like Domaine St. Michele, are beyond passable, and even sneak into the good if you can get them cold enough. At somewhere around 13 bucks, they won’t destroy the budget either, and will take a good 30 years to rot the liver. That’s plenty of time to become JR Ewing or the Prime Minister of England in the meantime. Now pop the Santana DVX.

#3

Tequila. Silvery-tongued bandita with perfect tits heaving under the sole cover of a bandolier of ammunition, borne aloft by angel’s wings and a jet pack, soaring naked just out of reach…oh, tequila, you turn me into a lovestruck mad scientist. Best served just cold enough to take the ethyl edge off it, tequila probably is the liquor inspiring the greatest instant gag reflex for anyone reading this, and that is because at one point you disrespected her, and she shot you dead and left you die vomiting in the desert somewhere around 4 a.m. for the offence.

Shame on you: when balanced properly with the right mixers, attitude, and a enough food in the belly, tequila really will turn you into a more brilliant lunatic than you ever imagined yourself being. Normal alcohol: swimming naked. Tequila: swimming Lake Nantahala naked with the company of ten total strangers you talked into joining you. That’s what tequila has done for me, and it can do the same for you, provided you show the proper respect for the drink with the highest risk/reward ratio of any of the major alcohols in the canon. It worked for Ty Webb, after all, and he never made a single mistake in his life.

It’s not just for shots, and if you’re drinking the cheap, formaldehyde-laced shit, it’s most definitely not for shots. (Don’t bother with the salt and lime if you don’t have to if you’re shelling out for Patron or its compatriots: it goes down smooth enough, especially if chilled, and all that squirting and tossing can get confusing, especially after a shot or five.) You could go Tequila Sunrise, but the outlaw TNT is a pleasant surprise: Tequila and tonic mixed in the proportions of your choosing, garnished with lime, and consumed slooooooowly, lest the slow infusion of genius overwhelm your mainframe.

#2

Rose. Oh, pink wine. So sexy, so trashy, so not White Zinfindel, a mistake by Gallo vintner that caught on when someone drank it and noticed it tasted just like jolly ranchers after you threw them up and reingested a few times. (Notice, we capitalized White Zinfindel, but not like you capitalize “Washington,” or “The Renaissance,” but like you capitalize “Evil” and “Chlamydia.”)

Rose is hot weather wine, and it comes from a quick dip in the tank with the skins and then a tank fermentation without them, resulting in a light, slightly fruity and tart wine you can drink on the surface of the sun (or in Columbia, South Carolina in a windowless van with shag carpeting in July, which we know some of our readers are wont to do.) You also get to have this fun conversation with your friends when you drink it at a barbecue:

Friend: “Pink wine? Wanted something that went with barbecued cock, homosexual?”

You: “It’s GOOD DAMMIT.”

When this happens, just remember that you can drink a boatload of the stuff without a serious hangover, it matches just about anything summery on the menu this summer, and it’s usually tres cheap. And gay. Fine, it’s gay. IT’S GAY AND DELICIOUS. Like a Queen album or using Lush products with open enthusiasm, you can take it from my cold dead hands, which are bent at a slight angle from our wrists.

#1

Since Holly has the summer swillin’ beer taken, I’ll be a good American and recommend one of our red-blooded American beers to counter her outsourcing of drinking choice across the border WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA? (Pacifico is delicious and we could drink a six pack in an hour on a hot day if we stopped counting, which would all end in tears when you try to hop over the fence to use a neighbor’s trampoline, and then gash your leg open and bleed all over a stranger’s trampoline, who happens to be sitting on the deck the whole time watching you do this, and let’s just move on.)

You know an old friend beer-wise when the experience of power-vomiting eight of these and burnt dormroom chili doesn’t ruin the splendor of a beverage for you. Oh, Miller High Life, you fake-tittied 42 year old waitress beckoning from across the bar with a lit Virginia Slim in hand who won’t ask any questions, and won’t be blinded by the light as long as you call her Angel of the Morning, you trashy lovable whore of a beer, you.

To taste a Miller High Life is to taste your misspent youth in a single, bubbly, weakass-wheat soda shiver. It’s called the Champagne of Beers because it is very bubbly, will get you in a superb mood provided you drink multiple units of it, and like champagne sets in innocuously enough to make overconsumption a near dead certainty. It also only costs $3.69 for a six pack, which is in itself a valuation placing Miller High Life somewhere between the categories of “Alcoholic’s Miracle” and “Public Health Scandal in Convenient Cardboard Carrying Case.”

Beer Pong: Teach Your Children Well

No self-respecting father wants to raise a kid who sucks at beer pong. That’s why you’ve got to start them early. It’s a proven fact that all professional beer pong players started practicing before hitting the age of 15.

(HT: Uncoached)