We're gonna become a nation of binge drinkers who never sleep! Yippee! (Course, I'm high on red bull right now)
Given that red bull and vodka is a popular drink, it only stands to reason that bud would try some pale imitation.
I have a tendency to fall asleep when I drink so after the initial giddyness and buzz I inevitably feel like taking a nap. So for me at least, having similar type drinks (like the previously mentioned red bull and vodka) gives me the same alcoholic giddyness without the shame of having to excuse myself and lay down half an hour later.
Ok, "giddy" helps. To me, it's alcohol=relaxed, and caffeine=tense, so alcohol+caffeine just wasn't making any sense.
Ever had a rum and coke? Bailey's in your coffee? It's nothing new.
Yeah, but I thought those combinations were primarily about flavor.
You'd be surprised, but it actually tastes horrible. I had some this weekend. Never again!
old person's theory. people actually drink beer for the hops, not just the flavor but mainly the relaxing, maybe i need a nap effect. that would make it different from the rum and, bailey's and, (kahlua and),sort of thing. i think.
Nothing about this sounds good. Really. Even the name makes me feel a bit ill.
Definitely on my Do-Not-Try list. Even the packaging is surprisinngly ugly. Then again, IMHO, the only halfway drinkable A-B product is Michelob Dark, and I'm not even sure they still make it.
As for the alcohol + caffelne combo, my choice would be Italian black coffee (the kind made in the little vacuum pot) with anisette. Preferably after a gigantic holiday meal.
The following is not recommended for taste, but purely for drug effect. Several years back I was working at a Kinko's (as all liberal arts majors are required by law to do), and after some number of hours the coffeepot had boiled the coffee down to more or less essence of coffee. Ghetto espresso, if you will. A giant cup of that, heavily doctored w/ cream and sugar to make it swallowable, followed by a pitcher of black-and-tan at the bar down the street, and WHAMMO!
I just about saw God. So yes, the heavy caffeine / heavy alcohol combo is a righteously enjoyable buzz. I suspect B-to-the-E (perhaps the stupidest product name in your grocery store besides Birds Eye Frozen Peas) hasn't enough caffeine to achieve it, however. And I never doubted it would taste like (unsparkly) shit.
Particularly disturbing is their description of B-to-the-E (it's hard not to call it B-to-tha-motherfuckin'-E) as having "aromas of blackberry, raspberry, and cherry." What? The whole flavored malt beverage fad just leaves me flummoxed. Who the hell drinks those things? My "favorite" was Jack Daniels Hard Cola, which contained neither Jack Daniels nor cola.
I'm frightened by these kids today, with the flavored beer and the big pants. Whatever happened to just washing down Percosets with bourbon anyhow? No respect for the classics any more.
word to that, apostropher. and if people want to get wasted but have the energy to go clubbing, there's this thing called X they might want to look into? of course the general principle of mixing uppers and downers is sound, thus classic mixes such as the speedball (coke and H), or meth and demerol. in my college days we used to refer to this process as 'titration'. like you're going too far in one direction, so you inch back towards balance with the application of some counteractive agent.
A big factor in the flavored malt beverage movement, from the industry side, is that they can be sold at places that only have a beer & wine off-license, like the corner store, instead of being sold only at liquor stores.
So Bacardi and Jack Daniels and Smirnoff and whoever else can get their brand name out there in a lot more places. Plus most of it tastes like koolaid, so you get the little ones onto it early.
When I was last resident in the UK, so-called "Alco-Pops" (sickly sweet pre-mixed drinks in dayglo colors and oddly shaped bottles) were all the rage among the young clubbing set. One smart young thing explained to me that she liked them because, since they were in a bottle, she could worry less about the bartender or someone else slipping rohypnol into her beverage than if she were drinking, say a vodka tonic. So there's also that, I guess.
Funny, we also used to call the balancing act Belle describes titration. Also variations on the word "tune", e.g. fine tuning, getting a tune-up, etc. Also variations on diplomatic language, e.g. fostering diplomacy, achieving a balance of power, maintaining detente, etc. Also variations on feng shui lingo. Yeah, we liked euphemisms.
Speaking of euphemisms, I knew a group of acquaintances who always used to say "I have to go talk to the coach" whenever they were going out back to smoke marijuana. I always liked that one.
I'm disappointed that no one has mentioned Buzz Beer and its nemesis Capbeerchino.
Hey, I like Lindemans Framboise and Sam Adams Cherry whatever. I think the secret is to start with a beer that doesn't taste like ass. (Or the secret is that I'm an irredeemable... supply appropriate insult here.)
Lambics (such as Lindemans Framboise) are in a whole different category from flavored malt crap.
Irish coffee (and low rent alternatives like, say, tipping a shot of the whisky of your choice into a cup of coffee) seems sadly underrepresented in this thread.
And I firmly believe that if you can't take what real booze tastes like, you probably shouldn't be allowed to drink. Go suck on a lollipop and leave the grownups alone.
LarryB's black coffee + anisette combination would be pretty awesome, I bet.
I don't know from anisette, but if Sambuca is a close-enough equivalent, it's very nice in coffee (strictly, espresso, but black coffee too.)
I think anisette is generally a little sweeter than Sambuca (though I might be importing drouth to Sambuca from ouzo), but yeah, close enough.
I don't think anything could be sweeter than Sambuca. If you don't wash the glasses that night, the dregs of Sambuca crystalize into liquorice-flavored rock-candy.
I have a friend who's mom makes her own anisette from grain alcohol (smuggled in from Connecticut) sugar and her own extract. Whoa, Nellie!
I like it better than Sambuca, but in a pinch, Sambuca wil do.