I like to drink, but I hate the solvent taste of alcohol. Generally speaking, I’ve found that sour mixers tend to kill the taste the best (particularly grapefruit juice and Rose’s lime juice; I can mix gin to Rose’s in a 2:1 ratio and not taste alcohol), but it’s not necessarily only sour mixers. Bawls, a high caffeine guarana drink that kinda tastes like cream soda, completely kills the taste of alcohol. Me and a friend tried it with some gin, and found that not only did it knock out the alco-nasty, it helped to express some of the more subtle aromatics of the gin. Then I got ahold of his grenadine and we wound up inventing a drink called Sunrise In My Pants. However, I digress.
Also of importance is the kind of alcohol being mixed. Gin is subdued very easily, but vodka often leaves a kind of rubbing alcohol taste behind. Whiskey is the worst. Even in a weak Jack & coke, the solvent shines right through. SoCo with coke is okay, taste-wise.
Alcopops almost never taste of alcohol, which is good. My favorite is St. Ides: big, cheap, and higher ABV than beer.
As a side question: Who actually likes the burning taste of alcohol?
Try a Long Island Tea. It boggles the mind that you could mix that many types of alcohol and come up with something that really doesn’t taste like alcohol at all, but it’s true.
Punch. Good ol’ fruit punch is famous for hiding the taste of alcohol. It is also accordingly dangerous. Novice drinkers tend to come unstuck on things like this, which is why the taste of alcohol ain’t such a bad thing. Those premixed “Bacardi Breezer” type bottled cocktails which are currently fashionable also tend to be like this.
As to your side question, I tend to like the taste of alcohol in certain situations. An example would be drinking a scotch and ice. I like the way the ice melts over the time it takes to drink the whisky, so every taste is different. In the beginning, the drink says “hey, I’m a powerful hard spirit. Feel the burn”, and at the end, it shows you the rich, smooth flavours as the water reacts with it.
The common ingredient in all mixers is sugar.Something to make your frou frou drinks taste even better to the crowd.Use more sugar.An old bartender’s trick.
Just like the old time bad tasting medicine,take it straight with a spoonful or so.
Not very exciting,but will kill the alcohol/bitter taste,just like sugar cuts the acidic/bitter taste of coffee.
I hate the taste of cheap alcohol, especially cheap vodka, which really does smell like rubbing alcohol. Pink lemonade is a great mixer for cheap vodka, it really cuts the taste (more so than regular yellow lemonade, b/c of the extra sweetness). You can mix if half and half w/ vodka, and it will still cut the taste quite a bit even at that high concentration of alcohol. I’ve never tried it with gin, but it may work for that, also.
I do, however, like the taste of quality alcohol on occasion. My father had a bottle of tequila (I forget the brand, but I know if was about $50 for the bottle). Smoothest to-kill-ya I ever had, and it didnt’ burn at all. I also like a good scotch now and then, on the rocks. Sapphire Gin is good in martinis, high quality but not ridiculously expensive, IMHO.
I have an intense dislike for alcopops of most kinds, they’re far too sweet for me to drink more than one of them, and they can also hurt my stomach sometimes. I’d rather just mix some alcohol with soda if I want something carbonated.
In college it was discovered, through some experimentation, that Irish creme, Kaluhah and 99 Bananas makes a pretty smooth drink. Of course, it’s not much stronger than a liquer, so that’s not too surprising. If you want something with more alcohol in it, I second the Long Island iced tea and the “redneck punch” of vodka/Everclear and fruit punch. Be careful with both; they’ll knock you on your ass before you know it.
Try making a kamikaze with Hangar One mandarin vodka, Cointreau, and fresh-squeezed lime juice (or the equivalent, if you prefer a mix of fresh-squeezed citrus rather than straight lime). You’ll still be able to taste the alcohol, but it’s remarkably smooth. I suspect that if you exchange the Cointreau for Grand Marnier or another form of decent orange liqueur, it might smooth out some more.
Another possibility is to make a cosmo with Grey Goose or Hangar One plain vodka and Cointreau, then add about half a shot of cranberry liqueur and a few drops of Lucien Jacob blackberry liqueur. It’ll come out tasting like Heaven’s version of Kool-Aid, and you won’t be able to taste the alcohol. (FYI, Lucien Jacob is a French brand of berry liqueurs–think of Chambord, only much much better.)
And as already noted, if the alcohol has a solvent taste, it’s bad alcohol.
(Aside: The detritus of one party back in my college days included a bottle of cheap Irish whiskey that somebody had brought–I don’t recall the brand, but when the label says that it’s specifically for making Irish coffee, it’s pretty scary. Not wishing to let it go to waste, we mixed it with Berry Blue flavor Kool-Aid; the mixture ended up a pale green color, smelling vaguely of celery, and with no flavor whatsoever–no alcohol, no berry, no whiskey, no nothin’. Damndest thing I ever seen.)
Mix sloe gin, lemon juice and sugar syrup in a shaker with ice into a chilled collins glass. Fill with cold club soda and garnish with lemon slice. Stir gently.
3.lick hand between thumb and forefinger, pile on powdered sugar
place a shot of vodka in the other hand, then very quickly…
eat sugar
do shot
7.suck on lemon
After a microsecond of shivery straight alcoholic blech during the “do shot” stage, Lemon Drops will reward you with the aftertaste of… well… a Lemon Drop. That old-timey candy. Best done in groups simultaneously, and after a few vodka and red pops.
Takes me back to high school. Specifically, takes me back to long summer nights on my best friend’s back porch, nursing a Big-Gulp sized pink lemonade and vodka.
Sometimes I wonder where I got my champion alcohol tolerance…
As for vodka, the -best- Vodka I’ve ever had is Tito’s. You wouldn’t think a vodka that bears a paper-bag-brown label that looks like it was made with a laser printer – AND a gold plastic screw-on cap – would be good.
May I reccomend 42 Below as the best vodka in the world. It’s a little pricey, but it slides down your throat like water. Mix it with a little lime juice, a splash of bitters, and presto! A nice cool summer drink. Or Absolut Kurant and cranberry juice - the cranberry hides the vodka taste without overpowering the kurant flavour
Or you could do what I wound up doing towards the end of any party we held, when all the mixers had been drunk; mixing vodka with beer. (an ale-y type one tho, to mask the vodka). It was a step up from simply drinking the vodka straight from the bottle, but is not terribly classy, and you’d have a hard time ordering it at a bar perhaps.
Ketel One vodka doesn’t have nearly as much alcohol taste as other vodkas. You should try that. Also, Absolut Citron and lemonade looks tastes and smells just like lemonade.
