This drink has a reputation as something to drink to get drunk quickly. Many people have stories of bad evenings or mornings after that involve this cocktail. My wife has one. But I had never tasted one. So after years of offering her one on her birthday, I decided to actually make one.
Specs vary but I think I used:
0.5 oz each:
Blanco tequila
Vodka
White run
Gin
Cointreau
Simple syrup
1 oz lemon juice
Splash cola
I see the Wikipedia article calls for a bit more syrup.
Those specs put it in the daisy/sidecar family in my book, despite being served more like a highball, but I didn’t see anything alarming. I did use decent ingredients. And sure enough, it was fine. My wife liked it too. The tequila came through. The gin and rum got lost. If I were to make this again*, I might sub some or all of the vodka for gin/rum or drop the tequila slightly. We had just one each, so no bad times ensued.
*Needing to rummage five bottles from the cabinet and not typically having cola on hand decreases the likelihood.
Anyone have strong feelings about this drink? Stories?
Heh. We were visiting my gf’s family once and she suggested we all go to a bar. When she mentioned the name of the bar, various family members hooted/hollered/applauded/laughed. So of course, we went.
Walking in, it was dark and cloudy. The clouds were cigarette smoke. I hadn’t been in a smoking bar in years. There were video game machines lining one wall and they (illegally) paid off. The people in the bar looked like stereotypes of dive-bar personalities.
The drink special was Long Island Iced Teas, which is what everyone was drinking, and they were dirt cheap. They were cheaper still if you bought them by the pitcher. We were a party of 8, so we got two pitchers and 8 glasses.
The really funny part was the trio (husband, wife, mother-in-law) playing video games. They each had their own pitcher and were drinking them with straws. They were trashed. The guy alternated between his wife and MIL, grabbing/pinching their asses. He’d guffaw, they’d squeal. We sat watching them as they sucked down their drinks.
Our party of 8 went through 4 pitchers. My MIL had driven us there in 2 trips so we didn’t have to deal with driving/parking. We called her to pick us up and all squeezed in so we could do a single trip. What an experience!!
I think the bar we used to go to used fresh orange juice, too. They look a bit like iced tea but more importantly, tasted like iced tea. This was 40+ years ago. I love good iced tea but those things are dangerous. For whatever reason, the girls (early 20s) loved them. I rarely drink spirits when I’m out. Beer is more predictable.
Having grown up on Long Island I subscribe to the Oak Beach Inn origin. It was probably the only place where the bartenders didn’t mind making them (maybe they really did or they had something pre-mixed).
But outside of the OBI I know bartenders really did not like making them with all those ingredients. I would only get them at a certain pub when my friend Eddie was bartending and I was with cousins from Ireland who usually never heard of them or had a “real” LIIT.
But yeah, like a well-made Frozen Daiquiri or Margarita you would barely taste and appreciatate the alcohol content and could get pretty hammered after a couple of them.
I put Long Islands in the same category as NOLA Hurricanes. Drink one, fine. I usually have a second. But I’ve never seen someone drink three and have a happy ending.
I’ve seen them in pint glasses sometimes; that much alcohol in a pint glass will eff you up.
Ever been to Fat Tuesday? They have a row of 10 or 12 slurpee machines behind the bar; almost all of them are made with 151 or grain; however, between the frozen & the fruit juice you don’t taste the alcohol. Have a couple & go to stand up from your bar stool & you…don’t
One of my most embarrassing memories involves the drink, but not in the way you’d think. I was in my very early 20’s and not terribly experienced with drinking in bars. The Big Boss of our company took a group of supervisors out for happy hour one Friday night. Even my teetotaler supervisor, who was not much older than me, went along, because she didn’t want to miss the chance to hobnob with upper management. She confided to me that she wasn’t sure what to order, since she didn’t drink alcohol or soft drinks. I sagely advised her to order a virgin Long Island Iced Tea, since I assumed that it was made with actual iced tea.
I was a lowly worker bee, so I wasn’t there to see how that turned out, and she didn’t say anything about it on Monday. I only realized how stupid it was much, much later. With any luck, all those older supervisors thought it was cute? I still think about her and hope she didn’t think I was trying to set her up to embarrass herself.
Mostly it is for people who do not like alcohol but want to get fucked-up fast. And it delivers.
When I was in college we had a local bar that had a Long Island Iced Tea night on the cheap (and some minor variations on it). It was very popular because you got wasted fast for little money.
As bartender in a previous life back in the last century, long islands were a sure fire way of identifying the noob drinkers. More often than not, young’uns looking to get trashed rather than looking to enjoy a cocktail. Not to that they are bad cocktails, per se. But that mattered to very few of the people who normally ordered them.
And yeah, a bit of a pain to make. But no big deal compared to anything requiring a blender. Be kind to your bartender. Yes, tip them well. But don’t ever fucking order a blended drink. Especially when it’s obviously super busy. We used to break the blenders on purpose.
Years ago, I took a friend to Vegas to celebrate his 21st birthday. We stayed at New York, New York. When the clock struck midnight and he was officially 21, we went down to the casino and passed a drink stand that had these plastic Statue of Liberty glasses, about 14-16 inches tall. I asked the person at the stand what type of drinks they put in them. She said “strawberry margaritas or Long Island Iced Teas.” My friend said “a margarita sounds good.” I smiled and ordered 2 Long Island Iced Teas.
I have pictures of us drinking these over the course of 3 or 4 hours. Viewing them in chronological order, the effects are easy to see. First pictures - standing upright and smiling. Then slouching. Then clearly shitfaced. It was probably the most drunk either of us have ever been. Thankfully, we made it back to the room eventually without any intervention from security, where we each proceeded to empty our stomachs into the toilet.
I’ve never had one, and remain somewhat curious. Closest I got was when out witih friends, and I needed to go to the restroom before our beverage (or food) orders were taken. As I stood up, I asked my husband to order me one.
Everyone’s chin dropped - I was VISIBLY pregnant at the time. I cracked up, and assured them I wanted the more traditional iced tea, no long island about it at all.
I’ve had a few, and for similar reasons to mentioned above - I’m not a big drinker, and I don’t care for most of the taste of strong booze, so it works. But my experience when it comes to friends or associates drinking it is closer to @Disinfectus - a lot of new drinkers (I was the designated driver for a few of my wife’s 21st B-Day friends) wanting something “safe” tasting, and quickly ending up obliterated when they were originally planning on hitting 3-4 bars.
I’ve heard many anecdotes though of said drinks being abused, much like screwdrivers and rums and cokes, in terms of predatory daters getting their inexperienced partners far more drunk than they expected, and could see how easily that could happen.
What’s the theory on how that much booze doesn’t taste strongly of alcohol? Are the different spirits somehow canceling each other out, or is it just the sugar and flavoring in the triple sec and cola?
