Sometimes in the name of research you make terrible mistakes.

Terrible, terrible mistakes.

When Equire Magazine’s cocktail guru David Wondrich posted about his Groundskeeper beer cocktail last year, I threw it onto the idea pile and promptly forgot about it until I was working on drinks for tailgating this weekend. We’re fan of beer cocktails around these parts and we’re fans of scotch, why not try the two together? Chocolate and peanut better? Peaches and cream? Starsky and Hutch? Incongruous thing with incongruous thing? This matches all had to start somewhere, right?

I can hear what you’re saying to me through your monitor right now.

“Sarah, what are you doing with that scotch? No really. This isn’t joking around. What. Are. You. Doing. With. That. Scotch.”

“Esquire? You’re better than that.”

“No, stop it! Seriously! What are you about to do to that scotch?!?!”

“Aiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”

Now, I knew I always already playing fast and lose with what was barely a recipe over a boilermaker. Wondrich’s drink called for a pilsner like a Budweiser (Bud’s actually a light American lager, but who am I to quibble), and a very smokey scotch, like a Ardbeg or a Laphroaig.

Since we never keep Bud in the house, I substituted the lightest lager we had in the fridge, the Yuengling I had brought back from my last trip to Pennsylvania. As far as a very peaty, smoky scotch, when I went looking in our liquor collection I couldn’t find the bottle of Talisker I thought was still back there, so I went with the richer-but-less-smoky Balvenie Doublewood.

I should have known better.

The Balvenie was completely lost in the Yuengling, making it just taste like a skunked Yuengling. Bry’s reaction was pretty much pure disgust, mostly because I had wasted some decent scotch and one of our valuable Yuenglings. I couldn’t get through more than two or three sips of the vile drink, so Bry nursed it for the rest of the evening before he finally gave up with a little more than a third of the glass still full. It was so awful, it went down the sink with barely a sigh.

So maybe if I try this again I will use a true uber-peaty scotch and a lighter lager, but I’m still not using a Budweiser. This weekend in Arizona looks like it’s going to be nothing but IC Light and mercilessly making fun of the Cardinals for having a fondue stand in their stadium.

CD Barker still leads the Football Foodie NFL Pick’Em Pool, while Carolina Blue has finally given up the lead in the CFB pool (MSU upsetting UM pretty much messed up everyone’s picks), leaving Studley alone in first place.

What are you guys making and watching this weekend?

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2 Responses to The Groundskeeper: Football Foodie Beta Testing Failures in Cocktails

  1. Bryan says:

    “Bry’s reaction was pretty much pure disgust”

    NODDING

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