This drink shouldn’t work. It has no business tasting as good as it does. The sparkly High Life makes the grenadine pop, while cutting through the sweetness all at the same time. Bry kept stealing sips from my glass, asking over and over, “How can it taste this good?”

Even though lemon is the natural accompaniment to blueberries, lime works just as well in this drink. Also, I really wanted to get a stronger blueberry taste, so I increased the amount of blueberries while doubling the total amount of simple syrup being made so we’d have enough for the entire divisional weekend games.

The sweet blueberry and lime are a great match for the tequila. Garnishing the glass with a lime gives your guests a little control to increase the tartness of their drink if they so desire.

Beer margaritas are a fairly commonplace tailgate drink because they’re easy, tasty, scalable and contain a serious amount of alcohol. Generally made with cheap beer, a can of sickly sweet frozen limeade and tequila, traditional beer margaritas tend to taste like they belong in a Slurpee machine and not your cup.

The Suffering Bastard is a classic old British Empire recipes with many variations. You can use ginger beer for ginger ale (like you would for a traditional Dark and Stormy), Rose’s lime juice for fresh lime, and can be served with or without bitters. Some people prefer to make the cocktail with bourbon, although the earliest recipes for the Suffering Bastard called for brandy. Both ways are excellent. Always made with gin.

These went over very well at the end of the Pats-Jets game yesterday with our guests, but that could have been because we were already through more craft beer than you could shake Portland hipster at.  Well, except for me. I was having IC Light, which prompted the following:

While most people think of beer when they think of football and tailgating, I love bourbon-based drinks and football.

It wasn’t always this way. I spent my 21st birthday at Lafayette for the Leigh-Lafayette Rivalry weekend, and when I arrived at my friend’s dorm he handed me a handle of Jim Beam with the direction, “This is your weekend.” Obviously “your weekend” meant drinking so much I passed out on top of a Suburban before the game, getting a firm handshake from a high school crush/boy-I-occasionally-fooled-around-and-I-always-wanted-it-to-be-more-but-it wasn’t-who-happened-to-attend-Lafayette when I happened to pass by him at some party, and sleeping in the spare bed of a guy with the appropriately occupational name, Stoner.

It was years before I could even stand the smell of bourbon again, but once we became friends again, I realized why it made for such a good football drink. Sweet and warm, it’s an autumn afternoon in a bottle. Mint juleps, long the standard for hot summer days in the South, really are not made for tailgating, what with all the shaved ice and fancy silver cups and such. But a “jelly” — we’re avoiding the brand name here — shot was made to take to parties and tailgates.

Beer pops are one of those things that have been around forever, but every once in awhile everyone gets all excited for them all again after they show up in hip restaurants like Diablo Royale Este in New York City.

They’re super easy to make (as long as you have the freezer space), and are a fun novelty to bring to a September tailgate while the weather is still warm. (Or if you live in SEC or AFC/NFC South country, still 100º-Timothy-Olyphant-hot outside.)

On a lark, Josh (aka Punte) from With Leather held a pool for the 18 countries who only had one athlete participating in the 2010 Winter Olympics for which country would have the highest overall finish.

My draw was Dow Travers (official Olympic page, Twitter), from the Cayman Islands who participated in the Men’s Giant Slalom.  Skier from the Caymans?  Improbable you say?  Maybe, but so is the fact that the Cayman Islands are home to the original frozen mudslide.  No really!  The Wreck Bar on Rum Point — odd since there isn’t any rum in a mudslide — is where the drink first appeared

Why?  Because a good drink starts with a good foundation.  Not enough ice in the beer cooler? Warm beer.  Not enough ice in the ice bucket?  Warm cocktails and even worse if you’re the designated driver, warm soda.  Nothing is sadder than the poor designated driver at the end of the evening, just staring at a half-empty, flat 2-liter of Coke, (most of which had been used as a rum mixer), on the table next to a sorry bowl with just a little bit of water at the bottom. Even scarier is the idea that you might have to make a drink using the slimy, greasy ice — what little of it is left — from the bottom if the beer cooler and hope it doesn’t taste like disintegrated Bud Lite labels.

Supposedly the rule of thumb is two pounds of ice per person.  LIES!  Three to four pounds a person should be mandatory for all gatherings.  If you were having a Super Bowl party with all these fine sports writers who contributed to this predictions post over at the Gally Blog, you would need at least 60-80 pounds of ice for it to be a successful event.

The one downside to cheese is sometimes your stomach does not feel so hot later on.  Or maybe you did drink too much Icehouse.  Or maybe you’re just getting old.   But you do not want to stop drinking, or you just want a nightcap, or maybe you’re just out of Tums.

This is where classic cocktails known as digestives are small miracles in a glass.  They will work through the cheese and they do offset the beer bloat. I don’t know how the magic of digestives work (someone from a cow college – the major, not the coeds – like Iowa might)  A traditional Black Russian is an amazing drink that can cure whatever is bothering your stomach.

Over the summer, we went to the LA Beer Float Showdown at the Blue Palms down the hill from us.  (Rumor has it that the Blue Palms turns into a Steelers bar on Sundays, but since we already spend about $2300 on the NFL Sunday Ticket, I tend to prefer staying at home to watch the games.)

Since it was 92 degrees in Hollywood last weekend, I figured a beer float showdown of our own was in order.  One of my favorite floats from showdown was the St. Bernardus Abt 12 with a toffee ice cream.  I wondered how a chocolate toffee would taste with dark beers, so I set out to make my own mix of ice cream for one of the selections the night before.  (Since apparently chocolate toffee ice cream only exists in my imagination.)

Equal parts vodka, Cointreau, and lemon juice.  Serve over crushed ice.  Pray for the end of 100 degree days, if only because hockey is already in the preseason.

For the same reasons Mint Juleps are the perfect Derby refreshment, they make a great football beverage. A drink you sip slowly, letting the ice slowly melt and stretch your cocktail even further.  (It also provides a nice lasting buzz that will continue past the Sunday Night Game with Olbermann and Patrick and right into Entourage.)  Everyone has a mint julep recipe they prefer, but I like this one since it cuts down on the little leaves that might get stuck in your teeth.

This evening on “Masterpiece Cocktail,” we’ll be discussing a drink of fine stature that should be enjoyed in only the most civilized of occasions and company. And while its name is somewhat deceiving, it’s a rather rich and complex drink with many layers that is best sipped by an expert tongue.

Garnish with more blueberries, to give yourself the appearance of getting in a full serving of fruit.