Words On Wednesday

Want to order an old favorite, but sound fancy doing it? Get a Cuba Libre! It's just a rum and cola with lime, but it sounds cultured. Plus, it's fun to say: Cuba Libre. As the Lima One Capital annual company party was approaching, I was discussing it in the office with the data engineering team. You know, before I got laid off? I really felt like if there were no hard feelings, they should've let us still attend the party to go out with a bang. Alas, I digress. At that point, I still had every intention of attending the celebration. One of the data engineers said she planned on getting a Cuba Libre. I was intrigued, a Cuba Libre? I hadn't heard of that. "Oh, it's just rum and Coke with lime." How droll. I love a rum and cola, and I frequently throw lime in it because lime is amazing. Turns out, I had been drinking Cuba Libre for years and didn't even know it. Beyond being simple and delicious, it's also cheap. When you don't have a job, you...

For the first time in Thirsty Thursday Eve history, I'm covering a non-alcoholic drink. Don't worry, there's still alcohol involved. It wouldn't be Thirsty Thursday otherwise. Name: Piña Colada and Strawberry Daiquiri drink mix Source: Margaritaville Price: $1 for 6 packets My wife loves flavored water drink mixes. I mean, she LOVES flavored water. And because she drinks so much of it, I've kinda picked up the habit at well. Admittedly, it's better than the sodas we were drinking, so I suppose it's an improvement. And I would say she has a problem, but they're so ridiculously organized, it's kinda just how things are. Regardless, she's always on the hunt for new flavors and brands. She's tried pretty much every variant of every brand regularly offered at Walmart, Target, and a Ingles. Oddly enough, Dollar General has a stellar selection of drink mixes, it's closer to my house, and it's often cheaper. Therefore, we've taken to maki...

Another year, another cruise , another bottle of liquor to bring home from the duty free shop on Royal Caribbean's Utopia of the Seas. Name: Pineapple Rum Source: Bacardi Style: Rum ABV: 35% Price: Two for $30 Volume: 1L Price per oz: $0.44 For this new tradition I'm creating, it's standard practice to pick up something from the ship liquor store. The lack of taxes is nice, even if technically I could get it cheaper from some places near home (namely Costco). Last year, I got a bottle of mango tequila, plus a bottle of white rum and a bottle of black rum by Bacardi. This year, we were in a bit of a time crunch to get back to our room and pack, so I just went with Bacardi again. They had the same 2 for $30 deal, and rum is never a bad thing to have. I didn't love the Bacardi black, and the standard "Superior" white you can get anywhere. Instead, I decided to grab one of the fruit flavored options. They had coconut, pineapple, lime, lemon, and raspberry. If I wa...

Everclear is legendary. It has a notoriously high alcohol content, many people are afraid to try it at all, and those who have tried it usually have a very negative story to go along with it. Does it really live up to the bad reputation that it has? Name: Everclear Source: Luxco Style: Grain Alcohol ABV: 95% Price: $5.95 Volume: 200ml (6.8oz) Price per oz: $0.88 My first time trying Everclear was at a Halloween party the year I turned 21. I was still new to legal alcohol consumption, or alcohol consumption at all, really. With the innate curiosity that I have for trying new things, I was willing to try anything. (That never changed.) With so much booze at this party, I was sampling new drinks left and right. When my cousin realized that my friend and I hadn’t tried Everclear, he pulled us to the side and poured a partial shot for each of us. He talked it up something fierce. “You’re going to feel like you’re about to throw up, but you won’t. It burns for a minute, but then it’s gone.” ...

To celebrate Thursday Thursday Eve falling on Christmas Day, I wanted to feature a drink that really felt like Christmas in a cup. After some digging, I found the Coquito . A lot of times, when people think of Christmas, they picture that Hallmark movie set with snow everywhere and people bundled up. Problem is, this is South Carolina. Most years, Christmas is sunny with a high of 65. It ain’t cold. It ain’t even really cool. I usually end up wearing shorts and a t-shirt and it’s comfortable. If we lived somewhere cold, spiced buttered rum would be perfect. Instead, I wanted something cold, ideally something I could share with my cousins while we fry the turkey out back. That normally looks like a bottle of some whiskey that we stick in the back of my truck and mix with whatever soda is available. Surely I could find something a little more celebratory. I skimmed through a few lists of Christmas cocktail ideas, but none of them really seemed to fit what I wanted. Either they had a lau...

Costco recently discontinued their “Original Spiced Rum” for a few months and brought it back as the simply named “Kirkland Signature Spiced Rum.” Is it the same thing in a different bottle? I had to find out. Name: Kirkland Signature Spiced Rum Source: Kirkland Signature Style: Spiced Rum ABV: 40% Price: $16.99 Volume: 1.75L Price per oz: $0.29 I used to love Costco’s spiced rum . I always kept a bottle on hand. It was super cheap and really good, with a high enough alcohol content to really pack a punch when you wanted to make a strong drink. And one of the really nice things was its availability. This isn’t one of those limited releases that you have to keep an eye out for before it gets bought up, or wait until something more expensive catches a rare sale. Every time I walked into the Costco liquor store, they had a full pallet of it, and the price was always the same. This is the type of consistency and dependability that I live for. At least, it was. I went for my regular Costco ...

While it’s still cold, I wanted to take the opportunity to rave about spiced buttered rum for a moment and how it is the ideal way to stay warm. For the longest time, I heard about spiced buttered rum at Christmas parties and other such gatherings. Growing up, my family were teetotalers, so there wasn’t any alcohol anywhere. When we were old enough to buy our own alcohol, my cousins and I would just bring our own alcohol to Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc, and sneak it into red solo cups outside. Having a pitcher of alcohol actually featured in the party was unspeakable. Eventually, I just decided to make some for myself. It was cold and I wanted to try it, so I looked up a recipe  and made some of the butter mix. Fortunately, the process is that you make a batch of the butter and just cut off a pat, add rum, and top it with hot water to melt the butter down. This would be a huge pain if you made the mix per drink, but you can make enough per batch to get probably 20 or more servings....

As my first (and probably only) Thirsty Thursday Eve covering monthly discounted liquors from North Carolina, I thought it all too appropriate to pick the first style of alcohol that I ever reviewed here : spiced rum. Specifically, Admiral Nelson’s 70 proof spiced rum. Name:      Spiced Rum Source:      Admiral Nelson ABV:      35% Price:      $7.95 ($9.95) Volume:      750ml Price per oz:      $0.31 ($0.39) For a long time now, my approach to bottom shelf liquor has been, “just how bad can it be?” This cheap spiced rum surprised me, however. I’d genuinely say it’s good. It’s very smooth, even accounting for the small proof reduction. I try to base my judgement on smoothness from a standard 80 proof perspective, and adjust my expectations accordingly. This spiced rum is 70 proof, but it drinks more like a 40-ish proof liquor. It’s sweet and a little spicy. The flavor profile isn’t exactly dee...

As I mentioned last month, North Carolina has some super weird liquor laws and pricing policies. However, the monthly scheduling means that I have incentive to try something new each month. Specifically, true to the form of the economic alcoholic, I can pick up one of the cheapest sale items and see how bad it is. So finding the monthly sale items in North Carolina liquor stores is pretty easy. You go to this site , select the current month in the “Month” drop down list, and select Microsoft Excel in the “File Type” drop down list. Then hit “Create Report.” You could also select PDF, but spreadsheets are the superior file type. Fight me. This is where it gets a little funky. For whatever reason, the spreadsheet is in this really weird format, where the headers are vertically merged and there are two empty columns between each populated column. I have no idea why the formatting is so wonky, Google Sheets won’t sort the price columns in the original state. You have to do a little data ma...