This was a very sweet gift from Ms. Hipster. And conceptually a decent idea. Though in practice, sending a singular cocktail per month is a bit of a wild card. And after my three-month order turned into a four month order after Cocktail Courier sent me literally the exact same cocktail the first two months — the only difference being the name — they were kind enough to tack on the extra month gratis. And, truth be told, I’m not certain how preferences are entered into the system for gifting, but Ms. Hipster had to cancel the subscription after the third month, as she could see the upcoming cocktail had the word “peach” in it. Which in no world ever would have been something I would have imbibed. That one would have gone straight down the drain. And fast.
So the first month I got what I have to assume is a “holiday” cocktail: the Nutcracker Mule. You can see an image of it below. It consisted of a very small bottle of Grey Goose vodka, some spiced pecan syrup, lemons, ginger beer and a small bag of candied pecans. I feel like she ordered the “classic” kit, which makes probably six cocktails. For around $62. So let’s call it $10 a drink. Give or take. Not bad for a bar. Not so great for a made-at-home cocktail. I’m also not the world’s biggest vodka person. I don’t hate it the way I hate gin, but I’m generally a brown alcohol guy. The results were… fine. Tasty and relatively refreshing. But a pretty simple recipe. And one that I think is supposed to feature that pecan stuff, but mostly tastes like lemon and ginger beer. So imagine my surprise when I opened the next box and out came a Winter SKYY Mule. Which is literally the same exact drink, swapping the Goose for SKYY vodka and the candied pecan topper for dehydrated lemon wheels. Turns out this was a mistake, I guess? But, again, I imagine Ms. Hipster said my preferences ran more toward whiskies, bourbons, scotches and the like. So it was all kind of confusing. Not bad, just not my thing per se. Weirdly, my second kit was a spiced rum and lime based drink, with another bottle of their sweet syrup and ended up being not that different from the other two mule drinks I’d already gotten.
My third and final kit was finally a brown-liquored concoction. They call it a Spiced Old Fashioned. My first job was to steep some chai tea. The leaves came loose in a plastic bag and, not surprisingly, I made a mess of it. I have never steeped tea. And have especially not done so to anything not in a tea bag. The kit came with a large ice cube tray where I was to make chai tea ice cubes. Pretty cool, truth be told. Though, again, it was quite an endeavor getting that shit together. There was yet another bottle of their sweet café de olla syrup and a dropper bottle of chocolate bitters that I probably totally overdid. Ultimately it kind of tasted like a sweet, chocolatey, kinda-sorta Old Fashioned. If nothing else, it was super-flavorful with some kind of bizarro spiced notes that one wouldn’t normally find in a boozy drink. Since the booze in it is Wild Turkey 101, there is a bit of a kick as well. Interesting. And certainly more up my alley than the previous recipes, which seemed like summer drinks that they tried to make into winter drinks. I’m not sure I’ll go back to this well very often — especially after I use up the three remaining wacky ice cubes — but it was certainly an worthwhile one-off.
So, where does that leave us? Well, I think if I’d managed my drink making in a different way, it would have been more fun. Ms. Hipster is not a big drinker. And, frankly, neither am I. Despite an Instagram filled with beer and booze. So, as a solo effort, these little booze experiments feel more like chemistry than they do celebration. Point being, I think getting another couple over and prodding Ms. Hipster to open her mind to the spirits while throwing together a new kit would be a fun little time-killer for like twenty minutes or so. I just messed it up the communal aspect of drink-making that I should have considered. It’s more involved than pouring a neat dash of bourbon into a glass. And that is supposed to be the point of it.