My first drink in the challenge!  I figured it would be easiest to work my way through the alphabet as much as possible.  Unfortunately I will have to skip some drinks, such as Alaska, for now.  I can’t find any place that has smoked salmon vodka in stock.

I went to my favorite dive bar (APL) with the recipe in hand.  I’m on a first name basis with most of the bartenders there, so I had no problem giving Cindy the recipe from Buzzfeed.

Recipe: Orange juice and 1/2 oz each of sloe gin, Southern Comfort, amaretto, and vodka, pour over ice

Cindy had heard of the Alabama Slammer before, but her version had Sprite and was a shot that was “slammed” on the counter before being dropped into the mixers.  Sounds more exciting, but I wanted to stay true to the article.

I typically only drink vodka and flavored vodkas, so I was pleasantly surprised by the drink.  I could barely taste the gin, and it was sweet, but not too sweet.  It wasn’t as fruity as I would have expected giving the ingredients.

All drinks will be rated on a scale of 1-10 in the following categories; taste, difficulty, lushiness.  For Taste, 1 is awful, 10 is delicious.  For Difficulty, 1 is super hard, 10 is a breeze.  Lushiness is how I will describe how drunk you will get from the drink.  Us lushes tend to enjoy the buzz, and don’t want to drink 8 drinks before feeling it.  So the higher the score, the better the buzz.

Taste:           8     I really enjoyed this one, and ordered a second.  I could see myself ordering it in the future.  My amazing sister was with me and also liked the drink and ordered one of her own.

Difficulty:     8    My bartender had no trouble making this with ingredients on hand

Lushiness:   4     After two drinks in 20 minutes I felt a light buzz.  One would think with 2oz of liquor in each I would have more than a light buzz, but no such luck for this lush.

Overall Score : 6.67

All in all, a good first experience of the challenge!  1 down, 49 to go!