Making New Friends With Tequila

I'm not sure how most people try and make new friends, but one of my favorite methods involves going out for a drink or two.... or pitcher. Last night in a bid to be less antisocial I went out for some delicious angry orchard cider. Then when I realized that i was clearly enjoying drinking, I popped by a friends place for some tequila drinking. Oh yes, tequila Tuesdays. We started normal, knocking back some patron silver. The shiny fancy stuff I normally don't buy myself since its out of my tequila price range. Clearly, its simply too smooth and delicious for my palate.
Next, we found a bottle of this quite interesting Patron xo cafe in the freezer. Essentially its Kahlua but made with tequila. It imparts a rich coffee or chocolate flavor followed by a nice tequila burn. For flavor i'd give it a 4/5, i'm sure it would be good mixed, but for cost, i'm just going to assume its not in my price range.
Then I found a nice comfy patch of floor to work off my buzz on. Very nice. Onward and upward. Oh, and have a sweet new year!

Working Weekends

 While everyone else seemed to have a rather inebriated weekend, I kept things relaxed and easy. On Friday a midst a tornado warning I drove over to the liqueur store to try something new. I only had a bottle of the homemade wine in the car (have i remembered to blog about that at all?) and decided I could use something different. I picked up a 6 pack of the Southampton Pumpkin Ale and a 4 pack of Kahlua mudslides hoping for a good time. At first I thought the Southampton might be a local beer. Turns out it is... to New York. Happily it wasn't overpoweringly pumpkiny and it had a nice finish. I'd consider this again, although it was on the spendier side ringing up at about 11 dollars for the 6 pack. 4/5 for being a not disappointing pumpkin ale at 5.5 apv, and 3/5 for value.

Next up are the Kahluas. Ever feel to damn lazy to mix a drink? Then try these out. They are super sweet, but still tasty. They are definitely on the girly side and a little spendy at over 6 dollars for the four pack, but hey, a girl deserves something nice now and again. Next time i'm getting the mudslide variety :). Please note, the bottles are extremely breakable, i had a few of these in with the 6 pack of beer. The bottle sweat caused the bottle to fall out and all the bottles to hit the ground, the only one that broke was the single full white russian in the bunch. So sad for me :/.
3/5 for taste, and 2.5/5 for value. Party on.

Adventures in Colorado (Take me back!)

 What better adventures are there to have than those that combine all the things i love together? Awesome people, awesome views, awesome body breaking treks and BOOZE! My labor day weekend consisted of driving down to Colorado, 18-20 hours in a car, quick camp, hiking like a maniac up a 14,000 foot peak! (WHOOT! we are awesome.) Then packing up and driving home. If you get the chance, you should do it too. It comes highly recommended.

 On the way down our caravan of cars got a little bit separated and we had to wait on a few people. The best way we could think of to fill this time was to head over to the wine tasting room right next to where we had stopped for a bite in the sleepy little Colorado town of Georgetown, Colorado. Canyon Wind (www.canyonwindcellars.com/ )offers 4 free tastings of their wines in their tasting room, which we happily took advantage of. With 3 of us, we tried just about everything on the menu. While mid-priced (meaning above my price range) I still managed to be impressed enough to walk out with a wine bottle. Yeah, I might be a sucker, and I usually do buy something at wine tastings. It is still pretty good, though! After the tasting I came away with a few findings. Their blended table wines, meh, only so so. However, some of their specialty varieties were damn good. They had two in particular that really impressed me. Unfortunately, they were both over 20 dollars. The 32 dollar Zephyrus was spicy, rich, and hardly sweet at all. I was in love. The Petit  Vedot was also quite fruity without being sweet. Really rich in flavor and just overall super yummy. I picked up a bottle of my third favorite, the cabernet franc. I'd never heard of this variety before, but apparently it is normally just blended for table reds. This is a rich, somewhat fruity red. Not quite as complex as the other two reds, it still 100% better than most of the 3 dollar reds i indulge in frequently.
It was quite refreshing to try wines that are left in their less sweet, or even dry states. Oh, Colorado. Don't let me leave you! I give the Cabernet Franc a 4/5 for yummy, and a 2/5 for value. I paid 20 for my bottle. Boo.

 Later on, when we had finally made it to the campsite, up the mountain and back down, it was time for some VICTORY BEER! One of the alumni from a club i'm in brought some delicious local beers that he was willing to share. I hypothesize that some of the reason he shared is because us less acclimated folks are funny to watch get drunk in the high altitude off one beer. Or he's just nice. Thanks either way, i think your taste in beer is amazing. The first one i tried was Old Chub Scotch Ale. This dark malty beer is award winning. At 8% it knocked me to my behind at 11,000 feet. I very much enjoyed its smooth flavors and rich overall taste. 5/5 for taste. I have no idea how much it costs, but since one was good enough to put me in a great mood all afternoon, i give it 5/5 for value.

 A little while later everyone else was drinking some hot chocolate. I decide beer was more my speed and picked up another out of the cooler. This extra special bitter from Ska brewing company, another local to the area, was also really good. In Indiana when they say bitter the beer tastes basically green from all the hops. This on the other hand was well rounded. Rich, highlighting a bitter, but delicious flavor, this is one esb that I would drink again. 4.5/5 for flavor. No idea on value :). It was a good afternoon.
Sadly, now, back to the real world. Boo.