I’m sorry, my dear readers.
I was going to write an article on cider this week, but a more pressing topic has come up bacon.
Don’t get me wrong, I like bacon. I understand that some people can’t eat it due to religious reasons and while I highly respect that, I kind of feel bad for them. Bacon is delicious.
However, I have observed a growing trend of incorporating bacon into every conceivable item on the planet. I’ve had chocolate-covered bacon, chocolate-covered bacon cookies, hickory-smoked, apple-wood smoked, double-wood smoked, bourbon-barrel-stave smoked and every other kind of wood-smoked bacon available.
These things are good. Bacon is good. I, over the weekend, found probably the only application of bacon in which the outcome is bad.
I think quite a few drinkers out there will agree with me that vodka is good. Ice cold vodka from the freezer with a bit of tonic or soda is a pretty good drink.
I think many people will agree that bacon is good. A thick, crispy bacon slice served with a side of eggs is my pinnacle of a breakfast.
But mix the two and you have a catastrophe on an apocalyptic order.
Readers, I introduce you to Bakon Vodka. On their Web site, they bill themselves as ‘superior quality potato vodka with a savory bacon flavor.” They are made of ‘superior quality Idaho potatoes.”
Folks, this is a blatant lie. No quality ingredients could have gone into such a drink. Quality ingredients typically produce a quality beverage.
This beverage, however, is the result of a pork smoker with a penchant for vodka and access to a food chemicals lab, resulting in nothing bacon-y nothing at all.
This, like many of my friends’ suggestions, was a novelty drink. The same man who suggested malt liquor (I’m actually utilizing this as I write this. More on this later) suggested the Bakon Vodka.
Normally I would be highly skeptical. But he said he was going to buy a bottle to try, so I asked him to give me a few shots for a review. This was a mistake.
I poured it into my whiskey sampling glass, swirled and sniffed. The aroma came off like cheap paint thinner and copious amounts of liquid smoke. It reeked of industrial chemicals.
A common way to determine quality of a spirit is to check its ‘legs.” This requires you to swirl it and watch as the spirit slowly drips down the side of the glass, noting how long and how viscous the liquid is. I did this and it looked distinctly like canola oil.
The beverage had two strikes against it. The final one was the taste, which was so bad my gag reflex kicked in. I brushed my teeth twice and it wouldn’t go away.
Readers, have you ever parked on a hill and, when putting it back into drive, forgot to remove the parking brake? Do you remember that pungent smell of burning rubber as the rubber pad friction-burned off as you wondered why you were only topping out at 20 mph? Imagine that smell, hickory smoked, and put into a glass. Give that a proof of 40 percent and you have Bakon Vodka.
The taste hasn’t left my mouth yet and I drank it about half an hour ago. As noted before, I am washing the taste out of my mouth with a 22-ounce bottle of Colt 45 malt liquor and it is barely working.
Never ever buy this product if you value your sanity or well-being. As always, the e-mail is at the bottom of this column and, so help me, if you recommend another kind of meat-flavored vodka, the consequences will be dire.
Spolverino is a member of the class of 2010. His e-mail address is scott.spolverino@rochester.edu.
