Sweet Ghost Cocktail

Hello, everybody, it's been a long time, it's four o'clock Pacific time, which on a Friday, which means it's time to drink, probably time to drink today, like at noon, to be quite honest. Anyway, today we're going to try something super good, it's spicy, it's tasty, it's got a really nice kind of fall zip to it, I like it quite a bit, and it's one of my favorite drinks. I'm not a big vodka guy, this is probably one, right, well let me put it this way, it's one of my favorite vodka drinks.

All my favorite drinks are whiskey drinks for the most part, but this is a really good vodka drink. I'm not typically a big vodka drinker. Vodka really doesn't have a whole lot of flavor, doesn't really have a whole lot of taste, and so I typically don't drink a whole lot of it, but this stuff's actually pretty good, this vodka is. If you are a Bloody Mary drinker, you will love this vodka. I'm not a Bloody Mary drinker, but in this particular drink, this vlog is really super good.

So, kind of weird, Week, weird month, I think the last time. we made drinks I had a bionic arm, don't have that anymore, which is great. So cool, there, arm's doing well, weird time, you know, on the 30th of October, this is the first, you know, Halloween That I can never remember coming up. where I don't know if any kids will be trick-or-treating in my house, it's kind of weird, no big parties, it's just an odd year.

You know, tack on to all of that is next Tuesday is probably one of the biggest elections of our lifetimes, as far as direction of the country, and it's just weird, and then we've got, you know, quarter million almost people dead in the US of COVID, and it's just, but we're going to weather all that with a freaking amazing cocktail. So while things around us are maybe going crazy, these cocktails are amazing, so you know, in the post I, I put up there, I kind of explained how this came about.

My buddy Chris Wagonblast had this bottle of at least 10 years, probably more like 15 years old, vodka in his liquor cabinet, and he brought it down to this recipe and said, dude, like, can you make this, and of course I said yes, of course I can make this. And it was super good. And, and it just has a lot of these really good fall flavors, really a lot of these really good fall textures to it. It's an easy drink to make, but the flavors are super interesting, like, so we're going to use ghost pepper vodka, which sounds kind of intimidating, but it's actually in this drink really good.

You know, we're going to have some nice fall flavors, we've got cranberry, we've got the homemade grenadine that we make. If you don't have the homemade grenadine, regular grenadine will work. You know, we're going to add lime juice, because you all know I love lime juice and lemon juice. Freshly squeezed is the way to go. If you don't, you know, out of a bottle works just fine, but this, this drink is awesome and it absolutely reminded me of, of Halloween, all the fall flavors just came together really well, and, like I said, I'm not a big Halloween guy anymore, I used to be a big Halloween guy, you should dress up, used to love the parties of all that stuff, and then I got old and became an old fart.

And so Halloween's not that big for me anymore. I will say this about Halloween, though, Halloween is the gateway to the holiday season for Steve. I love Christmas. Love Christmas, and the the Christmas season starts to me on the first of November, you know, I fight with my wife every year about Inching Christmas decorations up further in my house, it's a rule that they can't go up until after Thanksgiving.

I've kind of lived with that rule, but my daughters and I start listening to Christmas music on the 1st of November, which drives my wife crazy, so not much of a Halloween guy, but I love fall, love the season. Love the fact that all my favorite holidays are coming up, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, love all that stuff, but there's something about this drink, just like screams Halloween, right? So let's go ahead and get started with this drink, it's super easy, so I kind of told you guys, go out and buy some this Sweet Ghost Pepper Vodka, heritage distillery, if you don't have it, probably like a, a super heavy pepper or a pepper vodka will work. Okay, the thing I like about this is this brings some heat, right, I wouldn't want to put Tabasco or something, or something like that in the drink, I think it would kind of throw the taste off, but you might try it.

It might be okay, I haven't tried Tabasco in this yet because I've been using this stuff, but if like, if I just had a regular vodka or a peppered vodka, maybe I put in a dash of Tabasco, that might help. But let's go ahead and get started. This is a shake and drink. Here's my shaker, we're going to get started like always. Every drink we make has at least two ounces of alcohol in it, right? Oh man, that's an interesting thing, so got a jigger two ounces of alcohol, oh my goodness, time to get some more.

Okay, so we'll start with that and then it's pretty easy. We're gonna have some cranberry juice, we're gonna take a half an ounce of cranberry juice, pour that into my jigger, half an ounce of cranberry juice, and we're going to take a half ounce of pineapple juice, and this is kind of tricky, like I buy them in these little cans because I never drink pineapple juice unless I'm putting them in a drink, and there's really only a couple drinks I put pineapple juice in because it tends to be super sweet, super fruity, this is one of those drinks, but just a half an ounce, right, now we're going to use a quarter of an ounce of lime juice, freshly squeezed lime juice, so I buy limes in bulk

and I'm now just squeezing them down and putting them in a mason jar. Whoa, so a quarter of an ounce of lime juice, and then we're going to use a quarter of an ounce of grenadine, and this is the homemade grenadine that we made several months ago, this is, is super easy to make, it's just a simple syrup, all it is is pomegranate and sugar, that's it, so you know, take like an ounce of, or sorry, a cup of sugar, a cup of pomegranate juice, put the pomegranate pomegranate juice in a little saucepan, boil it, when it comes to a boil, pour in the sugar, stir it until it kind of the sugar dissolves in there, and then just let it cool and you've got it.

But a quarter of an ounce of this, so got all that in our shaker. To recap, we have in here two ounces of that Sweet Ghost pepper vodka from here's distillery, like I said, you could use a flavored vodka or sorry, a little bit of a drink I made before this, I'm gonna get rid of it.

You could use a like a peppered vodka, or maybe just add a dash of Tabasco to get that kind of spice, that heat. But I really really do enjoy this, this is good and it's super inexpensive. Like I picked up a bottle of total wine for like 13 bucks, so it's, it's pretty easy to find, not expensive, 2 ounces of vodka, half an ounce of cranberry juice, half an ounce of pineapple juice, quarter of an ounce of lemon juice, quarter of an ounce of grenadine, I like to use the homemade granule make, I just like the taste of that better than buying grenadine, shaker ice, oh, I almost forgot the coup de grace.

Yeah, so I found these guys, I think it's Safeway, these fire and spice maraschino cherries, I know they've got a Total Wine, these things rock, so we're going to put one of these bad boys, the bottle of our glass, we're going to take our ghost pepper cocktail, pour that out, and the cherries.

Actually really goodness, if you can find these fire and spice cherries, they're amazing, in this drink in particular. They're good anyway if you like them, they kind of remind me of a kind of hot tamale, but they're super good. Okay, now we got the most of that drink, nice little ice crystals on top, if you let it sit, it'll make this just amazing, awesome looking red drink. Cheers, everybody.

Super good, it's it's super smooth, super tasty, that ghost pepper vodka has that little kick in it, and that little spice in it that makes it over the top. Like I said, normally I'm not a big fan of vodka, or flavored vodka for that matter, but this stuff is really good, and I buy it specifically for this drink. It's funny, most of the stuff out of Harris Distillery, I'm not a big fan of that distillery, but they make two things that I have to have for a couple drinks, brown sugar bourbon, there's a couple of those fall drinks that we made earlier, that really don't work without BSB, and this drink just does not work with anything else, I did try normal vodka and pepper vodka, and I wasn't happy with it, I did not try the Tabasco, that might have been a little bit better, but this drink is awesome.

Again, two ounces of the vodka, the ghost pepper vodka, half an ounce of cranberry juice, half ounce of pineapple juice, quarter of an ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice, quarter of an ounce of pineapple juice, or sorry, a quarter of an ounce of the grenadine. If you can find these awesome fire and spice maraschino cherries, highly recommend taking one of those, put them on, put them in the bottle of your glass and drinking it, this guy is really good, like I said, it tastes kind of like a hot tamale, it's good, maybe a hot tamale.

Oh, it's yummy. That's a good drink, I don't recommend you drink them like that, I recommend you probably enjoy a little bit more than I did, it's a good drink, so I know that I've been kind of off doing this for a while, but with the holiday season, like I said, this is my favorite time of the year, I'm gonna start probably doing some holiday drinks tonight, unbeknownst to my wife and her friend, they're going to be taste testers, went to the liquor store today and bought all the ingredients to make five brand new cocktails that I've been thinking about.

A couple of them are more fall type cocktails, but a couple of them are cocktails that I've made in the past that I'm going to make some changes to, I'm trying to perfect a gingerbread eggnog drink, which should be pretty damn good if I can get it right, but I'm really excited about this indulgent chocolate martini that I've been working on, and I think I think I might have finally figured it out, so tonight I'm gonna be making cocktails, Molly and her buddy Alex are gonna be the happy recipients of my taste testing, because sometimes I'm biased, but we will, if they turn out well, we'll be doing some of these over the holidays and making these super good.

And just as a general tip during this time of year, during the fall, I love apple bourbon, get some apple flavor bourbon, here's a super easy, easy trick. Take apple flavor bourbon, put it in a coffee mug, stick it in the microwave for let's say Like 30 seconds, 45 seconds, just enough to get it really nice and warm. Whipped cream on the top, money, perfect, fall drink, right? Easy to make, if you want to you can take some caramel sauce and drizzle it on the top, super easy to make, super cheap, super perfect fall drink, right.

But hopefully these drinks go well tonight, we'll see, hopefully a couple will show up over the next few weeks. Don't know if we'll do anything next week, that's kind of soon, depends on how these, these these drinks turn out tonight, but we'll be doing some holiday drinks for sure, over the next, you know, eight weeks. I just, it's just there's a ton of cool stuff that I tend to make and buy booze just for this time of year.

And so the specialty cocktails kind of come out of me this time of year. Not that we haven't been doing specialty cocktails since March. I will say, that is the one good thing about the pandemic, is that I'm a better bartender. I don't know if that means I'm drinking a lot more or what, but it is what it is, so. Sweet ghost cocktail, a great fall drink, the, the flavors are great, the color is great. If you can find these bad boys, these fire and spice cherries, they're awesome, they just kind of add that little extra touch to the drink to put it over the top.

Again, ingredients super simple, two ounces of Sweet Ghost Pepper Vodka, it's cheap, you can find it just about everywhere, a half of an ounce Cranberry Juice, a half an ounce of Pineapple Juice, a quarter of an ounce of our homemade grenadine, or just regular grenadine if you don't want to do that, and a quarter ounce of freshly squeezed Lime Juice, put it in a shaker, shake it up, cherry on the bottom of the martini glass, pour it in the martini glass and enjoy.

I really, I really like this and I, this is probably the, the best thing Chris has given me, been a while, so thank you Chris Wagonblast, because I wouldn't have ever gone back to this thing in a million years, so hope you enjoyed it, super quick this time, tonight I'm making cocktails. If you're in the area and you want to come down and taste, you're more than welcome, we may need some more sober people by the time they're all done, because I do plan on making like five or six different cocktails tonight to try them out. But we will

be doing some holiday, we will be doing holiday themed cocktails over the next several weeks, so kind of stay tuned in, that, like always, I'll post the ingredients on Facebook and then we'll go from there. Sorry there isn't a cool story around this one, you know, I like the cocktails that kind of the classics that have those cool backstories, this one, it's Chris, he's the backstory, right, he had this bottle of vodka for probably 15 years that we've boughten at the distillery tasting room, Gina's out of town, he's bored, he comes down and we make drinks, that's the backstory.

Anyway, I hope you all have a good week, be safe. Hopefully you'll get some trick-or-treaters, hopefully this Halloween can kind of be normal, hope everyone has a good Halloween, but you know I'm looking forward to the day after Halloween, when the holiday season officially opens, trees are going up, lights are going up, Christmas music starts, I cannot wait, because that's when the cocktails in this house really start going, so take care folks, enjoy this cocktail and vote, the most important thing, I don't care who you vote for, just vote, it's important.

So take care everybody and I'll talk to you soon, cheers.