The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Vodka's job is to add warmth to the drink. It really isn't supposed to have much of a "taste" at all. Tito's has always been really good at just getting out of the way.

Hennessy cognac is something I like to use to demonstrate glassware and environment. That is, if you pour Hennessy into a shot glass and swallow it, it hurts! It's a cold bite of ethyl alcohol that just really isn't that pleasant!
If you put that same shot into a snifter and let your hand warm it for about 5 minutes, then sip, you get all the happy esters in your nose from the bulb glass. The warm liquid becomes almost candy type smooth with none of the brutal bite the shot had.

It's also why it's a crime to drink it outta the bottle! If you're just looking to consume booze, by all means be my guest! I do it too on occasion. Just don't waste the fine craft built into the cognac to do it.

We're fortunate to have good beer these days for about $1.50 per in a store.  Then it's $7-8 in a bar.

When I started drinking, there was no good beer, unless you think St. Pauli Girl is.  Or skunky Heinekin.  One dive in Athens had dark Schlitz I liked.  I could pop over the main street for lunch after German and make it across campus to chemistry the next period.

Dark Schlitz.  I remember when Stroh came through.  And someone would "import" Coors, which was thought to be superb.  Then the Lite beers happened.  I recall drinking a fair bit of Red White and Blue, which is cheapened PBR, or Busch, which is cheapened Bud.

I was a poor college student.  I had a buddy who'd split a case with me on Friday nights, we got whatever was cheap.  Then I got a GF and that stopped it for a while, the GF was not cheaper though.  The dude was from south Georgia and drove a jacked up Mustang and was a liberal, interesting fellow.

I wasn't really poor, my Dad paid for it, he even let me keep the scholarship money (which wasn't much).  I was more cheap than poor, which helped out when I went to grad school, where I was getting paid about enough to cover expenses until the very end.

My wife likes beer, which is good, mostly the Pilsner types.  Some of them have decent flavor of course.  Some don't.

I have a weakness for gin and tonics.

I'm a bigtime lover of gin and tonic. 

Bombay Sapphire is my "house" gin.  My i s c & a aggie wife likes Hendricks but that's not really my jam.

I also usually keep a couple of less common bottles around, right now I'm enjoying some Boodles that was a recommendation and is priced about the same as Sapphire, and some Old R'aj that was a gift and appears to be considerably more expensive.  They're both tasty but I don't think they're any better than Sapphire.