Since the dawn of civilization (or at least since the advent of cake baking), people have wanted to have their cake and eat it too. That’s pretty much what I was thinking when I purchased Skyy vodka. I remembered drinking fair amounts of it in my early drinking days and considering it an underrated spirit. The $22 price tag won’t hurt the wallet as much as a top-shelf spirit, but the people at Skyy claim the taste rivals that of the big names in the vodka world. They even label it ”ultra-premium.” That sounds promising.
Skyy vodka started in San Fransico in 1992, and quickly became a very popular brand in the US. The company founder, Maurice Kanbar, pioneered a quadruple distillation, triple filtration and reverse-osmosis process to create an exceptionally smooth vodka. Skyy has been lauded as a “Hot Brand” and ”Brand of the Future.” I think the folks at Svedka may have something to say about that. I can certainly see there being two vodkas of the future, but I guess I’m just a glutton for booze. Those accolades sound even more promising than the reasonable price and my fuzzy memories.
After finally cracking open the bottle, my nose was assaulted with a harsh rubbing alcohol-like scent. Skyy certainly doesn’t smell like the ultra-premium spirit they claim it to be. I would liken the smell to that of Aristocrat vodka. After a pour over some ice and a sip, I have to admit I was a little disappointed. Skyy goes down extremely smooth. In fact, it is one of the smoother vodkas I have consumed, but the taste is just not very pleasant. It has a very bland and almost cheap taste. I can understand why an inexperienced drinker would enjoy this spirit so much. The smoothness makes for easy shooting and drinking, but after tasting a number of premium vodkas, the taste just doesn’t measure up to the big boys. The bland taste leaves you with an almost dirty finish and aftertaste. It makes for very unpleasant breath. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to feel like a fire-breathing dragon when I talk to people at the bar.
Mixed, Skyy works a little better. It blends well with Sprite, but it certainly doesn’t add anything to it. There isn’t any added yumminess, and you still get that dirty aftertaste. I can see Skyy making a good mixer to use with fruit juices or something with a moderate amount of flavor to cover the dirty finish. The smoothness would make for a good fruity beverage, but I can’t say that I get in a fruity mood too often.
After drinking a fair amount of Skyy, I’m somewhat pleased with the results. I got a little drunk. Skyy did an awesome job of soothing my rage. My Xbox 360 crapped out on me (for the second time) with the dreaded “red ring of death,” but Skyy was on my side. Thankfully, Wade handled the talking to India part of the night, but I could have really lost it if I didn’t have Skyy to help. I stayed somewhat calm and receptive, even when I was told that computer problems (at Microsoft, India Branch, I assume) prevented them from looking up my previous issues. Perhaps the people at Skyy knew of the amazingly helpful coping assitance provided by their spirit when they came up with the idea for this banned commercial (look below).
I don’t know if the advertisement is a fake or not, but I can certainly understand Skyy vodka helping with a father’s patience in dealing with his bratty kids. Kudos to Skyy for helping me through the evening.
The next morning, I awoke in good shape. My breath was terrible. I also felt a little cloudy-headed, but there was no headache or sickness. That leads me to believe that Skyy might make a good booze to consume in excessive quantities. Not that I condone such acts, but I can picture certain rage-filled situations that might call for a little extra vodka to calm the beast. Seasoned vodka drinkers and people with discerning palates may want to look elsewhere for their next liquor adventure, but those who enjoy fruity beverages or people who really want something to take the edge off might just want to give Skyy vodka a try.
On CNN’s news site, there is a new half-ass study done by someone with too much time on his hands that suggests that when liquor has higher prices there are less liquor-related deaths. That is like saying when the price of bullets are raised, fewer people will get shot with guns. Someone give these people a piece of pie because they are brilliant. According to the study, each time the state of Alaska raised its alcoholic beverage tax, fewer deaths were caused by or related to alcohol, according to the study that examined 28 years of data. Apparently, when Alaska raised its alcohol tax in 1983, deaths caused by or related to alcohol dropped 29%. A 2002 tax increase was followed by an 11% reduction. In Maine, they failed to pass a law that would have increased excise taxes by 116% for beer and wine to fund a controversial state healthcare program.
“Increasing alcohol taxes saves lives; that’s the bottom line. The tax increase caused some reduction in consumption of alcohol. The reduction saved lives,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Alexander Wagenaar,a professor at the University of Florida’s Department of Epidemiology and Health Policy Research. Who is this idoit, and who told him he could speak? Apparently the people who “studied” these “facts” have no idea why people drink. So I thought I would help the good doctor by finishing the rest of his report due to his glorious ignorance on a subject matter he could never understand.
First off, we need to define what an alcohol-related death actually means. Yes, acts such as drunken driving wrecks, over-comsumption of liquor, and purely dumb acts that one wouldn’t do sober are all part of this. But the study needs to include all the acts of violence that would have been avoided if alcohol were involved. Examples of such acts: suicide, running down that asshole that nearly ran you off the road because he was trying to text his dumbass friends while drinking, attacking the jerk in front of you because he is driving 20mph on a 45mph road, beating the kids because they are pissing you off, beating the neighbor’s kids because they keep bouncing that damn ball off your house, attacking your neighbors because their trash has blown in your yard on the wrong day, killing their *beep* dog because he always starts barking at 3am, stabbing your dumbass boss, shooting your dumbass boss, choking your dumbass boss, breaking the coffee pot over the head of the ass who decided that he wanted decaf coffee but didn’t bother tell the rest of the office, beating the woman in your office with her keyboard because she keeps telling you how great her kid is (Mary, your kid is five and can only count 12. He’s retarded! Go ahead and take him down to the Government Health Department and apply for his stupid check.), and let’s not forget choking that damn girl that has pictures of her stupid-ass cats wearing stupid-ass hats on her desk, who’s always telling you how smart they are and how they are just like people (You hear that, Becky? Shut the *beep* up or your ass is going down! *Beep* you and *beep* your *beep* cats! No one cares!).
Now you should be getting my point. Liquor helps control rage and sometimes even depression. Let’s be honest, how many times have you had to leave work and get a drink because you knew if you stayed there you would end up on the news? How many times has someone you cared about abandoned you, and if it weren’t for your friends like Jack and Johnny, would you be here today? Where are these stats in Dr. Alexander Wagenaar’s study? I’m 100% sure the rate of violent crimes towards oneself and others shot through the roof. Maybe the good doctor should study the adverse effects of rasing liquor prices. That’s only if he’s not too busy on his next study, “Why has Jim been so easy to piss off?”
If you want to read the whole article, you can read it here at CNN’s site.
Ohhh, Canada! You have givien us so many things…hockey, the moose, that delicious bacon, women with hairy legs, that funny way you say ‘aboot’ instead of about, and so much more. Now we have another gift from our friends to the North, Canadian Mist. Canadian Mist is a very afforable blended whiskey. And much like the hairy-legged women, it’s something you can learn to enjoy, especially on those cold sober winter nights.
Corn and barley malt are used to make Canadian Mist. The corn is ground and mixed with water and spent stillage to extract the starch. Then the corn slurry is pressure-cooked to make more starch. The starch is what gives Canadian Mist its light taste. After that, it takes a little whiskey magic and a few secrets before the whiskey is ready to be aged. Canadian Mist uses the finest white oak barrels that are charred to impart a smooth vanilla flavor during aging process. Each barrel is filled and stored in a special temperature-controlled facility. This means the whiskey can mature year-round rather than simply in the spring and fall. As a result, Canadian Mist is more fully matured and smoother in taste than other whiskies. It’s also what makes Mist so mixable and equally enjoyable over ice or with water.
So how does Canadian Mist really taste? It’s hard to describe. There is no real upfront flavor when drinking it on the rocks. There is just a faint sweet, sugar-like taste, but once swallowed, all the other flavors come to the forefront. The overall flavor is a sweet, corny, whiskey, woody, barrel taste with an unfair alcohol burn. I say unfair burn because the flavor is so weak and not special. There’s nothing special to stick out and make you say, “Damn that was good whiskey!” The taste of Canadian Mist is just boring. It’s like getting a birthday card with nothing in it. I kept expecting something great to happen, but in the end, I just ended up throwing it down and cursing the person who gave it to me.
It seems to me that the people at Canadian Mist weren’t out to make a blended whiskey as much as they wanted to make whiskey flavoring for ordinary drinks. When Mist is mixed, it can give any regular beverage a whiskey aftertaste and kick. From Coke to water, it makes everything taste like someone was trying to make a crappy drink good. I suggest you try this in an Irish coffee (your choice of coffee and a shot or two of whiskey). This seems like the real reason they even sell this stuff. It tastes just right. With Canadian Mist’s price tag usually around $13, it makes a better accessory for coffee than cream or sugar.
Unless you have a lot of time on your hands, don’t expect to get drunk off Canadian Mist. Its says 80-proof on the bottle, but I’m willing to question it. After four shots, I started thinking that if I had three more shots, I might be able to get a weak buzz. That’s never good. So after I took three more shots I was exactly where I thought I would be. I was buzzed, annoyed, and wanting to drink something that could get the job done. At this point, I was thinking I’d rather have one of those hairy women, so I could have something better from Canada. Well, I awoke the next morning feeling the same way I felt the night before…unsatisfied and wanting something better. I had no headache or body pains, just a feeling of disappointment. I’m not sure if that feeling was from the Canadian Mist or just my everyday life, but the fact remains the feeling was there.
Canadian Mist is a good enough cheap liquor but something like Canadian Club or Crown Royal would be a better buy. If you are a serious whiskey drinker, you are going to want to steer away from this one and get something with more flavor and a lot more punch. As for everyone else (especially us poor drinkers), this is a good buy. You will be able to afford enough bottles of it to get you where you want to be. Plus, it would be a great party booze because of the low price. The morning after the party, you can get up, make a few Irish coffees, fry up some Canadian bacon, and enjoy it all with the girl with the hairy legs who ended up in bed with you.
Since the dawn of civilization (or at least since the advent of cake baking), people have wanted to have their cake and eat it too. That’s pretty much what I was thinking when I purchased Skyy vodka. I remembered drinking fair amounts of it in my early drinking days and considering it an underrated spirit. The $22 price tag won’t hurt the wallet as much as a top-shelf spirit, but the people at Skyy claim the taste rivals that of the big names in the vodka world. They even label it ”ultra-premium.” That sounds promising. 
First off, we need to define what an alcohol-related death actually means. Yes, acts such as drunken driving wrecks, over-comsumption of liquor, and purely dumb acts that one wouldn’t do sober are all part of this. But the study needs to include all the acts of violence that would have been avoided if alcohol were involved. Examples of such acts: suicide, running down that asshole that nearly ran you off the road because he was trying to text his dumbass friends while drinking, attacking the jerk in front of you because he is driving 20mph on a 45mph road, beating the kids because they are pissing you off, beating the neighbor’s kids because they keep bouncing that damn ball off your house, attacking your neighbors because their trash has blown in your yard on the wrong day, killing their *beep* dog because he always starts barking at 3am, stabbing your dumbass boss, shooting your dumbass boss, choking your dumbass boss, breaking the coffee pot over the head of the ass who decided that he wanted decaf coffee but didn’t bother tell the rest of the office, beating the woman in your office with her keyboard because she keeps telling you how great her kid is (Mary, your kid is five and can only count 12. He’s retarded! Go ahead and take him down to the Government Health Department and apply for his stupid check.), and let’s not forget choking that damn girl that has pictures of her stupid-ass cats wearing stupid-ass hats on her desk, who’s always telling you how smart they are and how they are just like people (You hear that, Becky? Shut the *beep* up or your ass is going down! *Beep* you and *beep* your *beep* cats! No one cares!).
Ohhh, Canada! You have givien us so many things…hockey, the moose, that delicious bacon, women with hairy legs, that funny way you say ‘aboot’ instead of about, and so much more. Now we have another gift from our friends to the North, 
