Screaming slippery bald beaver, anyone?

First, let me lay my cards on the table. I’m not much of a one for cocktails. I think it’s a generational thing. I’m of an age where an evening out is more likely to involve the consumption of some kind of beer. It is my children’s generation who seem to want to imbibe this litany of sticky (an usually overpriced) cocktails that just about every pub pushes these days. On reaching drinking age (when, incidentally, I was still in full-time education), I would have been no more likely to order a cocktail in a pub than…well…ask for a half pint of beer. There was one chap I vaguely knew who had a penchant for pink gin, but he was pretty much out on a limb. Beer by the pint was part of the rite of passage from boyhood to manhood; a bit like splashing on Brut 33.

I suppose the closest I get to cocktails now are gin and tonic and the odd Bloody Mary, so I was only vaguely interested when I stumbled across 1001cocktails.com. This website allows you to search for cocktails by ingredients, albeit it seems to be broken at the moment. It will not, perhaps, surprise you that I wasn’t bothered to find out how many bourbon-based drinks there were; no. I was far more interested in cocktails with, shall we say, unusual ingredients.

Here are just a few you may wish to try. The names are a bonus, but please excuse their rudeness:

Burning Demon Piss - Tequila, Peach liqueur, Rum (dark and white), Tia Maria, coffee, hot pepper sauce.

Hate - Gin, rum, Bourbon whiskey, vodka, tequila, peppermint liqueur, dry vermouth, irish cream, Tabasco sauce.

Flaming Anus - Sambuca, high proof rum, curacao, coffee, brandy, grape juice, Tabasco.

Mud and Blood - Carrot juice, beef bouillon (ie stock), orange juice, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, pepper vodka.

Camel Piss - Lager, tequila, dark rum, ouzo, fizzy lemon.

T-Bone - High proof rum, A1 steak sauce.

Oh, and the aforementioned beaver drink? Vodka, butterscotch schnapps, Bailey's, and a mixture of kiwi and strawberry juice. What it has in common with a nocturnal, semi-aquatic rodent I have absolutely no idea.

Way back in 1976 I read a book called Beer and Skittles. It was written by the late Richard Boston, and I recall that, in one chapter, he described some of the nastier beer-based cocktails he had encountered, the worst in my opinion being Guinness and Advocaat. He also mentioned a pub landlord who, after hours, would sit down with his cronies to concoct the worst drink possible. And the winner? Gin and the juice from a jar of cockles.

I think I’ll stick to my pint of bitter.