Mistakes We've Made: Manipulating 40s.

Mistakes We've Made is a biweekly editorial feature about, well, booze related mistakes that we've all made and what to learn from these all too familiar situations. First up: the mistake that adding something to a 40 somehow makes it less disgusting.

There's a point in every booze fan's life where drinking forty ounce beers happens. This usually starts around late high school and, God willing, usually wraps up about a year or 2 after college. 40 nights happen for all sorts of reasons, ranging from economic hardship to purely racist parties but generally end up with some sort of hungover regret. After a few solid weeks of scraping together change to catch a buzz, you yearn for something new. Something exotic. That's when you hit Google or ask a friend for new twists on old favorites. Results are downright terrifying and best left to professional homeless. We'll stick to the big 3: the Brass Monkey, the Redeye, and whatever the hell the cool name for adding Sylvia's hot sauce to Olde English is.

The Brass Monkey is, well, to put it nicely, downright awful. First rearing its ugly head to me somewhere around 2003, the Brass Monkey is concocted by drinking an ice cold Olde English to the top of the label, filling it with tropicana orange juice, mixing, and continuing drinking. When written down, none of this sounds like a good idea, but when someone suggests it at 8am before a tailgate, it sounds somewhat appealing. Do not believe your inner-thoughts. This sucks. It basically tastes like bootleg Blue Moon with a hell of a lot more malt liquor. The orange juice takes the edge off, but adds hours upon hours of agonizing heartburn to your drunk. 2 of these suckers and you're about ready to give it up behind a van in some alley. Which to be honest, is probably where you belong anyways.

A red eye is basically the same idea as the Brass Monkey, except endorsed by old people instead of hip city folk. Grab a High Life or Bud Light, drink about 1/4, fill up with some Clamato juice, and swill away. Homeless bloody marys are probably the best way to describe the taste, with the clammy tomato juice mixing oh so delicately with the beer. Ask an old person and they'll swear by the medicinal qualities of the red eye for a wicked hangover. Ask a normal, rational human and they'll do everything in their power to prevent you from trying this. Oh yeah, Budweiser execs drink these so much that they decided to pre-bottle it and sell it right next to the forties, taking out all the guesswork.



Lastly, and certainly the most disgusting, is the whack assumption that hot sauce makes everything better. While this is generally true for food, the belief that it can be carried over to booze it perhaps the biggest mistake you can make. No idea who told me this, but it was someone employed by Penn State Housing Services in 2004ish. Basically, this is exactly what it sounds like: you crack open some malt liquor in 40oz form (I tried Colt 45), add a few shakes of Sylvia's hot sauce, mix around and indulge. No clue who decided that this was a good plan, but it tastes worse than anything imaginable. Basically bottled and liquified burps after you eat a dozen hot wings and down 3 beers. Again, some exec somewhere decided this was the future, because you can buy it premade.

Next time: the many dangerous varieties of jungle juice, and why college wouldnt exist without it.