Gin fans will find a beautifully easy-drinking and surprisingly complex take on the gin and tonic - plenty of juniper in the back, fun floral notes from fresh hops preserved as aromatics in Devils Backbone’s Fresh Hop Gin, and the sweet-mineral tang of tonic extract.
As of press time, only about 20 more people in Hampton Roads can pick up a cheap clearance four-pack from an ABC store in Chesapeake or Portsmouth.ĭo so if you can. We apologize for this, but one of our favorite Virginia canned cocktails is no longer in production. The result of all that work is the unbridled taste of low-effort summer in a can, what one taster called the “fulfilled promise of the canned cocktail” and another called an essential tool for being “basic by the swimming pool.” And if being basic by the swimming pool isn’t the real promise of the canned cocktail, we don’t know what is.ĭevils Backbone Fresh Hop Gin & Tonic is tasty, but discontinued for now the company will issue a new line of canned cocktails in Spring 2021ħ.5% ABV, $6.50 a four-pack on clearance at ABC stores in Chesapeake and Portsmouth They worked it out with a fruit company in the Pacific Northwest, pasteurizing the juice so it wouldn’t ferment - and to make sure it’s right each time, they send samples of each batch to a lab. So we decided we had to find someone to get real juices, get them in the can in a way they won’t degrade.” But there was no way to reproduce a quality cocktail with artificial ingredients. “We started the process with a flavoring company and a chemist using artificial flavors. “It was not an easy process to figure that out,” Yancey said.
#VODKA MULE DEVILS BACKBONE TRIAL#
To make it, says Tarnished Truth co-owner Andrew Yancey, they had to go through multiple rounds of trial and error. Of all we tried, these festive cans from the Beach’s Tarnished Truth Distilling are the most what they say they are: silly, fun orange drinks for the Bermuda-shorts set, an endlessly crushable froth of actual orange with just enough bubble to mimic its namesake cocktail’s splash of Sprite. Nix the pebbled ice, and this is the beachy and bubbled spirit of Virginia Beach in a can. The Coastal Cocktails Vodka Orange Crush, made by Tarnished Truth Distilling, is the boozy spirit of Virginia Beach in a canħ.5% ABV $12 a four-pack at Tarnished Truth Distilling also at Total Wine and soon most local supermarkets Here are the Virginia cans we’d most welcome on our imaginary party boat. Cans made with darker liquors often just tasted weird.
#VODKA MULE DEVILS BACKBONE MOVIE#
Oh, and just like Patrick Swayze in the movie Ghost, it’s best to move toward the light. Natural fruit juice did better than artificial flavors, though not all fruit translated well to a can. As a rule of thumb, higher-alcohol cans offered more oomph. But our favorites were the cans that actually tasted like the cocktails they purported to be - no mean feat for drinks limited by law to 7.5% alcohol. It turns out that canned cocktails are often closer to seltzers than a drink at a bar. We assessed each drink with meticulous care and discerning palates, according to some very serious criteria: How much would we like to drink this cocktail while lounging atop a pool floatie shaped like an avocado? If we reached deep into an ice-filled cooler and this is what showed up in our hand, would we happily keep it? Or would we secretly wish it were a Bud Light? We assembled a small and socially distanced crew for a fireside outdoor tasting, including local reporter Ben Finley and Norfolk bartender Josh Seaburg, who writes about spirits for our sister publication Distinction Magazine. Our spread of 15 Virginia-made canned cocktails available in Hampton Roads, as tasted on January 16, 2021 A can of gin-and-tonic might be the safest and easiest way to get someone else to mix a drink for you during a pandemic, even as takeout cocktails continue to flow from local restaurants. As of August 2020, Nielsen data showed more than 85% growth since the previous year.Īnd even though crisp cans of cucumber-lime vodka might seem made for summer, these days we’re taking what we can get. Alongside the meteoric rise of the hard seltzer, canned booze ranks among the fastest growing categories of hooch in America. Since the start of the pandemic, when drinking at bars became a fond memory, an effervescent wave of aluminum-swaddled booze has washed ashore at local grocery stores - a rainbow tide of vodka smash and whiskey mule. After spending its early years in obscurity, the frothy canned tipple has finally found its moment. We can all be forgiven if we want this year to be easy.Īnd there is nothing in this world easier than a cocktail in a can, a smashable quaff for those who can’t even be bothered with an ice cube. E-Pilot Evening Edition Home Page Close Menu
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