Of course, back then I was still planning my Haloween costume. If by planning you actually mean procrastinating that is. We were still early in the football season and National Turkey Day was still a faint dream ahead of us somewhere down life's road. Ah, how innocent we were. I mean, by gosh, we still thought that BPIKW would be a smash hit! I had visions of BPIKW franchises across the country with pickup trucks and Escalades lined up to sip of the golden, piggy nectar. Yeah.
This past weekend I decanted the concoction and it was... interesting. The liquid was a warm, golden color, very thick (if you had several pieces of bacon steeping inside you for a month you would be thick too. Trust me, I know!) and almost like honey. But I get ahead of myself to the payoff without the setup.
After most of a month in the bottle, sitting snug and comfy up in the liquor cabinet I placed the bottle in the freezer to solidify any protiens that may possibly have released into the liquid. Then I ran it through a pair of coffee filters to remove most of the really offensive looking material. And let me tell you... this looked nasty. Until it filtered, that is. Once complete the liquid looked warm, golden, honey-ish and very very inviting. The aroma coming off of the snifter (naturally!) was smokey, pleasant and amazingly inviting.
On first sip I got a hint of the warmth of a decent whiskey along with a almost-subtle but still strong hint of bacon. Lovely, lovely bacon. Ah, if only my tasting experience stopped right there and held at that joyous moment when I realized I had actually created bacon-infused whiskey. Life was amazing back then.
I have to wrap up this post. The nurse in the ICU tells me I have to save my strength for the recovery.
You see, dear readers, it was about then that the pepper oils woke up, scratched themselves in several unmentionable places, looked around and said to themselves, "Hey, let's go rape some poor, unsuspecting bastard's mouth. Yeah, that sounds like fun!" Now, I want you to imagine pepper. Not the kind, gentle pepper you shake out on your pasta. This pepper is that pepper's Old God. Primeval, raw, uncensored and hostile. This pepper hates you, your children and your soft little lives, all snug and protected with some domesticated pepper sitting genteely in the cupboard. This pepper wants blood sacrifice, yours preferably. And it will take it out in scorched, burnt mouth linings if you don't mind, thank you very much.
That's what waited for me in the snifter. It hurt, it burnt, it literally took my breath away. There exists a slight possibility that 1 tablespoon of peppercorns was a tad too much for a fifth of whiskey. A tablespoon of peppercorns might have been better suited all of Jack Daniel's annual production for the current fiscal year. Even then, only the strongest men would have touched it under proper medical supervision.
I believe, sitting here in my hospital bed with my lower jaw wrapped up in burn bandages, that the proper amount of pepper for round two of this little experiment is to merely wave a single peppercorn in the direction of the infusing bottle. From the next state over.
