Tastes

Rating: 14/23 I know it's artificial, but I really love the color of this. Imagine the pristine blue water of the ocean waves approaching a white Caribbean beach as viewed from above. N: It's tropical fruity with a clear bias toward citrus. I get lemon, lime, orange, passionfruit, and possibly mango and pineapple. It smells tart, but still sweet and very juicy. It smells enticing, like a refreshing cocktail for a summer day. P: Very fruity. I get orange with a lot of lemon tartness and some lime bitterness leading into a bit of passionfruit. I'm not sure that I quite taste the mango or pineapple that I might have smelled, but maybe they are there. I can imagine that there is some cognac in here, but I can equally imagine that it's all well-executed vodka though. A nice corn or wheat vodka would make sense given the sweetness and fullness, but it does remind me just a tad of Grand Marnier, so I definitely believe their claim that there is at least a dash of cognac. It's very balanced if you'd like a good hit of citrus like in lemonade or limeade and the complexity is decent. F: It citric and drying just like the end of a glass of lemonade. This is richer, fuller, and more complex than lemonade without just having a big blast of one other flavor like most flavored (e.g. mango) lemonades. It's a bit too puckering on the finish, but it feels right given the nose and palate. So on it's own it essentially tastes like a cocktail with the fruits dialed up to 11. And by fruits, I mean citrus. It isn't bad, but it does make me think of a cocktail in a bottle mixed with orange concentrate (you know, from the freezer section, or from Trading Places if you prefer a dated movie reference that doesn't help you understand what I'm writing about). It's solid enough to drink on its own, though I really would like a bit more going on. It's simultaneously hard to figure out what to do with this and also hard to go wrong with it. What do I mean by that? I mean that there is no clear purpose that I can say it was designed for (well, there are like 2 cocktails), but it also fits in all sorts of fruity drinks. Essentially, if you have a fruity cocktail (I mean one with a substantial amount of fruit juice), there's a decent chance that throwing a bit of this in could make it better and there's not a huge risk of making it worse. Hypnotiq's flavor is pretty much citrus with some tropical influence though, so its complexity is likely to get flattened in mixing. That makes it hard to rate. The value for money question is also out to the jury, though for drinking on its own, I'd wager that some fresh lemons and limes with some orange liqueur and a few good base spirits would be cheaper and also more flexible. This isn't bad and it's not very expensive either though, so I wouldn't be afraid of buying a bottle. Come summer, it should be pretty easy to make use of. Now, I do think that I saw a mention of some cocktail somewhere mixing this with Chartreuse Green. Throwing a dash of Chartreuse Green in with this really made it less biting and added a lot more complexity. It was a big improvement. It might be a decent way to use Chartreuse Green or not (considering the price). It isn't as good as Chartreuse Green neat and even gin actually made it worse (though maybe I picked the wrong gin). The color is pretty cool at least - very tropical, just like a clean ocean meeting a pristine beach! It really helps to sell the whole experience. I think that this is most suited for some variation on a Mai Tai. Maybe it makes sense to use this in place of some or all of the lime juice and simple sugar and then reduce the amount of rum as well. This works pretty well mixed with some good light rum and a bit of dark rum (maybe 2:1 light:dark). I could have a lot of fun with this and while I don't see myself buying another bottle soon, that largely has to do with a lack of shelf space (the trials of collecting liquor!). I don't really think that the value for money is here since at only 17% ABV. I could instead get a $44 bottle of rum and water it down with fruit juice (OK, $44 less the price of the fruit juice, so let's call it $30-35). and probably get a better result. Well, at least if I'm allowed to assume a situation in which I'm debating between buying a few bottles of rum to use for cocktails at parties over the course of a summer versus buying several bottles of this, I can probably do better using some rum at the $20 range with a little bit of Grand Marnier. This is fun and easy to use though and the fact that I actually had to do some math indicates that it isn't too far off from being a decent value. In terms of raw quality, I think I'm going with a 14. It's pretty tasty, but it's kind of hard to drink neat because the citrus is a bit much for me. I can't quite figure out what to do with it in cocktails and I don't really think it's bringing anything to the table that I can't get with rum (and/or other spirts/liqueurs that are not too expensive and I likely already have stocked) and fruit juice. I like this pretty well given the price, but it would be at best a 15 and I might drop it to a 13 if I found on closer analysis that it consistently produced inferior cocktails.

15: The blue color is obviously fake. The flavor is very fruity and initially has quite and appealing sweetness but then it develops a bitter bite. The flavor is also kind of watery. It's very tropical, with lots of orange, mango, passion fruit, and pineapple coming through. There's a bit of mint too and some lemon and underripe strawberry really drive home the more biting side of this drink. It's kind of like a fun punch that is a bit too aggressive. There's a hint of licorice on the nose, but the mint is really the main medicinal flavor. I wouldn't want to sip a whole lot of this, but I might sip a little. It could be an effective mixer with rum to make a nice fruity drink. The grapefruit presence is really what does this in. I wish that there were far less grapefruit. This is OK with E&J XO. It works nicely in a refreshing way with Beefeater gin. Chopin vodka is fine but not terribly exciting. Rye whiskey synergizes well, enhancing the flavor. Irish whiskey (Kavanagh) is not a great combination. The combination with Old Forester Signature is good. Mixing with Symbole National is a delightful balance. That Symbole National balance is so sublime that this instantly becomes a terrific cocktail. Amaretto is a nice complement. Hypnotic plus Symbole National plus amaretto? A fantastic cocktail. This isn't a standard liquer but it is surprisingly versatile and delicious. Framboise is a surprisingly ill-fitting flavor, but Cointreau is quite good. OK, Cointreau on its own doesn't work too well, but mixed with framboise it is quite good. The mix with Grand Marnier is interesting and rich it it could use some more balance. The mix has a weird tequila flavor. Some amaretto balances it out a bit though.