If anyone has seen this on SA already, this is my creation, I'm not just ripping off someone else's idea.
Links under pictures go to full size.
The backstory.
Every summer, my friends Matt and Pablo have a party called Augustfest. August needs its own holiday because absolutely nothing happens in August in the US and I'm not having a party to celebrate National Goat Cheese Month. The past two years, the entire condo complex has been on board, leading to 150-200 people showing up and partying like they did in college.
This year, I wanted to do something special and memorable other than homemade absinthe because while people enjoyed it, I would prefer a drink that people remember enjoying and I don't have a proper distillation rig set up anyway. The idea hit me one day, and I knew it would either make me a hero, or get my burned at the stake by an angry mob.
The idea
Remember Kool Aid Kool bursts from your childhood? Twist off the cap, squeeze, and enjoy. I thought to myself, "what if I figured out how to put alcohol in there? People love memories of their childhoods, and " I figured I could use a big needle to poke in, suck Kool Aid out, and inject alcohol, then hot glue the hole shut.
I hit a big roadblock at first. I got a flavor injector syringe at Wal Mart, and quickly found that polycarbonate plastic is far from an ideal way to transfer ethanol, as my first syringe and two backup syringes shattered seconds after filling them with grain alcohol. Not to be defeated easily, I took the stainless steel needle and hot glued it into a turkey baster. I was back in business.
Actually, there was another holdup. Shaws in my town is apparently the only place in Fairfield County that sells Kool Bursts anymore. Target discontinued them, Wal Mart discontinued them, and Stop & Shop may not even have had them in the first place.
The process
Here we have our ingredients. Kool Aid Kool Bursts, grain alcohol, a glass for the grain, a glass for extracted Kool Aid, the extractor/injector, and a hot glue gun to seal up the shots and fix the turkey baster, which I believe to be as old as I am. Since these are only 220cc each, I chose grain because it allows me to keep as much Kool Aid in there as possible. I plan to experiment with other liquors, and Matt's sister commented on Facebook that I should put pure tequila in the cap for when people twist it off and suck out the few drops in there.
Everything laid out. Red become double shots, blue become singles.
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Pouring the grain
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On one side of the twist-off top, there's a little circle, probably flashing from the injection molding process or maybe where they put the Kool Aid in. Zoom way in and you can see it. Stick the needle in there and aim for the opening into the bottle under the cap. Be careful not to hit the sides or you're going to end up with leaks. Since there's someone in every thread with meticulous attention to detail who's going to notice a difference in the number of bottles in the first picture and the last, I'll say right now that one of them was lost to a puncture. It quickly became my brother's job to make it disappear.
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Squeeze the Kool Aid out. You'll get a feel for how much you need to squeeze pretty quickly, but in the worst case, inject some back in. Once that glass is almost full, it only seems proper to reward anyone helping by pouring a shot or two of grain into it and giving them a glass of Booze-Aid.
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Not quite enough out on this one. For a single shot you want the level to be at the top of the "d," and for double shots, you want it to be between the tops of the o's in Kool
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My baster was graduated by 1/4oz markings. For a single shot, you want a bit under half an ounce of alcohol (~11cc will make each Burst the equivalent of one shot of 80 proof liquor, twice that for doubles.)
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Inject the grain, once again being careful not to poke any more holes than you've already poked. It will probably drip a bit if you're using a turkey baster, but that's OK, at this point there will be Kool Aid stains on the counter and the alcohol will help clean them up.
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Holding it at an angle so you the glue doesn't drip down and seal the cap to the bottle, put a dab of glue over the hole. I found that it I give the bottle a tiny squeeze before sealing, it sucks the glue tight against the cap and prevents it from leaking.
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Half done
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At this point, I wasn't wearing a belt and my pants fell down.
45 minutes after starting, we were loaded up and ready to go.
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The results
Even after I told people, they said they couldn't tell there was any alcohol in the
blue single shots. The red ones had a bit of a burn since they were 10% pure alcohol. I can imagine the Fox News headline now: "Is Kool Aid the new date rape drug?" If I'm bringing them somewhere, I'll just have to make a sign to make sure people know because these go down smooth and I can easily see people getting a lot drunker than they expected off of these.
They were a huge hit, never before have I been called a genius so many time in one night. People were upset when they were gone and made me promise to bring them to their parties or any parties they'd be at because they wanted to have them again. This is my claim to fame and two weeks later I'm still getting people telling me how much they liked them and asking me to make more. A girl I met at Augustfest called it "the ultimate party drink," and I think it describes it well.
I couldn't be happier with the results.