Tonight we made the shameful voyage to Pluckers, our neighborhood wing factory. We intended to get ice cream on the way back but forgot, and so instead decided to drink dessert. Since the Grasshopper and her cracked-out little sister the Pink Squirrel were already taken, I settled on the Colorado Bulldog.
The Colorado Bulldog--what the hell does this drink have to do with Colorado or Bulldogs?
Dale's describes this as "your basic adult egg cream," making reference to one of my favorite NY deli treats (Fox's U-Bet chocolate sauce with half & half and club soda.) However, his formula is not quite as adult as the one I recall from the early days of my drinking youth, when I actually drank concoctions such as this one. The DDG recipe consists of Kahlúa, cold milk, and Coca-Cola. The formula that I was familiar with included those ingredients plus vodka. In other words, a White Russian with Coke. This is the recipe that is found in Simon Difford's Cocktails. In the interest of fair and balanced coverage, I made the drink both ways. For both drinks I used low-temp pasteurized non-homogenized whole milk from the Remember When dairy. In place of Coca-Cola, I used Boylan Cane Cola, which is sweetened with pure cane sugar instead of HFCS. First I made Dale's recipe, and then I made Difford's, adding Tito's vodka.
I don't know anything about this drink but I found two interesting references in an obscure book called Le Grand Mixology International Bartenders Guide (1978), by James W. Johnson. Johnson's guide is exhaustive in its number of drinks and variations, but scant on information. In fact, no recipes are given at all, just lists of ingredients. He has two listings that pertain to this cocktail. Number 400 in the C section is for the Colorado Bull Dog, consisting of Ice, Galliano, Kahlúa, and soda. Number 400(a) is for the Colorado M.F., which I assume stands for Mother F*cker, and this drink consists of Ice, Galliano, tequila, Kahlúa, cream, Everclear, and Coke. Take out the Galliano and the tequila, sub vodka for the Everclear and you have the contemporary Colorado Bulldog. I'm really curious how the Galliano got in to the picture, or how it got out of the picture if it was an original component of this drink.
