There’s a reason why you won’t be able to create a concoction that’s spot-on with a Flaming Moe, and it’s pretty simple: IT’S FICTION. Homer, in his desperation for a drink when he was out of beer and being bombarded with slides of a vacation taken by his sister in law’s, had to simply pour a bit of everything he had into a mixer and just hoped for the best. The moment that a bit of burning ash from either Patty or Selma’s cigarette fell into the drink however it exploded, luckily not too big, and a heavenly concoction was made from something that should have tasted like absolute garbage, like something a person might have drank in the Prohibition Era when alcohol couldn’t be consumed except in private. It might even be that this would be frowned upon back then by all but the most virulent alcoholics.
Apparently more than one individual has come up with their own brand of a Flaming Moe and quite honestly it’s not hard to think that it might work on a few levels since flaming drinks tend to be seen as exciting and kind of exotic in its own way. But when you look at the amount of alcohol and the types of alcohol that are in this drink you might think that it’s exceedingly sweet and that there’s absolutely no way that this should work. There are a lot of liquors that work together but then again there are a lot that don’t. Cordials such as Chambord tend to overpower a drink quite often and as a rule Chambord does tend to have its own list of drinks that will be sweet and will be delectable but also dangerous. Why dangerous? Well, with a sweet drink the propensity to keep drinking them simply because they’re good tends to stifle that area of the brain that would say ‘okay you’ve hit your limit’ and tells us to keep drinking. Some people have it in them to say no more but it’s still pretty difficult. With sweet drinks it’s easy to fall on your face after a few when you realize that the few has become a few too many.
The Flaming Moe doesn’t seem like it should be exceedingly sweet though unless one intends it to be that way. The one thing about bartending and mixology that Gwen Ihnat from AV Club goes over is that there really is no one set way to make a lot of drinks. You might scoff and say of course there is, but if you’ve ever had a Liquid Cocaine or a Scooby Snack or even a Hurricane or a Zombie then you might want to take a look at the recipes being used by your bartender. Some do it by memory and others do it according to what they’ve learned, but there will always be at least two or more recipes for a lot of drinks since a lot of bartenders love to use their own sense of style and flair to make them. Granted, Moe was never really known for having any sense of style or flair at all, but upon stealing Homer’s idea for a flaming concoction that people couldn’t get enough of he definitely made up for it as his business began to boom.
The one ingredient that likely wouldn’t work and is hard to believe would be legal is cough syrup. It’s not exactly harmful when added in small doses but given that it has a pretty specific use it might be worth looking into to see if it would be allowable at all. But cough syrup tends to be another substance that easily overpowers a lot of things and tends to carry its own flavor into anything it might be mixed with. That being said it might be possible to mimic the flavor of the cough syrup, if a person really wanted to, but otherwise it might be best to leave it out and just create the hodgepodge that is a Flaming Moe with one’s own recipe of alcohol that goes relatively well together and isn’t too cloyingly sweet or so gag-worthy that taking a few sips would put someone down for the count.
One great thing about making a Flaming Moe in real life is that if a person does well with it and manages to sell this drink as one of their prime specials it’s very likely that no one is going to be able to give the secret away, or even care really since the variations on this drink have to be great indeed considering that mixing in what looks and seems like it would work leaves a lot of room for interpretation since creating the perfect blended drink is kind of like creating the perfect picture, you need all the gathered elements to work in harmony to create something that people will be impressed by.
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