The Strongest Cocktail You Can Order Isn't A Long Island Iced Tea

The notorious Long Island iced tea comes fully loaded and goes down alarmingly smooth. (Don't blame Long Island — it's not even from there). While your first round might feel fun and brunchy, your second will probazly shmake you slart shlurring your werz — even though that extra booze makes your food taste better because science. But, despite its multi-liquor punch, the L.I.I.T. isn't the strongest cocktail you can order. That, my drinky friends, would be what's sometimes known as "the world's deadliest cocktail": Aunt Roberta. (No offense to anyone's real Aunt Roberta.)

While "strongest" may be a subjective term, Aunt Roberta's got a rep for getting lit like it's the Friday before a holiday weekend and the kids are with their dad. Featuring an ounce each of brandy and blackberry liqueur (or Chambord), 1½ ounces of gin, 2 ounces of mystical absinthe, and 3 ounces of vodka, this potent blend gets shaken with ice, strained into a glass, and dressed with an orange twist. Some more modern recipes scale back the portion size, skip the gin and vodka, and add in sweet vermouth for a take that's quite a bit less boozy. 

Unsurprisingly, its origins are pretty sketch. (Most popular myth: An 1800s Alabama woman drunkenly came up with the idea, and her customer Billy Joe Spratt later took the drink to New York City and made a million bucks on it in two years — or something like that.) It might seem like the boozy equivalent of filling a super-sized drink cup with Diet Sunkist Ginger Fanta Pepper at the soda fountain, but Aunt Roberta's motley mix tastes surprisingly balanced, according to those in the know. One Redditor noted, "The prevailing opinion is that this is a joke cocktail or random assortment of booze ... I thought the same until I tried it. It's better than you expect." Bartender, make that a double.

While some of us may want to chase an Aunt Roberta with an entire case of Topo Chico, others may be looking to add a few more hairs to the ol' chest. For that — like The Dude from "The Big Lebowski" — cocktail culture abides, offering plenty of spine-tingling mixed drinks.

Serving 1930s throat lozenge energy, the bitters-forward alamagoozlum (Wait, are we drunk already?) was made popular by financier J.P. Morgan. It features gin, Jamaican rum, yellow Chartreuse, orange Curaçao, Angostura bitters, cane syrup, and an egg white and is shaken and garnished with a pineapple wedge. Another '30s-era banger was the zombie cocktail from Hollywood's original tiki bar (Don The Beachcomber), stacked with Jamaican, Puerto Rican, and Demerara rum, plus absinthe, falernum, anise liqueur, grenadine, and Angostura bitters — hopefully, it's served in a mug with a face on it.

Care for a knockout martini? Grab a chilled coupe and stir gin, vermouth, absinthe, and crème de menthe with ice. If you'd rather hang with Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Johnny Walker, and Jose Cuervo, shake 'em up with Jäger and pineapple for a four horsemen highball. As for me, I'll be sipping on Ernest Hemingway's Champagne — appropriately known as a death in the afternoon — which he described in the 1935 cocktail book "So Red the Nose, or Breath in the Afternoon" like this: "Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly" (via Liquor.com). From Aunt Roberta to your favorite cocktail bar, you've been served.