Shots And Shooters You'd Probably Only Drink On A Dare

Whether the party is at a house, apartment, by the beach, or the local bar, it's highly likely that the alcohol will be flowing well into the night. For better, and very often for worse, booze is the ultimate social lubricant, relaxing inhibitions and getting people to chill out and ease up for a little while. But then, as it is won't to do, that alcohol gets people more than just a little bit tipsy, but full-on drunk. At that point, dares are on the table, especially ones that involve drinking whatever weird things one's supposed friends, or a knowledgeable and willing to experiment bartender, can devise.

There are plenty of old-school alcoholic drinks you don't see at parties anymore, but weird shots are often where this phenomenon plays out. There's a whole almost mythological set of shots and shooters passed on by word of mouth and those who bore witness to these foul, novel concoctions. They're so ill-conceived, and so gross, and so audacious that they've likely only ever been consumed at the egging on of others. Here are the most storied shots that you'd have to be a little bit mad (or a whole lot drunk) to even consider putting in your mouth to shoot as quickly as possible.

Made from one of the most famous secret recipes in food and drink history, Worcestershire sauce doesn't really taste like anything else. It's sweet, it's tangy, it's savory, and it's fermented, meaning it could easily taste like so many different kinds of alcohol rolled into one thing. But it doesn't: Worcestershire sauce tastes like the thing it's used the most for: flavoring fatty, oily, flavorful meats, like beef. Worcestershire sauce is really a steak sauce, and it's the inclusion of the curious condiment that gives a woeful and fearsome shot called Liquid Steak its taste and fortitude.

One of the saltiest and most memorable shots one could ever order, Liquid Steak starts with about a serving of whiskey or bourbon. A half ounce of Worcestershire sauce gets added along with other steak accessories like a little bit of hot sauce and some black pepper. Drink quickly to experience steak in liquid form, if steak was entirely made of steak sauce and hurt to consume.

Jägermeister is one of the strongest liqueurs out there, and that's in terms of pronounced and unique flavor, crushing sweetness, and alcohol content. Developed in Germany as a hunters' toasting drink nearly a century ago, it's a blend of 56 spices, roots, and herbs, and its taste is most comparable to licorice, if licorice were floating in liquid sugar.

There's so much going on with Jägermeister that it doesn't really pair well with many other things, either other liqueurs or liquors or nonalcoholic ingredients. It's consumed chilled and straight, or as the mischievous and destructive element in a number of shooters. One of the most notorious and gross sounding ones pairs Jägermeister with another heavily flavored item that counters the liquid liqueur with a wildly different texture. That's a shot called the Smoker's Cough. Emulating a ball of phlegm, in color and feel, that might spring forth from the throat of a lifetime tobacco enthusiast, the shot mixes an ounce of Jägermeister with a teaspoon of mayonnaise.

A cousin of the Smoker's Cough, the Eggermeister, turns the act of drinking into eating, as it requires the foolhardy to simultaneously drink a shot of Jägermeister and chew on a pickled egg, an old-fashioned bar snack. Yet another variant is the Relishious. That shot adds some very sour to the very sweet — it's Jägermeister dressed with a spoonful of pickle relish.

Macaroni and cheese are two great flavors that taste great together. It's a classic dish, either prepared homestyle with a roux, real cheese, and high quality pasta, or as the salty, extremely inexpensive, kid-pleasing version that comes in a blue box straight from the Kraft factory. Macaroni and cheese doesn't always go together though, such as in the imaginative and repulsive alcoholic beverage known as The Mac and Cheese Shot. It doesn't contain any elbow macaroni, but there is plenty of milk, and cheese in multiple processed forms.

The spirit of choice is vodka, and the drink combines that with a splash or two of milk and a spoonful of the powdered cheese that comes in a box of macaroni and cheese dinner. The booze mixed with the milk makes for a sour, spoiled taste that the cheese powder only supports. A more extreme and complete version of The Mac and Cheese Shot requires the shot glass to be rimmed with the salty powdered cheese and topped with a lump of right out of the can Easy Cheese or a spoonful of Cheez Whiz, which you can totally make at home.

While it's fortunate that no chicken meat is involved in the preparation of the Prairie Chicken shot, the name serves as something of a warning of the presence of a key ingredient. Eggs come from chicken, and one of them is used in a Prairie Chicken. Many classic cocktails employ whipped egg whites to add flair, texture, or flavor to the experience, but this a drink on par with a Gin Fizz, Pink Lady, or an authentic Whiskey Sour.

At least the Prairie Chicken is served in a vessel with a bit more pomp than a little shot glass. To make this infernal shot, grab a champagne flute and fill it almost to the top with gin. The complicated, herbal, fruity spirit is already a hard one to knock back — gin is a sipping liquor best cut or mixed with tonic or juice — but it's much more difficult when one has sprinkled in some black pepper and a few drops of fiery Tabasco sauce. Those condiments are supposed to replicate the experience of eating a raw oyster. The meat of the shellfish is represented by a whole raw egg.

Imagine: a liquid that's really a solid, or a solid that's really a liquid, floating around in your mouth, and the only thing it's comparable to is wet, just made cement. If that's what's happening after one orders and drinks a shot called a Cement Mixer, the bartender correctly made the beverage that still feels so very wrong.

What makes the Cement Mixer so revolting isn't necessarily the ingredients, but rather the chemical reaction that happens when the two components meet and mingle. The flavors of citrus and Irish cream don't harmoniously combine, and neither do the substances themselves. It's a whole process to consume a Cement Mixer, too. Pour out a full shot of Irish cream, the milky, creamy, sweet liqueur made famous by Baileys. In another glass, measure out half an ounce of lime juice. Now, the Irish cream gets poured into the victim's mouth, but they're not supposed to swallow, but just hold it there for a minute. Then they add in the lime juice. As the two liquids dance around each other in the mouth, the lime juice instantly curdles the dairy in the Irish cream, making a chunky, murky substance.

Drink enough of either of the constituent liquids that make up the Black Death shot and a person is bound to get sick. There's probably not enough alcohol in one serving of the shot to impart any lasting physical damage, but there's so much of the potentially toxic mixer that it could lead to dehydration or at least extreme discomfort.

Black Death certainly has a lot of Halloween spirit in its little shot glass of a home. If prepared correctly, it boasts a deep black color while also being slightly translucent. Start by adding vodka, either at room temperature or chilled, into a regular shot glass. Then, pour in an equal or near-equal amount of soy sauce, the powerfully salty condiment used in numerous Asian cuisines. A tablespoon of soy sauce contains almost 900 milligrams of sodium, roughly 40% of what the USDA says an adult should consume over the span of a whole day. An ounce is 2 tablespoons, so that's a whole lot of salt arriving all at once, along with some burning vodka.

Almost categorically, alcohol — consumed pure and straight and without adulteration — is going to sting, burn, and make a person wince and recoil. Alcohol, after all, is a mild poison, and the body reacts naturally and logically. Spirits with a higher proof, or alcohol percentage, are going to be more difficult to consume in the form of a shot, and it's that idea that makes the Four Horsemen such a legendarily tough drink to handle. It's made up of four different liquors that are hard enough to drink on their own, all combined into one mega, super-shot of unpleasantness.

The four contributing parties to the Four Horsemen, as in "the four horsemen of the apocalypse," because it foretells such awful side effects, are the sweet, herby, and licorice-like Jägermeister, an extra high-proof rum, famously challenging tequila, and Rumple Minz, a peppermint liqueur with a 50% alcohol content. All those caustic boozes and flavors don't complement one another whatsoever.

There's a way to make a Four Horsemen even worse: turn it into a Five-Star General. That necessitates the addition of Goldschlager, a sweetened cinnamon-flavored liqueur notable for the tiny flakes of real gold floating in the bottle.

There are a lot of myths surrounding tequila, namely that it supposedly leads to much more bad behavior than other alcohols because it's made different or acts as a stimulant. Because so many people avoid tequila as a matter of course, it becomes the spirit of choice for dare drinking. It's also commonly paired with Tabasco, a moderate to intensely spicy hot sauce condiment found in countless bars and restaurants that also has a reputation that precedes it.

Thus there are two infamous shooters with a base of tequila and Tabasco. The first is the Ranchero. Tequila tastes fine on its own, but not so much when a hefty pour of Tabasco enters the fray along with a dollop of cool and creamy ranch dressing. At least the Ranchero doesn't have as much inflammatory alcohol as the Flatliner. With a title that suggests imminent death, this shooter definitely doesn't taste like it came from the land of the living. A few drops of Tabasco go into a 1.5-ounce shot glass filled with equal amounts of tequila and sambuca, an Italian liqueur with the strong taste of licorice-like anise.

It's baffling and a little maddening how anyone would willingly and knowingly consume something called an "Infected Whitehead," but maybe that's just part of wacky shot culture. That evocative and visceral reaction-producing name is actually perfect for the drink, as an Infected Whitehead really does share the look, and texture, of a mild facial imperfection gone bloody and taken over by harmful bacteria.

One of the more likely shots to be consumed on a dare, because there's little to actually enjoy here, the Infected Whitehead makes good use of a couple of bar staples as well as a grocery item one would have to procure separately. Take some vodka, for the booze portion, and add in some Bloody Mary premade mix to provide flavor and the distinctive red hue. Then, stir in some lumpy cottage cheese to really make it look like a whitehead. While it's the perfect chili topping, cottage cheese is an abominable cocktail add-on: it creates a curdling effect when it hits the vodka.

A lot of people like to smoke when they drink at the bar, but in many states they have to go outside to have that cigarette. Also, smoking has been proven so objectively unhealthy that many don't want to even sample the practice. However, there is a novelty shot that reportedly so eerily and disgustingly replicates the taste of a cigarette, particularly having smoked one after a long night of drinking, that there's no need to leave the bar or light up. It's called, appropriately and boldly, The Cigarette.

There are three key ingredients in a Cigarette shot that are all individually overwhelming additions to a drink, but when combined create the simulated taste of burning tobacco and various chemicals. First up is fernet, an Italian liqueur known for its extreme bitterness and off-putting herby profile. Some of that goes into an ice-filled cocktail shaker along with an equal amount of mescal, a smoky and strongly alcoholic relative of tequila, and some cold brew coffee. Serve cold and drink quickly for an unreal experience.

There are many recipes full of glorious beer, and you can turn a favorite beer into a spritz cocktail to make for a refreshing and unexpected treat. But beer-based cocktails, or mixing beer with anything at all, remains a relatively obscure region in the land of drinking. Beer is so carefully and specifically brewed with particular flavors in mind that combining anything with it seems like a bad idea. That instinct absolutely rings true as far as something like the Beergasm is concerned.

Most any bar will have at least a few beers on hand, either on tap or by the bottle or the can. Bars also stock milk, cream, or half and half because so many cocktails require the addition of dairy. The Beergasm, a very unlikeable drink ironically named after one of humanity's most favorite things by way of a portmanteau with "beer," takes those two always-on-hand things and ruins both. How to make a Beergasm: combine equal parts beer and milk in a glass of any size.

Big, bold and ultra-conspicuously textured things clearly don't have any business being in a beer cocktail, or beer-based party shot, even if it's something as seemingly innocuous as milk. The same can be said for yogurt, which is milk's chunky, cultured, and chewier cousin. It creates a strange and unappetizing reaction when added to beer, and yet, there it is, helping to turn a common, mild-mannered measure of brew into a challenge of a drink called the Jersey Turnpike.

Popular in New Jersey since its supposed invention there in the early 1980s, some people actually like the taste of the Jersey Turnpike. Granted, it does offer a little something for everyone in that it's bubbly, creamy, and just a little bit spicy. But it's hard to get past the fact that the drink only exists through a combination of beer, yogurt, and as much Tabasco sauce as one cares to handle.

Not to be confused with the Jersey Turnpike, it's a virtual guarantee that the shooter called the New Jersey Turnpike will never be the same drink twice. Of course, that means you've somehow undertaken the challenge of ingesting the New Jersey Turnpike more than once in a lifetime, which is already far too many attempts to cheat the fates.

The New Jersey Turnpike is unequivocally gross, and consuming one is probably not even safe for one's health. Clearly invented as a dare by very intoxicated people after an extended drinking session, the New Jersey Turnpike doesn't have a set list of ingredients required, as it's more the result of a technique. Every bar around uses bar mats, those studded rubber things designed to limit liquid messes as the bartender does their job. They capture any and all runoff, spills, or splashes of booze and beer as the bartender pours shots, mixes drinks, and pulls from taps. Any other spills are periodically cleaned up with a quick swipe of a bar rag. These two tools, the bar mat and the bar rag, are the sources for a New Jersey Turnpike. To make one, a bartender empties the bar mat and wrings out the bar rag into a shot glass, and the drinker has to drink whatever combo that creates.