Weirdest alcohol you've ever had/cocktail you've ever made?

[amtriska]

I'll start: I took a Russian cooking class at my college a couple of years ago, and we made our own infused vodkas. (None of this was paid for with departmental money -- a lot of us were underage!) The weirdest of these was garlic-infused vodka. No one would drink it but me -- I loved it!

How about you? What's the weirdest alcohol you've ever had, or weirdest drink you've ever mixed?

[StriperGuy]

You have not lived until you've tried Maotai (the leading brand of Baijiu):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baijiu

VERY challenging flavors to the Western palette: barnyard, baby diapers, stinky tofu, kerosene, acetone. Whew.

[jehflyer]

Years ago I tried a "skippizini" cocktail: 1/3 gin, 1/3 vodka, 1/3 pernod.

[ed1066]

It's only slightly alcoholic, but in Fiji I had quite a bit of Kava. It is drunk in large quantities by the locals for mostly ceremonial purposes, but by "ceremonial" that can mean just a friendly visit to someone's home. I didn't quite get intoxicated from it, but the sensation is odd nonetheless. There's a numbing of the lips and tongue and a kind of relaxed feeling from imbibing. Unfortunately, it tastes pretty awful, like slightly gritty water from a muddy puddle.

[cannedmilkandfruitypebbles]

In Dominica (no relation to the Dominican Republic) i was treated to Jahn Daniels. I was told it was a local rum. In reality it was local moonshine with about an ounce of Marijuana steeping in it.

[pikawicca]

"Sadiki," the local white lightning in Saudi Arabia. Absolutely vile, not nearly as good as Appalachian moonshine I've tried.

[JMF]

Some of the Chinese distilled spirits are so vile they taste like kerosene and acetone. Also had a drink once in Vietnam of snake blood mixed with three snake liqueur (three snakes in the bottle of liqueur.) gag.

The first time I ever got really drunk, not just a glass of wine or liqueur, I was 9th grade and took an inch out of every booze bottle in my folks liquor cabinet and put them in a large cocktail jug, mixed them up, and drank it. It was really hard to get down and really, really gross. And I regretted it for days and days.

[Sam Fujisaka]

See my entry above. I find the snake liquors in Vietnam to be perfectly OK.

[JMF]

Sam- it depends upon what they start with. The ones I had were real rough, backcountry ones made in small, and not well run, stills. Now that I am a distiller I look back in horror at the poison I drank.

[pacheeseguy]

Just got back from a resort in the Dom. Republic. I asked the bartender at the pool for two Mojitos.
I watched him take a glass out of the fridge. It was filled with mint plants in water.
Couldn't see what he was doing below the bar, but it looked like he was muddling and mixing,
so I wasn't too worried.
Up came our drinks, each containing a handful of mint stems. Leaves, stem and DIRT still attached.
We tossed them behind a plant once we got to the other end of the pool. Luckily they were free.

[danieljdwyer]

Definitely airag, a Mongolian beverage of fermented mare's milk, known as kumis in most of the rest of Central Asia. It is less alcoholic than light beer, about as sour as a real lambic or very sour oud bruin, and only very slightly carbonized. Other than that, it's really nothing like anything else I've ever tried.
When I was presented with a bowl of it to drink, I asked our guide what the slightly effervescent yellowish milky liquid was. He tried to reassure me by telling me it was like kefir. Since kefir falls on the short list of foods I find vile, I was far from reassured. Thankfully, it is, in actuality, nothing at all like kefir. After the first few gulps, I found myself actually enjoying it. Our hosts had initially been very put off by my inability to ride a horse, but I managed to win them over by enjoying several bowls of airag and knowing a bit about the Tibetan Buddhism they practice.
At various later points I tried commercial versions of the beverage, which are always called kumis or some variant of that. They are made from cow's milk, rather than mare's, and taste terrible.

[Sam Fujisaka]

The Viet rice wine/liquor with the whole, propped up python in the bottle might be weird to some. Quite good!

[alanbarnes]

And makes you virile!

[mojoeater]

I am a fan of Hendricks gin, which has a subtle infusion of cucumber. So when our fave bar in LA made cucumber-infused vodka, we were excited to try the results. After a week of staring at the jug behind the bar in anticipation, they finally served it up to the regulars.

Disgusting. I am not sure what they did to make it so foul, but from then on we used it for when people lost bets or to haze newbies.