Pepsi Maximum Challenge: Romulan Ale

While visiting relatives in Oklahoma, I was offered the opportunity to purchase a mason jar full of "authentic, home brewed moonshine" in the flavor of my choice for something like $6-9. I was concerned about the potential health hazards, as I'd never dared much past 100 proof, and envisioned anti-freeze-induced blindness, hallucinations and/or blood poisoning in my future. Still, how could I pass this up? An hour later, I was treated to heavily watered down Everclear "distilled" through supposedly having been boiled in a pot, with cheap, weak artificial flavoring. Splitting the jar, I barely brushed against a buzz.

This brings us to "Romulan Ale," the blue alien alcohol so potent that in the Star Trek future, it's outlawed by the Federation of Planets. While I've heard of more terrestrial mixed drink concoctions intended to replicate the e.t. juice, this is a studio approved energy drink available for sale wherever geeky bullshit is sold. It goes down very mild and slightly fruity, somewhat like those girly low-calorie energy shots. I've tasted far worse.

The problem is, this is supposed to be Romulan Ale, described by Webster's as "an alcoholic beverage brewed especially by rapid fermentation from an infusion of malt with the addition of hops" ... from Romulus. There are no hops here. This is without malt. This is a tepid energy drink. Further, Romulan Ale is supposed to be the gutrot of choice five-hundred years from now. That means this energy drink is further evidence that everything about Star Trek is pussy, and that Tyler Durden would shit out the Shat. We're talking Edward Norton here, and not Derek Vinyard Norton, but unnamed-narrator-who-kicks-his-own-ass Norton. Regardless of how the fight goes, if you can consider Jared Leto a worthy opponent, you're limp but manageable, and yet still more manly than the entire Star Trek universe (who creams over the Shat getting replaced by a guy whose closest contemporary would be the dude who played Human Torch in Fantastic Four.)

In summary, Romulan Ale is an energy drink for little girls and Klingons, the latter of whom I will drink under the table and draw Cardassian cocks on their cheeks in Sharpie marker while they're passed out and drooling.