Cocktail Thursday: Bayou Bengal Edition

Dec 2, 2022 - 3:35 AM

If your Georgia Bulldogs are headed to the SEC championship game with a date against one of their perennial bugaboos you could probably use a drink. I can help you with that.

Kirby Smart has beaten a lot of different football coaches, coaching a lot of different teams in his time at the helm in Athens. In fact, he’s beaten Brian Kelly twice, just for good measure.

What he has never done as the head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs is beat LSU. In fact, the Bayou Bengals are one of only two SEC schools Coach Smart does not have a win over. The other, incidentally, is Ole Miss, but he’ll get the chance to cross the Rebels off the list next November..

And while Coach Smart has had ample opportunity to hoist the SEC championship game trophy in his time both as an assistant at Alabama and as the head coach in the Classic City, very few of his charges have had the same pleasure. Georgia has won a whole lot of football games since 2018. One they have not won in that span is the SEC title game. Only two players on the current roster were wearing the red and black when Georgia beat Auburn for its last SEC title in 2017, Robert Beal and Stetson Bennett.

With the Tigers’ disappointing loss to Texas A&M last week, LSU is out of playoff contention. And while the Tigahs have pride and an SEC Championship to play for, the ‘Dawgs have a great deal more at stake. Sure, Georgia is probably in the College Football Playoff win or lose. But at stake is likely the top spot in the playoff, and with it a chance to play a near-home game semifinal in the Peach Bowl. I expect the Red and Black to come out for this one motivated, focused, and looking for blood.

And what’s the perfect drink for when you’re out for blood from the Tigers?

A Tiger Blood Berliner Weiss from Broussard, Louisiana’s Parish Brewing. It’s an homage to a Louisiana tradition, the drive thru daiquiri stand. They don’t really have an analog anywhere else in American culture that I’m aware of. But Louisiana is plum tipsy with these establishments that serve frozen fruity cocktails to visitors on foot, in cars, on horseback or via airboat. Thanks to the state’s notoriously laissez faire alcohol laws it’s legal to serve alcohol to go as long as it’s mixed with ice and served with a lid and sealed straw (so as to not be an “open” container). It’s the best kind of legal: technically so.

This brew packs all the fruit slushy flavors of a drive thru daquari, with an 8% alcohol content that should keep you primed to party. A few of these will have you speaking in weird accents like Brian Kelly at an introductory pep rally, so drink responsibly. Until later. . .

Go ‘Dawgs!!!