A Sci-Fi Bar Crawl Through “Mass Effect: The Official Cocktail Book”

The Mass Effect video games are some of my favorite sci-fi content and one of my partner’s favorite video game series (we named our cat Tali!), so when we learned about Mass Effect: The Official Cocktail Book, we were pretty excited. There are a number of bars in the games that serve as backdrops for side missions or lore building, and a few are directly involved in the games’ main plot. Some of the fandom’s most popular memes or in-jokes take place in the bars or involve alcoholic drinks. And since it is a far-future sci-fi series, there’s a lot of potential for some really fun and interesting on-theme beverages!

Insight Editions

The book is very pretty, with nicely staged color photographs of all of the drinks. It’s organized by location, with each chapter focusing on one in-game bar and the drinks ostensibly served there. There is generally some kind of theme tying those drinks together, such as a particular ingredient or flavor profile. Each drink has a little blurb about it, tying it in to the franchise’s lore; these are written in the voice of an in-universe character (made-up for this book) as a fun little bit of immersion. And while the book does focus on drinks, there are a few bar food recipes included as well.

We tried a few different drinks and one of the snack recipes. Here’s what we thought of each.

Ryncol Cocktail

My partner has a deep and abiding love of Pop Rocks, so the fact that you rim this drink with them was an immediate tally in the “let’s try this one” column. Using honey to stick the Pop Rocks to the glass worked really well, and I’d definitely use that trick when creating my own drinks in the future. The actual cocktail—a mix of vodka, blue curaçao, melon liqueur, and lime juice—was a little underwhelming; I think because our expectation was for ryncol to be sour, and this had a more fruity flavor.

The Ryncol cocktail.

Blasto Sting

This one was also rimmed with Pop Rocks! We picked this one because of that and the Blasto reference. The idea and visual of this one are fantastic, but the flavor profile was unfortunately a miss for us. It is a mix of sour grape schnapps, white rum, and crème de cacao, with a visual garnish of white chocolate cream liqueur. The chocolate and cream liqueurs with the grape schnapps was a bit weird and not exactly pleasant. If there was a way to substitute flavors, one or the other, to achieve the same visual result, maybe it could be fixed.

Emergency Induction Port

We liked this one a lot! It’s like a cold hot toddy, with brandy and lemon juice as the primary flavors, sweetened with simple syrup. I legitimately have made this one multiple times since we first tried it; it’s a really good, simple drink.

N7 Shooter

A layered shot is always visually pleasing. This one tasted a bit like a cherry cordial candy, actually, with layers of grenadine, horchata cream liqueur, and coffee liqueur. I do feel like the ratio of grenadine was a bit high; some tweaking might be in order to suit your personal tastes.

Slumwater

Another visually fun drink! This one uses tonic water to add a blacklight-induced glow. My partner thought it was great, no notes. I personally hate the bitterness of quinine, so I had to swap the tonic for club soda, which meant mine didn’t glow, but with that switch it was pretty good. There are a lot of fruit flavors, but it wasn’t too sweet. It is quite strong, though, containing white rum, tequila, gin, vodka, green apple schnapps, melon liqueur, pineapple juice, lemon juice, and tonic.

The Slumwater was difficult to photograph, but the glow was effective in-person!

Paragade Punch

This is such a college party drink! You use any blue sports drink and add bitters, vodka, blue curaçao, and grenadine. It’s not terrible, and depending on the flavor of “blue,” it can taste pretty good. You could also boost it up a little by using a flavored vodka.

EDI’s Curry Snacks

This was the one bar snack we made from the book, and it was really good! Pretty sweet, with a nice heat from the spices. It is simply mixed nuts coated with honey and curry spices, lightly roasted to get the glaze to set. One tip if you happen to make them: Let them cool completely on the pan, otherwise they stick together too much and instead of bite-sized snacking you just have a wad of nuts fused together with the sugary glaze.

There were a lot of other recipes (for both drinks and snacks!) that we wanted to try but haven’t gotten around to. One of the downsides of the book is that there are a lot of different ingredients required, which can get pricey if you’re interested in trying multiple drinks in different chapters. Overall, though, this is a solid book. Fun fact: The recipe developer is Cassandra Reeder, who made the Geeky Chef cookbooks I’ve mentioned in a few of my other articles!

Have you tried any of the recipes in Mass Effect: The Official Cocktail Book? Tell us what you think in the comments below!