Halloween may have come and gone on this site without much fanfare, but what kind of host would I be if I didn’t try to make things up to you?
I noticed from the front page we were a little whisky heavy, having gone through a trio of Springbank, Knob Creek, and Macallan. I always try to pick items to review that mix things up, and so I found myself looking through my collection of minis. Suddenly, the Captain Morgan Jack-O Blast and its crayon-orange appearance shouted at me from the shelf. “I’m probably terrible,” it said, “But maybe I’ll make for good content!”
“The strange off-notes of Jack-O Blast cut through the liqueur like a hot knife through pumpkin pie. ”
So first and foremost, I do smile a little bit when I read the name of this stuff. JACKOBLAST! My life is made a little brighter by the image of a pirate gleefully loading pumpkins into a cannon and laughing maniacally as the fuse burns down. Kaboom, suckers! Anything that attempts to make our doomed world a little more goofy and carefree is appreciated.
But is it good? No. And you probably knew that already. I was ready to evaluate JACKOBLAST figuring it would be another scummy rum trying to vaguely pave over its shortcomings with some hints of pumpkin. Not so. It’s better to think of this as being primarily a pumpkin-flavored dessert beverage that, in certain moments, may remind you of rum. It’s a liqueur for sure.
JACKOBLAST comes out of the gate cloyingly, bracingly sweet. The kind of sweet where—if someone didn’t color the container of the beverage in the shade of orange you’d find on a traffic cone—you might not fully be sure of what you were tasting beyond sugar. It’s like a fruit gummy in that respect, where you want to believe that the red-colored ones taste like cherry, but then someone blindfolds you and you suddenly realize that nothing means anything anymore.
Things settle down a bit as you roll it around your mouth, and sure enough, the pumpkin comes through. For brief moments here and there, I thought, “this isn’t terrible.” If you have a sweet tooth, Jack-O Blast wants to be your buddy. If third graders could drink, this would probably find its way into a lot of lunch boxes.
But boy, do the strange off-notes cut through Jack-O Blast like a hot knife through pumpkin pie. Beyond the pumpkin, you’ll get punched in the nose with raw alcohol if you sniff it hunting for anything more. At only 30% ABV, there’s not much throat burn to speak of, but it’s deeply unusual in terms of what will jump out at you as you roll it around your palate. Wet, juicy tobacco? Bleh. Pencil shavings? That’s weird. Burnt plastic? Yuck.
Swallow the liquid, and the jig is finally up. All of the fun pumpkin shit races out of your mouth as fast as it can and leaves behind only the inexplicable, chemical-laden aftertaste of bad rum. I was instantly reminded of my old nemesis Bacardi—one never forgets that particular kind of scorched plastic flavor. Tasting this and keeping notes is like starring in your very own horror movie, as you sense yourself moving through the starry-eyed, “What could go wrong?” idealism of Act I and into the “Oh, this is where it gets very bad!” of Act III. Moments of levity are punctuated by sudden unpleasantness.
Or another metaphor: my 3-year-old niece bit into a glow stick this Halloween. I mean, who hasn’t thought about it? Our reptile minds have high hopes for the taste of bright orange liquid. Of course, the little one had a small freak-out when she realized maybe for the first time in her young life that expectation is different from reality. “It’s yucky, and I can still taste it!” she sobbed, flailing her tiny arms. In my mind, drinking a mini of Jack-O Blast is probably the closest reasonable thing you can do as an adult if you want to understand what her experience must have been like.
