How To Make Always Sunny’s Riot Punch... Gin

It's never a good idea to model your drinking behavior after anything the gang does on It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. However, when the opportunity arose to make Riot Punch — grain alcohol and Kool-Aid with a hearty dose of malevolence — with the help of a newly-acquired gin-making kit, we decided it'd be stupid not to make this totally awesome idea even more awesome. We popped off our inhibitions-laden shirt and threw on our party duster to make Riot Punch Gin. 

Step One: Lay out your ingredients. Kool-Aid, juniper berries, botanicals, a funnel, a strainer, a stray flask, and some grain alcohol. When it comes to grain alcohol, don't bother wasting your time seeking out the "good stuff." There is no good stuff. It all tastes like hand sanitizer. 

Step Two: Add in juniper berries and botanicals. These give gin that distinct pine-like taste alongside the sweet, full flavor. They are some robust and complex ingredients that will surely drown in all this grain alcohol and Kool-Aid.

Step Three: When you're making a powerful and borderline lethal drank, purple is the way to go. Slip some of that sweet purple Kool-Aid powder into your sluice. Side note: playing some nice slow jams in the background really helps. Like that soulful D'Angelo song where you can see his entire junk in the music video. 

Step Four: Make sure all the bad stuff and all the good stuff distribute evenly. Beware of dripping. 

Step Five: As you let your Riot Punch Gin sit overnight, you should take the chance to reflect upon your life. Not in a bad way, but also not in a good way.

Step Six: By straining out the juniper berries, leaves, and botanicals, you're left with some Grade A Riot Punch Purple Drank. 

Step Seven: Feel free to add more Kool-Aid for a nice, natural purple color.  Like it says on my great-grandfather's tombstone: "You can never have too much Kool-Aid in your drank."

Step Eight: Remember in step five where you kinda just sit back and examine your life to try to wrap your head around all the choices you've made that have brought you to this very moment? Do that more. 

After a couple more days of sitting in a dark corner, we decided to try it. What did Riot Punch Gin taste like? Well, here's what it didn't taste like. It didn't taste like gin. It didn't taste like berries. It didn't taste like Kool-Aid. It didn't taste like flowers. It didn't taste sweet. It was like a gym mat had been soaked in Robitussin and squeezed out into an old flower pot. It burned like lava and absolutely sucked the moisture out of the lips. The lips that drank Riot Punch Gin were lips that had gone to hell and back.


When Jeremy Glass isn't busy punishing his body, he enjoys spending time with his 46-year-old son, Derek.