Question for the drinkers

Even poor quality alcohol should get you drunk. Usually lower quality booze means you'll feel it more the next day, but it should still easily do the trick. So if you're not feeling a buzz off one LIT, odds are they're going heavy on the cola and light on the booze. Or they've done the old bar trick where they've watered down the booze in the bottle (or an employee has done that to hide the fact they've been stealing booze).

A lot of bars will also pour the cheapest booze possible into top shelf bottles.

A lot of bartenders HATE making LIT. There's way more labor involved in them and usually people tip the same dollar as they do for a beer or jack and coke. And it's notorious as a drink for people who want to get drunk for relatively cheap.

All that said, I'm a cheapass who will bring my own flask either in my car or into the club.

I would imagine the upscale clubs model is more like "get these guys liquored up and make our money through dances/VIPs" where the dives try to make more of their money through booze sales.

I think it just depends on the place

"I think it just depends on the place"

Totally, dives can pour short and high end places can as well.

For the most part, I only do shots...

Most likely at the dives you are getting watered down drinks, that's why your not getting a buzz.

Upscale clubs have better bartenders generally. And their liquor shelf isn't a bunch of rapper promoted liquor. They have a huge variety. Actually I've noticed most upper scaled clubs point blank don't use rap promoted liquor. So it may just be dives focus on what's popular with the youth (much cheaper that way), while the upscale focus on what they feel is good. And yes I have had better LIIT in upscale clubs vs downscale. Midscale, I had to get 6 LIIT to get tipsy. Of course that was back in 2012. Now, I haven't had drinks in years.

My experience is that's not related to the caliber of the club. Its often not repeatable at the same club.

I suspect most of the explanations people have postulated applied. Bartenders play favorites and pour heavy for some folks, then have to go light on others to even things out. Or they'll pour top shelf and charge well for their "good" customers & pour well into the top shelf bottle before they leave. I've been on both the right & wrong side of this at the same club. I'm sure there's some managers who instruct bartenders to pour light/float the liquor intentionally or wholesale use well brands / water down bottles.

Like others have said, even cheap alcohol should give you a buzz though. If you're not getting one, I generally blame the mix/pour. Its tough to tell if its the bartender or management though.

Sometimes it's the pour sometimes it can be body chemistry like if you haven't eaten in a while alcohol affects you quicker OTOH if you just ate a big meal you need more alcohol before it starts to affect you.

I think it depends entirely on the place. Cheap liquor is usually just as effective as hard liquor in getting a buzz on. Also, in my experience, no club (whether high end or a dive) is using top shelf liquor in Long Islands unless you make specific requests - which of course will cost you.

To add on:
Long Island Iced Tea is exactly the kind of drink I'd never order in a strip club: it's a hodge podge of alcohols, and often so sweet (although it shouldn't be) that with my already SC-dulled senses, it's hard to tell what in there and how much. I wouldn't order any sticky sweet, cola or fruit juice laden drink at the club. I mostly stick with bottom-shelf shots, and they seem to be a universally-fine option. When I order a top shelf shot I do it at the bar and watch them pour, although that is no guarantee of anything -- I've definitely noticed at times that my top shelf shot doesn't taste much better than my bottom shelf shot did, I think partially refilling good bottles with bad stuff is common. If I were to order a cocktail, it might be something like a Manhattan, but that's just me

I drink whiskey neat. No opportunity to water down my drink.

It's club and/or bartender dependent.

With that said, I agree with CMI. I drink my whiskey neat too. They can't water it down plus I can taste it to make sure I didn't get a well drink (aka the cheap stuff aka bottom shelf stuff).

ETA: if you don't want a well drink, you need to call out the liquor by brand name. Mixed drinks are always made with well liquor unless you ask otherwise. The difference is sometimes $1-2 more per oz of liquor. Most people don't put top shelf liquor in mixed drinks, but something from the middle price range is pretty common. I don't drink LI so I don't know what people generally put in those.

-->"The difference is sometimes $1-2 more per oz of liquor. Most people don't put top shelf liquor in mixed drinks"

Elliott: the difference between a well shot and top shelf shot in one of the clubs I go to is: $4.00 vs $14.00 (at least at happy hour). So it's a lot more than $1-$2 per oz of liquor, the alcohol itself is double the price. I don't know how they would scale the price of a top shelf long island vs a well long island, but a standard long island with 4 oz. of top shelf liquor could be super expensive. In that particular club, I'd expect to be paying at least $10 more per drink for top shelf liquor, even for a 1.5oz drink like a moscow mule or whatever.

I'll re-double my agreemnt -- shots, straight up alcohol like whiskey, best choice. Sweet drinks or drinks with lots of mixers -- terrible choice in a strip club, IMO. I go with shots because I want my strippers pounding drinks :)

Well my statement w.r.t dive vs upscale was a little general – as I mentioned I don't drink much especially these days; but my LI example was w.r.t. Tootsies vs the black dives I hit here in Miami; where a Tootsies LI consistently gave me a buzz vs a black-dive LI which almost never-did and why I stopped buying them at the black-dives I hit.

Papi, totally understand what you were getting at. But I think the explanations above are correct -- good or bad liquor will have roughly the same amount of alcohol, and if you got less buzzed, it's because your tolerance has gone up (has it?), or you ate before this SC trip but don't usually do that (did you?) or they put less alcohol in the drink.

Apropos "less alcohol in the drink", as a grandmaster-level alcohol drinker (lol!) in strip clubs, I'm just advising that a drink like a LI is a poor choice anyway, it makes it particularly easy to rip you off. Keep in mind that this is an industry that has ripping off the customer deep in its DNA -- hell, even for a 2-for-1 dance, they'll cut the two dances short, because heaven forbid the customer feel like he got a good deal for an extra 90 seconds, better to make the customer feel like we got another one over on him. And you're ordering a drink that makes it spectacularly easy to short the alcohol. I reckon the black dives did just that -- went heavier on the coke, etc.

As I mentioned – since I was not much of a drinker I didn't order a LI for it being a “quality drink” - it's just what gave me a buzz w/ just having one drink (it having multiple alcohols in it) vs having to have multiple drinks of something else (and not being a drinker did not what to have multiple drinks).

Also – the tolerance thing I don't think applies in my situation – I would hit Tootsies and the black-clubs on and off – not as if I only hit Tootsies for one period of time and then *just* hit the black clubs for another period of time – and I doubt that it would be something along the lines that every-time I had an LI at a black-club I was on a full-stomach and every-time I had an LI at Tootsies I was on an empty-stomach; etc.

I'm pretty sure what I was getting at the black-dives *was* watered-down big-time – b/c my reactions to the alcohol in both places was consistent over-time/multiple-visits.

They cheated you on the alcohol

^^^^Agreed. The LIT I've had are almost all liquor with just a splash of coke to give it the color of iced tea. I have been getting into shots of Jameson lately. I asked as I ordered my first one, so what is Jameson? The bartender girl smiled and said Holy Water. I knocked down the shot, and said to her, well them I must be somekinda evil, cause that shit is burning me up! 8O)

Subraman,

I didn't mean true top shelf. I meant something above bottom shelf, something in the middle. I'll spend the money there then spend the rest of the $$ difference on the dancer. I didn't mean for that to be as unclear as it might have have come across to some.