Missbehave
September 2007

GRAY KANGAROO

Being an editorial assistant is really fun because it’s totally glamorous and lucrative. Actually, not really at all. What it does do is make you a little bit of a lush, ‘cause liquor makes poverty hurt less. So you can imagine how stoked I was that I no longer have to puke in my mouth every time I drink my non-top-shelf alcohol.

I filtered my good old standby Georgi through this awesome contraption called the Gray Kangaroo, and magically, it no longer tasted like it was made in a bathtub by some dude named Abner. Now my whole bar is filtered and since I refill this empty bottle I found behind my house, no one knows it isn’t Grey Goose.

A blind taste test [me, Sunday afternoon, sleep mask] proved that the Gray Kangaroo filter makes rubbing alcohol quality booze into rapper-endorsement grade liquor.

This is an invention from God (with help from some drunks, maybe). It removes impurities, makes hangovers less brutal, and you can get faced for cheap without having to put out. Buy it for $29.99 at graykangaroo.com – Olivia Allin

Gadgets & Gear.
Gray Kangaroo Liquor Filter

Way back in our college days, our starving student budgets meant we were well acquainted with low-end liquors. Nowadays we’re buying liquors with a little more refinement. Sure this means forking out some extra cash, but it’s worth it to be drinking something which doesn’t taste like toilet bowl cleaner.

Little did we know, with a personal liquor filter, we could have turned all that cheap shitty booze into something actually drinkable.

The Gray Kangaroo Liquor Filter is the philosophers stone of drinking, capable of turning unappealing brands like Georgi, Gordon’s, and Palo Viejo into pure alcoholic gold.

It works sort of like a water filter, except the filtration material is specifically designed to filter alcohol. To use it, just stick your cheap booze in one end, an empty bottle in the other, invert the whole thing and wait for your booze to trickle through, leaving its dissolved organic particles behind. Each filter can purify up to 50 liters of any type of liquor, enough to last you a long while (and if it isn’t, please consider AA) and replacement filters are just $12.95.

The upshot of this is that by removing the impurities in poorly-made liquors, you can drastically improve their taste. If your plans for the evening require primo hooch, you can filter the same batch multiple times for better results, making your cheap swill comparable with a top-shelf brand. And since the stuff you’re filtering out is a major factor in headaches and nausea, your purified liquor is less likely to leave you with a hangover.

LINK

We made friends with Hotmovies, another Philadelphia company, when we went to their offices and did a GK demo. They were so impressed they decided to blog about it.

Gray Kagnaroo Personal Liquor Filter

Anyone who’s spent so much as a semester in college knows the bitter sting of bad liquor. You get what’s cheap, you get what’s avaliable. I half-remember passing grain alcohol around a dorm room in Delaware, maybe Maryland, just hoping I wouldn’t end up blind. Not to mention the hang-over.

I’d like to think I’ve come a ways since then but the “bar” area of my counter top tells a different story. Four years removed from college life and I’m still just buying what’s cheap and what’s avaliable.

The guys at Gray Kangaroo had the same problem but rather than buy better gin they built the Liquor Filter. You just insert an empty bottle in one end and a cheap bottle in the other and filter it back and forth three times. The bite is gone; alcohol goes down like water.

The quality of any liquor depends on how many times it’s been filtered. That, plus the fancy bottle and state tax, is what you’re being charged for. Now that you can turn anything into Grey Goose with Gray Kangaroo my cheap liquor habits are an asset.

Admittedly, my first time out was a mess. Just flipping bottles of tequila upside down, whatever your best intentions, can be a disaster. Use the liquor filter over the sink and away from open flame. Otherwise the apparatus itself is easy enough to maintain. It’s dishwasher friendly and stores comfortably in any cabinet.

The Gray Kangaroo Liquor Filter is the only essential for the serious drinker.

-Johnny Zito

Liquor Snob.com
Sept 2005

The fine folks at Gray Kangaroo have us convinced. Their product really works. It was able to take the most evil swill of a vodka we could find, and make it drinkable. Keep an eye out here at Liquor Snob as we test it out more, including Pepsi challenges comparing filtered vodka to the high-end stuff. And if you want to pick up a Gray Kangaroo of your own, head on over to the Gray Kangaroo site and tell 'em the Liquor Snob sent you.

See the First Article
See the Second Article

Maxim Magazine
Holiday Gift Guide
Dec 2005

Penthouse Magazine

Dec 2005

DRINK UP

f you love to drink, but don’t want to spring for top-shelf liquor, invest in the Gray Kangaroo Personal Liquor Filter. The Gray Kangaroo works with vodka, whiskey, rum, gin, and tequila to remove particulate matter and harmful toxins, leaving you with filtered liquor that they say is competitive with brands that cost three times the price.

Clinton Chronicle, NYC

August 2005

"Spoons Says: "The Greatest Scientific Breakthrough Since Penicillin!"

by Spoons, Saloon Columnist

Imagine a device that let you put Hershey's chocolate in one end and dispensed fine Swiss Truffles from the other end. Or, more to the point, let you put dingy old pennies in one end and out came gold bars from the other. Well that in a nutshell is what you get when you use the astonishing Gray Kangaroo Personal Liquor filter. You put lousy cheap booze in one end, and out comes premium quality liquor at a fraction of the cost. That's the promise they make and after a month of experimentation Spoons assures you that it works.

The Gray Kangaroo has been described as a Brita for Booze. Sort of, but it is way more powerful than a water filter. The Gray Kangaroo gives the consumer the ability to turn a cheap $7 bottle of vodka into a product as clean and smooth as any top shelf $30 brand like Skyy, Van Gogh or Grey Goose. Just run the cheap stuff through the filter four or five times (the cheaper the stuff the more it benefits from repeated passes) and you are using the same filtering technology that the expensive brands use, but at a fraction of the cost. The device saves you a fortune because each one can filter 50 liters of liquor - including multiple passes - and it sells for under $30. Refill filters cost only about $11.

This is a personal money machine, allowing anyone to enjoy top-shelf quality beverages for bottom dollar. We here at Spoons Central experimented with a brand of vodka so cheap that it actually had particulate matter floating in it. It smelled like fuel and a sip straight up made us gag. Perfect to put these Gray Kangaroo people to the test. One pass through the filter and the vodka was noticeably cleaner and less harsh. By the second pass it was getting smoother. After four passes, all the stink was eliminated. A fifth pass, and what we had made the smoothest Apple Martini we have ever tasted. And the Bloody Marys were superb. This device is pure genius. We will never buy top brands of vodka again.

The Gray Kangaroo works nicely with all liquors including whiskey, rum, gin tequila, but all signs point to vodka faring the best. If you filter the other booze too much you risk driving out their flavor. But a pass or two does improve any cheap hooch. And the makers offer this guarantee: "If you don't notice a substantial improvement in the quality of your liquor after you filter it, send your Gray Kangaroo back to us within 30 days and we'll give you your money back with a handwritten letter of apology!"

If you have Internet access, Spoons ardently suggests that you look at their exquisitely ribald website: graykangaroo.com. There you will find all the info you could possibly want as well as photos, wallpaper, press reports and uproarious, impromptu videos of people taking "before and after filtering" taste tests.

Punk Rock Confidential

Summer 2005

"Give Me, Give Me, Give Me. I would like some more!"

Are you an Absolut drunk living on a Royal Gate budget? Do you have to mix the low-grade Popov in a gallon of tonic water before it's drinkable? If the answer to either of these questions is "bleeaargh!", then you could use some cleaner hooch. The Gray Kangaroo Liquor Filter, like a modern day Jesus, turns corner-store swill into a crisp, purified guzzle.

Maxim Radio
Sirius Channel 145

June 2005

"The Bower Show"
Quotes from the show:

"[The Gray Kangaroo is] possibly a be-all end-all to crappy drinking of crappy hard liquor ever again"

"This makes a cheap bottle into a magnificent bottle"

"You're like a magician with this thing"

"Oh my god, dude that's so smooth!"

"I could probably drink a quart of that in five minutes."

"The difference is amazing!"

"You could use [the filtered vodka] as a chaser"

"Seriously the taste is unbelievable. This is not crap. Watching you guys filter this and then partaking in it: this is definitely not crap. This definitely works."

"People, we're telling you that this thing works, it's not a gimmick."

Laura the Producer: "I'm a wine drinker, I'll drink mixed drinks but I would never drink vodka straight, but I would take shots of this."

Archive:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Best clip: taste tests, amazement, etc.

Stuff Magazine

July 2005

"Best Hangover Killer"

Being a cheap-ass booze whore is in again. (Mother will be so pleased.) The liquored-up folks at Gray Kangaroo were sick of slugging bottle after bottle of bottom-shelf gin and vodka that went down like fire-breathing crabs, so they’ve decided to do something about it. Quit drinking? Oh, no, let’s not get hysterical here. To protect their brains from bargain bleach, they created the Personal [Liquor] Filter ($30), which strips crappy booze of all its crappy impurities.

Don’t expect it to turn Georgi into Ketel One, but your esophagus won’t feel like you just swallowed Lava Man’s load either. The gizmo doesn’t effect the alcohol content at all, so your liver will still get to absorb all of those noxious toxins that promise to deliver you to an early grave. Why should the filter have all the fun?

Juxtapoz Magazine

March / April 2005 #55

"Shaken Not Stirred"

Just when you thought martinis couldn't get any classier, Gray Kangaroo introduces the GK3, a new personal liquor filter that should be the next accessory to your wish list, along with you monogrammed flask, your custom Zippo, and your bad attitude. Kick down for one of these bad boys and you'll save hella money on booze. No more need for Absolut; now you can buy Royal Gate vodka for a fraction of the cost and run it through the ol' kangaroo's pouch a couple times with your Midas Touch. The end product will be so smooth, so lacking in particulate matter, that you can safely double-fist all night without even puking the next morning. Salud!

G4 TECH TV

March 2005

"Screensavers"
Nearly 2 years after the public first heard about the GK on "Unscrewed", Tech TV ran another segment on the product.

Quote:
"The final verdict is that we tried it out, it tastes better, it works. If you’re really cheap and like to drink the cheap stuff, this is the way to do it. The filter, you can run, I believe fifty liters of booze before you need to replace it "

Modern Drunkard Magazine

Dec / Jan 2005

"Four Nights in Philly"

…The night was capped off with an impromptu science-experiment involving two shots of cheap vodka. One shot was run through the Gray Kangaroo Personal Liquor Filter, an ingenious device invented and sold by the renaissance men of the East Coast Office. I drank both shots, noted that there was indeed a marked difference, saluted their ingenuity...

…To celebrate my ingenuity, Nick and I decided to hold another Gray Kangaroo Taste Test. I tried unfiltered Taaka Vodka and it tasted like paint thinner, then I tried it filtered and it tasted like something suitable for celebrating our respective genius…

Synthesis Magazine

Feb 21 2005

"Pink Elephants are a Thing of the Past!"

It’s the end of the month and bills, food but mostly alcohol have drained your funds. Like a resourceful student, you save money by skipping breakfast, maybe lunch, and hitting up the cheapest taco trucks for dinner. All this sacrifice just to be able to buy the most booze you can, to keep the buzz flowing throughout the weekend’s events. Taaka, White Wolf, and even Ray’s own brand of gin and vodka are by far the cheapest alcohol-in-quantity handles you can find. But wait! There is something you can do to ease the strain on your liver and stomach, while making the liquor taste top shelf all at the same time. Revolutionizing the drunkards one lush at a time, the Grey Kangaroo is making an impression on college students everywhere.
Read the whole article here.

Vice Magazine

Dec 2004

"Tidbits"

This…little invention turns Night Train into Courvoisier using an incredibly dense series of filters that take out all the impurities. Just pour whatever you want in the top and wait five minutes for incredibly clean booze to come out the bottom. Kind of a waste of time if you have a job, but when getting drunk seems prohibitively expensive this thing is a godsend. Oh yeah, and hangovers are about 90% less harsh the next day.

Philadelphia Magazine

Jan 2005

"A Britta for Booze"

This year, millions of college students will frequent parties stocked with the cheapest alcohol imaginable – poorly refined liquors that cause hangovers worse than the taste of the products themselves. But according to the local inventors of the Gray Kangaroo, the world's first personal liquor filter, their brainchild will filter out the impurities found in inexpensive brands, making them taste – and feel – more top-shelf. You pour a bottle of booze through the GK's replaceable filter that's filled with "Moonrocks", a proprietary blend of particles containing carbon, and the filtered liquor trickles out the bottom, purportedly cleaner and more palatable.

Skeptical, we filtered some entry-level liquors through a prototype. The results were remarkable. While the Jim Beam did not transmogrify into Knob Creek, it was smooth, as were the Jacquin's rum and vodka. The Banker's Club gin became indistinguishable from Bombay (though not Sapphire). Plus, the drinkers felt pretty good the next morning. At press time, which corresponded with exam week, the first GK shipment from the assembly line in Turkey was expected to arrive in Philadelphia any day, and orders were already brisk, especially from e-mail address ending in .edu.

Greenville Gazette

Mid 2004

"The Link "

Sound the Horn of Plenty! If you're like me, you've been searching for the perfect gift for your drunk uncle Bob, the one whose idea of Christmas caroling is having a bean burrito then hiring a taxicab to drive him all over campus mooning sorority girls. It's difficult to address this situation by visiting your local Spencer's at the mall, but luckily I have the solution.

It's called the Gray Kangaroo, and it's a liquor filter that will make that rotgut Burnett's vodka tasting like Belvedere. Basically you pour your plastic handle of spirits through the magical portal, and it comes out tasting top shelf and cuts down on your hangover too.

I've done approximately nine months of testing on this particular model, and I'm glad to report that it works with all the liquors I've filtered; whiskey, rum, even flavored vodkas. Check them out at www.graykangaroo.com, only if you're at least 15.

Las Vegas Weekly

Mid 2004

"Attack of the Bottlesnachers"

After stopping in at one of the two swanky bars at either end of the ballroom, the laminated masses – maybe 500 or so – gawk at tables lining the back wall: swag from the handful of local LA-based bands serving as soundtrack to the weekend; Modern Drunkard gear including T-shirts, hats, flags, lighters and flasks; Drinkstuff.com taps and RU-21 Hangover Supplements; and Backseat Conceptions merchandise including T-shirts, poster, stickers, Hot Rod condoms and Gray Kangaroo Alcohol Filters, which as LVW can testify, are remarkably effective gadgets for making cheap booze taste top shelf-esque and help eliminate hangovers.