I’m beginning to think every good cocktail has ginger beer in it
After kicking off Cocktail of the Week with the Moscow Mule I received some feedback from a reader who recommended this week’s cocktail. Specifically, they wanted to know what I would think of the Moscow Mule after having a Dark ‘n’ Stormy. Now, the Dark ‘n’ Stormy is a trademarked cocktail by Gosling’s Export Limited of Bermuda and it calls for using only Gosling’s Black Seal Rum. I didn’t have any of Gosling’s black rum and neither did any of the local grocers… So, this technically this can’t be a Dark ‘n’ Stormy. I guess we’ll call it a Dark ‘n’ Kraken, you’ll see why in a second.
The components
Dark ‘n’ Kraken
1.6 ounces (50 mL) of black rum
5 ounces (150 mL) of ginger beer
lime wedge
Pour the ginger beer into a glass over ice. Top off with black rum. Squeeze in the lime wedge and drop in.
These were good! I don’t think they’re as good as Moscow Mules though. I’d like a little more lime flavor to help with the sweetness of the rum and ginger beer. In the future I might add more lime juice and cut out some of the ginger beer.
Our bar is still pretty small. I’ve only been looking at cocktails with ingredients that we already have. So, my choices are a little limited until I start going out and expanding our liquor choices. With such a limited selection of I had to find a cocktail that was either vodka, rum, bourbon, or gin. Since the last two cocktails have had bourbon in them I wanted to avoid any cocktails with that as the main ingredient. I originally was interested going with that old standard, gin and tonic but, D vetoed it as not being sweet enough for her liking. Another search through the bartending guide and a few more vetoes left us with the Seabreeze.
The ingredients
Seabreeze
1 1/4 oz vodka
1 splash of grapefruit juice
1 splash of cranberry juice
ice cubes
Build the drink over ice in a highball glass or mason jars if you don’t have highball glasses…
There were a few issues with this my construction of this cocktail. First, I purchased just cranberry juice, as in no added sugars or other juices. This was a mistake. Pure cranberry juice is very bitter and very sour and I would never, ever purchase this again. In the future I’ll make sure I use cranberry cocktail juice instead. Second, a splash is not very descriptive… I tried doing a splash of each as the directions indicated and ended up with hardly any cocktail and what was there was undrinkable. Some changes were going to have to be made!
Seabreeze False(b)logic edition
1 1/4 oz vodka
1 splash of cranberry juice
grapefruit juice
splash of simple syrup (optional)
ice cubes
Place ice in glass, pour in vodka and cranberry juice, fill glass with grapefruit juice.
This tweaked version turned out much better than the original! The fresh grapefruit juice really balanced out the tartness of the cranberry juice, if your grapefruit juice is not sweet enough, or you just like your cocktails sweeter a little simple syrup should help.
D loved this drink and wished we had a nice front porch on a beach house to be drinking them from… I promised to make them for her again as soon as I figure out how to get the beach house. I loved this cocktail. The seabreeze is simple, refreshing and delicious. For a summer evening I think I’d prefer these to a peach julep.
D had an idea for our next cocktail. One that surprised me, as D is not a fan of the primary ingredient of the drink: mint. She said she wanted to try these Mint Juleps she had seen in a recent issue of Bon Appetit. I protested; it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to make a drink she wasn’t going to want. She informed me that these mint juleps also had peach in them and so would taste better. Also, I was to make hers without any mint…
I tried to tell her then that it wasn’t a mint julep at that point. I don’t even think it was a julep of any kind. It was just peach and bourbon. She was insistent and since I like Mint Juleps I went ahead with the drink.
The ingredients
Peach Julep (serves 2)
1/4 cup Ginger syrup
1 ripe peach, peeled, sliced
4 sprigs mint plus more for garnish
4 oz bourbon
2 oz lemon juice
6 oz ginger beer
For each cocktail muddle 1/2 of the peach slices and 2 of the mint sprigs in a julep cup or double old fashioned glass (I just used my old cocktail glasses;) add 2 oz of bourbon, 1 oz of lemon juice, and 1/2 oz of ginger syrup. Fill glasses with crushed ice and add 2-3 oz of ginger beer. Garnish with mint sprig
(Recipe found in the August 2013 Bon Appetit)
These were really great! The only real problem was that I didn’t use enough ice. I like to think of Juleps as boozy snow cones and I just didn’t crush enough ice during the prep… The muddled peach and mint was tasted great and added a lot of flavor to the drink. D enjoyed hers as well but thought it was a little strong. This too could have been prevented with more ice.
My Beer of the Week series was fun and it taught me a lot about the vast diversity, complexity, and depth of beers in the world. It was also very, very delicious. But, beer isn’t the only form of alcohol and despite its maturity as a medium it is often seen as the lowbrow option of alcohol consumption. At the top though, the classy form of consumption?
Cocktails.
D has recently taken an interest in cocktails and in our new place we’ve got ourselves the beginning of a bar, and a bartender’s manual. It just made sense to use this opportunity to learn about how to make cocktails.
Our private bar doesn’t have a name yet.
In San Diego D and I had our first Moscow Mules and we really liked the drink. In Seattle this year at a tourist trap bar we fell in love with the cocktail. (I know it is the last place you think you’d find a good cocktail, but Seattle Underground’s Moscow Mule was fantastic.) What makes the Moscow Mule so delicious is the interplay of ginger beer and lime. A sour, peppery, sweetness is not a taste profile that reads well BUT, it tastes really good. My first foray into bar tending turned out pretty good. In the future though I think I’m going to use a spicier ginger beer. Cool and refreshing these are great for long summer days!
