MxMo XL: Ginger

Like other stuff, Mixology Monday happens every month, but is at least 7,000% more fun than paying your rent. This month, RumDood challenges us to find a use for ginger, in any of its various forms. Ginger is a wonderful thing. Its mere presence elevates a run-of-the-mill stir fry towards the awesome and beyond that, it's versatile and easily fermentable. It's worth noting that having ginger hair is often treated as a kind of social disability in Scotland, but combining the physical trait with the root can be a powerful thing.

Fresh root ginger is, as we've already decided, great. The problem is that fresh root ginger is slightly troublesome when it comes to drinks. Muddling it takes a lot of effort and adds time and icky bits of ginger into a drink - we have a cocktail at work that involves muddling fresh ginger and it sells by the hundred. Every time someone orders one, another bartender starts crying, because basically it's a lot of faf for not a lot of benefit. There are other options - ginger beer or ale are the most obvious, but you could use a liqueur like Domaine de Canton (if you could buy it in the UK) or a syrup or jam.

Yes, jam. We will make jam out of anything.

Jams offer a slightly different sweetening agent for cocktails, adding sweetness, texture and specific flavour notes without adding too much volume into the mix. They're a great alternative to liqueurs, particularly in non-alcoholic drinks.

So, yeah. Ginger jam. It's the future.

La Roux

40ml Courvoisier Exclusif
10ml Campari
2 barspoons Ginger Jam
25ml lemon juice
Dash egg white

In a mixing glass, stir the jam with the lemon juice until it dissolves. Add the other ingredients and shake with ice. Fine-strain into a chilled coupette and garnish with a thin slice of root ginger on the rim.

Twenty One: Blackberry

If David Embury is to be believed, mixed drinks fall roughly into two categories - cocktails of the sour type, and those of the aromatic type. The former covers drinks that include - surprise! - a sour element like lemon or lime juice while the latter comprises recipes with some kind of aromatized or fortified wine component, such as vermouth. But I don't think that these two categories have to be mutually exclusive. I don't mean drinks that contain both aromatic elements and sour elements - there are some, most notably the Corpse Reviver - more I think that it is often possible to present both a sour version and an aromatic version of the same drink. There will be differences in the two versions of the drink, but the overall flavor profile will pretty much the same.

I'm going to use a Bramble to illustrate the point. It's a gin-based drink invented by Dick Bradsell in London in the early part of the 1980s.

Bramble

45ml gin
25ml lemon juice
10ml gomme syrup
15ml Creme de Mure

Stir the first three ingredients with crushed ice in an old-fashioned glass. Float the Creme de Mure and garnish with a lemon wedge and a couple of blackberries.

*** 

The thing with sour drinks is that they're not actually sour. It's all about that balance between sweet and sour, finding that spot between zingy and refreshing, and avoiding gum-sucking acidity. The immediate hit is something that is going to be lost in the aromatic version, but that doesn't mean that we're going to lose the citrus notes entirely.

Blackberry

50ml gin
15ml dry vermouth
10ml Limoncello
4 kaffir lime leaves
15ml Creme de Mure

Stir the first three ingredients with cubed ice in an old-fashioned glass. Float the Creme de Mure and garnish with a blackberry and a lime leaf.

*** 

And there we go - complementary sour and aromatic cocktails based on a single flavour profile.

Twenty: Last Night's Party

You get asked to come up with a lot of drinks on the fly, working behind a bar. Most times, these drinks tend to be fairly simple - diverting, but not that remarkable. Every once in a while, though, you stumble on something golden.

Last Night's Party

30ml Bols Cherry Brandy
45ml Absolut Raspberri
30ml lemon juice
10ml Orgeat
Dash egg white

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with an orange zest.

Eighteen: West India Company

If I'm honest, this started out as more of a kitchen special. I recently had the privilege of having my flat inspected by my landlord and in my attempts to make the place look more safely habitable, I turned all kinds of interesting things. There were newspapers dating back to 2007, a stack of comics as big as a five-year-old child, and most intriguingly for the purposes of this post, an airtight jar full of vanilla chai teabags. Masala chai is a blend of tea and aromatic spices that originated in the Indian Subcontinent, usually served heavily sweetened with milk. The practice of adding spices, combined with the increased proportions of milk and sugar, drew disapproval from India's colonial masters but the popularity of spiced tea seems to have outlasted the Empire. These days, masala chai style drinks are available in coffee shops everywhere - Starbucks, Costa, the usual suspects - though the actually chai component tends to be a bit of a cheat. Starbucks, for example, uses a spiced and sweetened tea-based syrup for its Chai Lattes and other commercially available syrups and teabags tend to include nontraditional flavours like chocolate or vanilla.

Just like my teabags! For some reason, I immediately thought of adding rum.

West India Company

50ml 10 Cane Rum
50ml sweetened vanilla chai (black)
25ml lemon juice

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into ice-filled glass. Garnish with a lemon zest twist.

Seventeen: Fifth Crown

Today - yes, today, look at that topicality - is Cinco de Mayo, a date that carries significance for many on the American continent. For Mexicans (and Californians), it is the anniversary of their victory against the odds at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Curiously enough, the French don't seem to mark the occasion. For Americans, it is the day on which they consume the most tequila in the year. Mexico's contribution to the world of alcohol extends further than tequila and mezcal - Mexican beer accounts for at least one of the UK's biggest selling bottled brands and provides a handy byword for exotic yet accessible brews. Surely, it'd be foolish not to combine the two.

Fifth Crown

40ml José Cuervo Tradicional
20ml Creme de Mure
30ml lime juice
Top with Corona

Shake the first three ingredients with ice and strain into an ice-filled highball. Top up with the beer and garnish with a lime wheel.