A celebration of ginger. Ginger beer and ginger ale…and Ginger Grant.

The Moscow Mule

According to The Essential Cocktail, the Moscow Mule was another of Smirnoff’s marketing triumphs. Along with the Bloody Mary, the Screwdriver, and the Vodkatini, the Moscow Mule was promoted in the 1950s to sell Smirnoff the brand. Back then, ginger beer was as available as ginger ale. Now it isn’t so easy to find. I found Reed’s, which is a medium-spicy Jamaican style ginger beer. Just so you know, ginger beer is like root beer, it contains no alcohol.

1 1/2  ounces Finlandia vodka (does that make this a Helsinki Horse?)
4 ounces Reed’s Ginger Beer
Lime wedge garnish
Pour it all over ice

I don’t think I’ve ever had a ginger beer before. It’s very different, like a spicier ginger ale. I used Reed’s and it’s not too gingery so don’t let that scare you off. I’ve had some very spicy ginger ales…hand-crafted drinks I’ve tasted at the Old Town Root Beer Company in Temecula. But this Reed’s is smooth and very delicious. The vodka is just there for a kick, so you can call it an adult beverage. Get it? Kick? Mule?

I know it seems like you could put vodka in anything and drink it. The idea of vodka is that it is odorless and tasteless so shouldn’t it go with everything? Need a cocktail but you only have vodka and prune juice? Go for it, you’re only steps from your own toilet anyway! See? Doesn’t always work. But I have tried it with Capri Sun and if you use the Pacific Cooler flavor, you get a drink I invented called the Russian Gradeschooler. Float a little Mountain Dew on top and you get a Russian Hillbilly Gradeschooler. But I digress. You wouldn’t drink vodka and Coca-Cola unless you really had to. But ginger beer? That makes a mighty simple, mighty fine drink.

Charles Schulz created this. Thanks Chuck.

The Dark and Stormy

DeGroff includes a great little paragraph explaining the bitter spice of Myers’s Dark Rum. He mentions that the Jamaican rum making technique includes taking spent mash from the fermentation process, called dunder, and putting it in pits to let bacteria grow before adding it to new mash for a new batch of rum. First of all: Yech. Second of all: Dunder? I wonder if “mifflin” is the word for some other kind of disgusting detritus or dregs. In any case, the Dark and Stormy is a Moscow Mule with dark rum instead of vodka.

It sure tastes dark and stormy. Another drink unlike any other, which is a nice change of pace. So much of this project has been slight variations on a theme of gin and citrus juices. This drink makes them cower below decks in fear! The ginger beer is moderately spicy, but the Myers’s Dark Rum is very peppery. It’s got such character that it makes this drink a singular experience. I imagine that if you’ve got a bottle of Myers’s Dark Rum on your bar, it’s at least 2/3 full yet it’s over a year old. Buy some ginger beer and drain that rum bottle.

Myers I Have Known: Geri Myers and I danced to Journey’s “Open Arms” at the Grandview junior high dance in 1982.

The Presbyterian

This is a lady’s highball. The Essential Cocktail  leaves half of the page blank rather than explain how the thing came to be named after a member of a religious group. My guess is that this is what the ladies at the First Presbyterian of Allentown Summer Picnic drank while their male counterparts drank their whiskey straight. Mixed with ginger ale and club soda, a proper 1950s wife and mother could have one or two and still be able to make it to the station wagon without fumbling the melmac bowl of leftover potato salad.

This is just a less offensive way of taking bourbon internally. I happen to like bourbon so the drink is wasted on me. Also wasted is the 1 1/2 ounce of Maker’s Mark that I put in it. Furthermore, I don’t even taste the ginger ale. I took a swig of the ale before putting it in the glass. It’s Reed’s and it’s quite good. It’s sweeter than the beer but in no way is it like the bilgewater that passes for ginger ale on the shelves of your local Piggly Wiggly.

I’m more of a Mary Ann Summers guy, but with all the ginger going on, I give you…

Ginger Grant