Root56

ROOT56

A pleasant upcoming weekend to y'all! Here's a drink, from which I made actually three different versions (here's just the promopic :D). The Root56 (Route56 get it, also Jäger with its 56 roots/spices)

I tried with the original of course and then with Manifest and Spice (winterspice).

• 5 cl Jäger (4 cl for Finnish restaurants)
• ginger beer (instead of ale)
• 1-2 slice cucumber, lime wedge
• (fresh ginger)

In a high ball glass filled with ice. Add the jägermeister, ginger beer (ale) and garnish. The "official" mentions 1 slice of cucumber and a wedge of lime but feel free to experiment (fresh ginger or e.g. muddle lime wedges). Ginger beer gives a more zesty taste to it and I have to admit even one slice of cucumber gives enormous smoothness to this drink! Overall, the original version was the best as the winter spiced didn't taste other than ginger beer (it's also 25% ABV). With Manifest you have a much distinct, drier taste to it. Eventually it is up to you, which you prefer the best. But I recommend trying the basic one first.

Gingerhassle

GINGERHÄSSÄKKÄ

(GINGERHASSLE)

(I know, it is in Finnish)

Hello everyone! Here's a very refreshing drink, initially asked by a customer (do something citrus-y) and I thought of summoning something up for them. It turned out to be so good I figured "hey this makes one helluva drink!" Since this doesn't have a proper name yet, it is called a "Gingerhassle". Yeah, that'll do :D.

½ lime's juice

2 cl cointreau

2 cl gin

ginger beer, to top

On a highball glass filled with ice, press the juice of ½ a lime onto it. Add the alcohols and top the whole thing up with ginger beer. Garnish with a lime wheel, add a straw and there you go!

It is both fresh with good notes of citrus, orange and ginger. The lime juice cuts the tight gingery notes and the gin I used (a london dry style) was more in the background. Nonetheless, an excellent drink this was!

A Great Ginger Beer Tasting

A GREAT GINGER BEER TASTING

10 ginger beers waiting to be tested

Good day everyone! Today I had the greatest opportunity to conduct another great tasting, now with different kinds of ginger beers! As we all know ginger beer is different from ginger ale and quote "The big difference between ginger beer and ginger ale is that ginger beer is brewed (fermented) but ginger ale is just carbonated water that's been flavored with ginger." Moreover, the taste is like day and night where proper ginger beer is spicy and much more full of flavor.

Over the weeks I managed to gather ten different kinds of products. These varied not only by size but also in taste. The more I thought of this tasting I realized one major aspect that should be taken into account: "Since marketing/branding is a key element of selling (anything), how do these products manage if put to the test?" Before we started tasting these beers, I asked each guest to rank the products from 1-10 based on their visual outlooks. To do this we assume that

1. One buys a product for a friend of theirs
2. All of these taste the same
3. They all costs the same (per liter)

I asked each one to do this "separately"; this way we can minimize any impact on others' opinions on the matter. I would later gather the intel and compile these as a spreadsheet. With four guests (and me), the maximum score was 50. I was interested in knowing if there was any consistency in the scoring and if any product really shines out (be it in better or worse).

Each guest was given a sheet with the ten ginger beers in a tasting order. We first went through five, had a small break and then sampled the rest. Although there wasn't any particular order per se, the first four were organic and the last three in cans. Otherwise the order was random so to speak. I did count up the carbohydrates (sugar) from each product g/100ml

1. Naturfrisk (organic, Denmark)       8.5g
2. Luscombe cold (organic, UK)         N/A
3. Luscombe hot (organic, UK)          N/A
4. Belvoir (organic, UK)                    10g
5. Fentiman's (UK)                           7.8g
6. Fever Tree (UK)                           10g
7. Bundaberg (Australia)                  10.8g
8. Grace (UK)                                  13.8g
9. Old Jamaican (UK)                       15.2g
10. Barr's Originals (UK)                    13.9g

Was (?) quite the coincidence that the last set contained the most sugary ones. Also to mention the difference between Luscombe cold & hot was that cold had 2% ginger and hot 3%, respectively.

The first set

With these products it is essential that you tip the bottle upside down a few times before opening. There is no danger of foam forming but it helps the ginger sediment (if any) to mix properly. What was peculiar was the fact the bottle sizes varied a lot. These included 200ml, 275ml, 320ml, 330ml, 375ml and 750ml.

The first set

Both Luscombe's had a rather lemony taste to it (it contained organic lemon juice from sicilian lemons) and Naturfrisk had a huge amount of ginger sediment in the bottle. Fentiman's had the least sugar of them all you could tell, both fiery and a tad bitter. But in my opinion a truly wild card in our set of ten was the Belvoir. In a perverse kind of way it tasted excellent and was ginger-y but had a very forest-y touch to it and I kid you not! You have that fresh birch whisk (used in saunas) aroma and earthy tones. Among us testers it stood out, it stood out good.

The last set

When it came to the last five, we were glad the order was how it was. Fever tree made a ginger cloudy (pun intended) distinction between the rest by its very spicy taste. After that, Bundaberg tasted like lemonade and the three last, being incredibly sugary couldn't beat the others either. In addition, Grace (picture middle) could have been disqualified for not really being a ginger beer at all. Its ingredients list doesn't mention ginger at all, just "natural ginger flavoring". Then again, for its defence it does claim it is a "Jamaican style" ginger beer. Old Jamaican was rated the best (out of the canned ones).

Tasting ginger beer, serious business!

Finally, each product was given a 1 to 10 points for its taste and I compiled a spreadsheet (as mentioned before) how each one managed.

(don't even care that the picture's borders go out of line)

WINNER BY LABEL(max 50 points)

1. Fentiman's, 41 points
2. Belvoir, 39 points
3. Old Jamaican, 34 points

WINNER BY TASTE(max 40 points)

1. Fever Tree, 31 points
2. Naturfrisk, 26.5 points
3. Belvoir & Fentiman's 25 points

Even when scoring is based on personal preferences/opinions, when we take a closer look at the scoring table we can clearly see that some products managed to keep consistency throughout the test. Naturfrisk  (8-8-7-3-2) and Old Jamaican (7-10-5-4-8) had the most variation when it came down to labels where the winner, Fentiman's had a solid score (10-8-7-8-8).

When it came down to taste, we can clearly notice how the first five were better overall. With the exception of Luscombe's cold, they all got 20+ in scores where as the last five (with the exception of our tasting winner Fever Tree), not a single one got 20 or more!

MORE SERIOUS BUSINESS!

So what conclusion(s) can we make out of this tasting/test? First of all, compared to regular soda, these are more expensive. But what was really interesting that how these ginger beers can taste so different and how much effort is put in making a good product. It's not just about good flavor, you also need to have a solid team making a great label for your fine product and be assured, it sells like hotcakes.

I later gave the canned ginger beers a thought and "what's with the heaps of sugar in them?" Even with their high sugar levels they do mix well with alcohol, because of said sugar! I couldn't really imagine making a Moscow Mule out of Belvoir, unless feeling really diabolical.

All in all, yet another great experiment in our back pockets, was fun to do!

Moscow Mule

MOSCOW MULE

No cupper mug, but still has the kick!

Hello everyone and welcome back! Today I came to realize that in the past years I still had not made the Moscow Mule. Given, it's a well known drink and when done properly, tastes a-mazing during the summer time.

As you already see, I did not use the traditional Moscow Mule cup (I don't have one), so any good sized tumbler will do. What you'll need is:

• ½ of a lime + 1 lime wheel
• 5 cl vodka
• ginger beer, not ale. BEER.

The reason I have to stress the importance of using ginger BEER is that it is a completely different product than the ale one. Ginger ale, in all its fairness is just carbonated water with ginger flavoring, but ginger beer uses real ginger, has that spicy kick and just overall tastes about...I don't know, a thousand times better.

So what you want to do is the following: Squeeze the juice of the ½ lime into your tumbler, you can drop the shell in the glass as well. Add 5 cl of vodka and fill the glass with cracked ice (not blocks nor totally crushed). Add your ginger beer and garnish with a lime wheel. Serve.

Extremely refreshing during the summer periods, if you ever get a hold on to some ginger beer, try this cocktail!

Dark'N'Stormy

DARK'N'STORMY

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Well not quite, but close enough! This whole Midsummer weekend has been rainy and well, quite dark! To honor that I've made a very classic cocktail (variant) called Dark'N'Stormy!

Fair enough, this drink demands the use of Gosling's rum (which I don't have) and their own ginger beer but heck, I will now cut some corners and as mentioned, make one of my own. Go ahead, Gosling, SUE ME! :D What you need:

• ginger beer (go for the fiery ones)
• 6 cl dark rum
• a little bit of lime

In a highball glass filled with ice, pour the ginger beer in. Do leave some room for the rum. Then pour in the rum to create a layer as seen in the picture (the stormy bit on top of calm waters). Squeeze in some lime and garnish with a lime wheel. (Add a straw) & serve.

Quite excellent a summer drink! Given, the use of Kraken rum (I got to say the use of Krakens and stormy drinks to fit in like a glove!) made this cocktail taste different than probably intended, but it worked well! The spiciness of both the rum and ginger beer were an absolute "wow".

My thumbs up for this!

Ginger Martini

GINGER MARTINI

Evening everyone! Here's a cocktail I picked up from a food&drink magazine while at the barber shop (I'm so fresh&clean right now). It also traces back (kinda) memories because the main ingredient here is Xanté, a pear-cognac liqueur. The thing is, for a long long time I looked Xanté down for one (vain) reason. It was my...25th (?) birthday and a friend of mine asked what I wanted. I told him to get me a glass of Amaretto (I love that stuff). As the story goes, they didn't have any (!) at the bar so my friend asked the bartender to give something "similar". So what I got was Xanté. Nope, not an overly-sweet (mild) almondy liqueur but a strong pear-cocgnac one. At the time I couldn't drink it.

Ever since that I felt Xanté was a bad product. Yes, I was young and didn't know better (and to be honest the ideology behind my hatred was simply immature) but...last year I found out how horribly wrong I've been all these years. A few days ago I tried Xanté with hot chocolate, it worked! The possibilites are endless but only my stubbornness was getting in the way.

So today I grabbed the bull by the horns and this is what we have; the Ginger Martini (yea it's technically not a martini since it doesn't have vermouth in it. Hey I didn't come up with the name :D)

• 4 cl Xanté
• 2 table spoons of sugar
• juice from ½ a lemon
• ~1 cm piece of fresh ginger

Put everything in a shaker, muddle the ginger properly, add ice and shake vigorously. Double strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a piece of ginger (as seen on the picture).

I got to say, this is one great cocktail! I can taste each ingredient individually, the lemon, spiky ginger and notes of pear! Yummy! This cocktail has that ZING! It's a super fresh cocktail!

All in all, the Ginger Martini has won my heart. It's a good cocktail.