Oh, Snap!

The high in Los Angeles was 99ºF on Monday (or 37ºC, to the rest of the world).  It is hot. Not, “delightful-sip-a-mint-julep-on-the-porch” hot, but, “I’m-going-to-punch-that-kid-in-the-fact-for-his-ICEE,” hot.  So…in lieu of a pleasant, refreshing mint julep (or beating children senseless over ice and syrup), I’ve concocted a slightly more intense, yet still refreshing(!) cocktail that tastes oddly more like winter than it does the spring (if only to overcompensate for the summertime heat).  Holla.

Oh, Snap!

Ingredients:

•  1.5 oz  Junipero Gin

•  Fresh ginger root

•  1/4 slice tangerine

•  Naturally sweetened ginger ale (eg. Fever-Tree, Vavo, etc.)

Skin and cut a golf-ball-sized chunk of ginger in half and slice it into 3-4 fine wedges and leave the other unsliced half for later.  Next, add the sliced ginger to a mixing glass and muddle - along with about 0.5 oz of the gin - until you notice the gin becoming opaque. Add ice to the mixing glass and use a zester-grater to grate the remaining ginger half over the muddled ginger/gin slurry.  If a lot of the ginger sticks to the other side of grater, just stick it tip-down into the mixing glass and pour the remainder of the gin over it to rinse the rest in.

Now cut your tangerine quarter in half and squeeze one eighth into the mixing glass and stir (not shake) all the ingredients.  Strain into a low ball glass with fresh ice and top off with ginger ale (note: the larger slices of ginger which you muddled should not get through the strainer, but the zesty little bits definitely should). Garnish with the other tangerine eighth.

Phew.

Don’t worry: a lot of that anal procedural nonsense is in regards to the aesthetics of the drink. I also like the feeling of being able to ‘bite’ into the grated ginger bits that float on top with the ice, which you only get via the grating. That being said, I’m sure you could circumvent a lot of my (probably) unnecessary modus operandi and get just as delicious a mix using your own imagination.  Cheers!