14 Oct Fall Five: Fall Ginger Smash

Posted at 08:00h in Blog, Cocktail Recipes, Cocktail Recipes: Modern, Party Tips by Roberts & June

Fall Five: Fall Ginger Smash

A few weekends ago, we spent the weekend at a truly unbelievable house with an even more incredible group of people, saying goodbye to summer and hello to fall together. It was a quiet weekend full of winery visits, walks and rides along the cart paths of a closed golf course turned park, and an amazingly entertaining trip to a local farm where the rubber ducky races and the real pig races were topped by the pumpkin cannons–definitely worth the very reasonable price of admission. Each day of the weekend began and ended with a delicious, leisurely meal around the big formal dining room. It was our job to provide the cocktails for the evening meal.

For one of those dinner cocktails, we turned to another book we’ve been using a lot recently, Speakeasy by Jason Kosmas & Dushan Zaric. It’s a good introduction to cocktail history and to the art of adapting a cocktail. Kosmas and Zaric present a classic cocktail, and then show you how they’ve modernized it at their Greenwich Village restaurant Employees Only. One–or, rather, four–of their twists on tradition is the Ginger Smash, presented in seasonal variations.

The Fall Ginger Smash was a big hit at our weekend away. It’s sweet and zesty, and easy-drinking. Beware, though, if you make a pitcher at your own fall party: it’s also hard-hitting, the use of apple liqueur instead of ginger beer giving it a higher alcohol content than is usual with ginger drinks.

Fall Ginger Smash

from Speakeasy: Classic Cocktails Reimagined, from New York’s Employees Only Bar

By the pitcher

Ingredients

2 cups Plymouth gin (I’m sure the more usual London dry would work too, if that’s what you have)
2 cups apple liqueur (if possible. We couldn’t find any, and used apple brandy instead. It worked great, though I imagine the cleaner taste of the liqueur would be even better).
1 cup lemon juice
.25 oz. allspice dram (a not very commonly used, but also somehow not very hard to find liqueur. A candidate for a fall/winter only Bottle #9)
3 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 pear, thinly sliced
about 2 tablespoons of fresh ginger, thinly sliced.

Instructions

muddle the ginger, pear, and sugar in the bottom of a pitcher
add the gin, apple liqueur, lemon juice, and allspice dram and stir
fill another pitcher with ice, and strain the liquid into the new pitcher (Speakeasy calls for serving it unstrained, but we found the floating ginger bits to be more of an impediment than an enhancement, both for looks and drinking. You may disagree with us, though, as the creators of the drink clearly do)
stir again, until the ice visibly melts
pour into ice-filled glasses, and enjoy

By the glass

Ingredients

1.5 oz Plymouth gin (I’m sure the more usual London dry would work too, if that’s what you have)
1.5 oz cups apple liqueur (if possible. We couldn’t find any, and used apple brandy instead. It worked great, though I imagine the cleaner taste of the liqueur would be even better).
.75 oz lemon juice
1 dash allspice dram
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
5 thin slices of pear
2 thin slices of ginger

Instructions

muddle the ginger, pear, and sugar in the bottom of a cocktail shaker
add the gin, apple liqueur, lemon juice, allspice dram, and ice and shake hard for 10 seconds
strain into an ice-filled glass and enjoy (Speakeasy calls for serving it unstrained, but we found the floating ginger bits to be more of an impediment than an enhancement, both for looks and drinking. You may disagree with us, though, as the creators of the drink clearly do)

See other drinks in this series: Day 1 | Day 2 |