Dark and Stormier Cocktail

This spicy ginger drink makes hot summer nights easier to bear.

I like my ginger beer wicked hot. Sometimes I get Sally Fallon's recipe for brewing my own ginger beer to work, and sometimes I don't. When it fails to culture, I now have a product I can buy that's local and as good as I can make at home.

At the Taste of Massachusetts Wine Festival last month, a long line snaked all around the Tri County Fairgrounds. I noticed ginger beer in the program, and made a beeline for it. Green River Ambrosia bottles a Ginger Libation with serious punch. It's so good, Dave bought a case of it, right there. Kevin and I have been buying it, a couple bottles at a time, from Liquors 44 or River Valley Market, both here in Northampton. Drink it chilled over ice, for a kick equivalent to beer, fizz like a soda pop, and a powerful ginger flavor. If I can't use the whole bottle at once, I save the bottle from going flat for a day or two by tightly securing the top of the bottle with a sandwich bag and a rubber band.

Ginger Libation is one of the ingredients in a Dark and Stormier. A regular Dark N' Stormy uses non-alcoholic ginger beer and a shot of Gosling's Black Seal rum. Several versions of the Dark N' Stormier exist, including this one here that has a recipe for brewing ginger beer using Champagne yeast. Here's our own more emphatic version.

Dark and Stormier

Ingredients

1 oz Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
1 oz Kraken spiced rum
Juice of 1/2 lemon or lime
4 oz Ginger Libation
Ice

Directions

Fill a highball glass (or any 8 oz glass) with ice. Juice the lemon half over the ice. Add a shot each of ginger liqueur and spiced rum. Top with Ginger Libation and stir. Serve with a brightly colored straw.

Check out this post on Hard core soft drinks for a recipe to brew your own alcoholic root beer.