Tiki Tuesday #1: The Suffering Bastard

Recipe: In general, when it comes to my personal mixology, while I appreciate the urgings of the authors of these books to use the most authentic and fresh ingredients possible, I'm a practical kind of guy and Iowa doesn't exactly have the greatest liquor laws or liquor selections out there, so sometimes you just have to improvise and make do with whatever you can get ahold of. While the recipe also calls for a Collins or highball glass, I just used a whiskey one, because again-- I'm just going to use whatever I can find. (I'm also completely agnostic about garnishes-- if you wanna be fancy, you do you, but apart from Luxardo cherries in my Manhattans, I'm indifferent to them. I probably shouldn't be, but I am.)

(Taken from Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum and The Cult of Tiki, page 65)

4oz ginger beer

1/2 oz fresh lime juice (I used bottled lime juice- though apparently the original recipe also used Rose's Lime Juice, which I wouldn't be opposed to.)

1/4 SC Demerara Syrup (I used brown sugar syrup)

1 oz London dry gin

1 oz brandy

2 dashes angostura bitters

Add the ginger beer to a Collins or highball glass, then add remaining ingredients to a cocktail shaker. Fill with cracked or cubed ice. Shake and strain the contents into the glass and gently fill with cubed or cracked ice and then garnish. 

Thoughts: I made my first one of these after a somewhat rocky day dealing with online schooling. It seemed appropriate at the time- but if you dig a little on the history of this drink and learn about where it came from (Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo) and the bartender who made it (Joe Scialom), then you appreciate it all the more. In a desert climate, these would be refreshing and thirst-quenching- and certainly, this went down quite nicely.

Grade: 10/10 would make again. I'm always a sucker for a drink with some history behind it-- and a few of these would make anyone willing to spit at a Panzer and send Rommel's chaps straight to hell and back again. 

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