The Land of Forgotten Cocktails

When summer wanes and autumn waxes, the Drinking Man had better be nimble. Hothouse afternoons can quickly turn to cool evenings, and the typical icy-cold beverages that slake the thirst brought on by the last of the year’s gardening don’t seem up to the task if you’re slipping into a sweater against the night’s chill. Ginger beer, and the drinks we can make with it, fits the bill nicely. Crisp and refreshing, these beers also have a spicy edge that warms the insides.

Ginger beer has been around since the 1700s. As its name suggests,  the drink was originally alcoholic, made at strengths between 2 and 11 percent. Fermented with yeast and Jamaican ginger, it was slightly cloudy, zesty, and had a yeasty aroma like baked bread. Prohibition killed “real” ginger beer, and its successor, non-alcoholic “dry ginger ale,” hammered the casket closed. At its peak, the U.S. had 300 ginger breweries, Canada had over 1,000, and England had about 3,000.

Ginger beer seems to be making a comeback, even if it is a non-alcoholic version of itself. Two good ones are produced locally: Captain Eli’s, made by Shipyard Brewing Company, and Ginger Brew, by the folks at Maine Root. As we’ll see, ginger beer is remarkably versatile, mixing well with everything from vodka to whiskey to beer. 

If you’re going to experiment with ginger beer — and I suggest that you do — a few hints and tips are in order. 

Commercially available ginger beers vary widely in their potency and sweetness. For good cocktails, you want something with a spicy backbone that’s not too sweet (the local products fit that description). For a kick, the Goya version is blow-your-skull-off spicy. For meek, much tamer varieties, look for Barritt’s, Reed’s or Regatta. 

Typical ginger beer recipes deploy limes or lime juice, and mint is commonly a fellow traveler, too. Angostura bitters are a welcome addition to almost any ginger beer recipe, adding a little more of an autumnal edge to your drink.

British Islanders certainly have a reverence for their beer, but fooling around with it also seems to be part of their DNA. From Mulled Beer, Ale Possets, Aleberries and ’Arf and ’Arfs of the old days, to the Black and Tans, Snake Bites and Black Velvets of today, the Brits just don’t seem able to leave their beer alone. The Shandygaff — or, simply, Shandy — is one of the few I can easily get my lips around. 

Most of the times you call for a Shandy—and don’t get a quizzical look from the bartender—you’ll be served beer and 7 Up or beer and ginger ale. This is all well and good — your ale will be lightened, sweetened, and made more thirst-quenching. But for autumn, I like the slightly more complicated and zesty version from the Dickensian era. (The recipe included here is from Drinking With Dickens, by Cedric Dickens, Charles’ great-grandson.)

With Shandies, your choice of beer is of tantamount importance — the thinner and lighter the beer, the thinner and lighter your drink will be. You’ll notice PBR in the photo at left — a thin beer, indeed, but it was hot out that day. 

Mayme Taylor was a popular actress and singer of light comic ditties on the Vaudeville circuit during the Gilded Age. She was a starlet in the days when bartenders would name drinks after any damn thing in the popular culture. Railroad lines had drinks named after them, as did songs, plays and cruise ships. Poor little warbling Mayme should have had one, too — and she did, sort of.  

The Mamie Taylor is the name of the drink they gave her, and one account from 1899 suggests she helped in its creation, adding a twist of lemon to a pretty standard scotch highball of the day. No matter how you spell it, in a world with few scotch drinks, this one is a welcome addition to the repertoire and a fine template to follow for your experiments with ginger beer.

That’s what John Martin did around 1941, when he couldn’t give away a silly little product called Smirnoff Vodka. Vodka was almost unheard of in the U.S. back then, mostly limited to the Eastern European communities in major cities and a few bohemian (as in the lifestyle, not the ethnicity) bars. Martin was an executive at Heublein, a company primarily known for selling A.1. steak sauce and a few pre-fab bottled cocktails. He’d bought Smirnoff from a guy named Rudolph Kunett, who was hemorrhaging money with the brand. Kunett had purchased the brand from Piotr Smirnov himself, who’d fled Russia with the memory of Trotsky’s gun at his temple. (Smirnov, you see, made vodka for the czars.)

So here was John Martin, crying in his beer at his friend Jack Morgan’s bar, the Cock ’n’ Bull, in Los Angeles. Morgan knew how Martin felt: he couldn’t give away his Cock ’n’ Bull Ginger Beer, and he knew a girl (history is unclear as to whether she was Martin’s girlfriend or a waitress) who couldn’t sell her copper mugs at any price.

These three white elephants came together to form the Moscow Mule. Martin and Morgan hawked their drink to every bartender they could find, and damned if it didn’t take off! And those little copper mugs? Why, they were so cute (and got so cold!) that movie stars patronizing all the swanky Hollywood joints had their names engraved on them and got them hung behind the bar, like a ritzy Gritty’s mug club.

That, my children, is how Smirnoff Vodka conquered America’s liquor cabinets and how vodka sunk its talons into a nation’s liver.

Now for a slight departure. The next two drinks aren’t forgotten or classic cocktails, per se. They are modern variations based on classic templates and themes. Moreover, they’re delicious.

The first is the Gin Gin Mule, created by my pal Audrey Saunders when she was at the famous Bemelmans Bar in New York City. These days, she holds sway at her Pegu Club, and the Gin Gin Mule is a mainstay of her cocktail menu. It’s part Mojito and part Gin Buck —before the Moscow Mule came along, ginger ale/beer drinks were called “bucks” — and well worth adding to your cocktail repertoire. 

The second is the Smashed Mule. Smashes have been around a long time — since the 19^th century, in fact. Gin Smash, Brandy Smash, Whiskey Smash, you name it. A smash is “simply a julep on a small plan,” as Jerry Thomas summed it up in 1862, in the first cocktail book. 

When Dale DeGroff reinvented the smash more than a century later, there wasn’t anything simple about it. He included sliced lemon, substituted orange liqueur for the sugar, and added a shake or two. Contemporary bartenders have gone a step further and stretched the smash with everything from simple club soda to champagne and, in this version, ginger beer.

Shandygaff (or Shandy)

3 lumps ice
1 liqueur glass orange brandy
juice of half a lemon
.5 pint best ale
.5 pint ginger beer

Into your favorite tankard put the ice, orange brandy and lemon juice. Add the ale and ginger beer, and drink with a twist of lemon peel.

Mamie Taylor

2 ounces scotch
juice of half a lime
ginger beer

Put all ingredients in an ice-filled Collins glass and garnish with a lemon twist.