In honor of Memorial Day, here are some fun drinks to enjoy today while outside by the grill or pool: Homemade Ginger Ale and Ginger Bulleit Limade.
I bought around 2.5 lbs of fresh ginger for $2.37 at the 99 Ranch Market in Chinatown as the basis for these drinks. I love exploring different ethnic grocery stores; they not only have great prices, but their produce is really good too. This ginger was super fresh and the skin wasn’t hard and dessicated like some of the pieces that you find in regular grocery stores.
Peel the ginger and then run it through your juicer. In case you don’t have a juicer, the recipe says you can find fresh ginger juice at health stores, although I would also check out some ethnic grocery stores too. If you have a juicer, I recommend juicing the ginger on the highest level and to periodically clean the blades if you juice a lot of ginger like I did. The ginger was quite fibrous and kept on building up in the blades. 2.5 lbs of fresh ginger made around 20 ounces of ginger juice. What I didn’t end up using to make the simple syrup, I stuck in the freezer for another day that calls for some cocktails.
Drain the ginger juice with a strainer and then put 1 cup of the ginger juice into a saucepan with 3/4 cup of sugar. Heat them up until the sugar dissolves into the ginger juice to create a simple syrup. This syrup forms the basis for both the Ginger Ale and the Ginger Bulleit Limade.
The New York Times recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of ginger syrup mixed with 2 tablespoons of fresh lime juice topped off with ice and enough club soda to fill a tall glass. While the result is very tasty and refreshing, it tastes a bit too limey to be called real ginger ale. So I upped the amount of ginger syrup for a bit more ginger kick. The fresh ginger syrup is quite spicy much like raw ginger in food, so be sure to not go overboard if you don’t like a little heat in your drinks. Each glass costs around 50 cents to make.
While the little ones enjoy the Ginger Ale, adults can make their own spicy treat by adding a little Bulleit Bourbon. Mix ginger syrup and fresh lime juice to taste and then add a slug of Bulleit to the glass. Mix with some ice and then top off with club soda and a lime garnish. Each glass costs around $1.50 depending on how stiff you like your drinks. Enjoy the holiday!
If I may offer a suggestion, you slavishly followed the ginger syrup recipe and then found you couldn’t follow the ginger ale recipe because it was too tart. Two other roads suggest themselves that don’t involve upping the ginger and making it too spicy (hot). One, cut down on the lemon juice until you get a nice balance. Two, if that doesn’t quite balance out, try increasing the ratio of simple syrup to ginger juice. Seems to me you want people to recognize that it’s a ginger ale, so they will say “Wow, that’s the best ginger ale I’ve ever tasted!” instead of “Is this some sort of Thai soda pop?”
Thanks for the suggestions Bob. I personally loved the spice of the ginger syrup, but Carlo was the one that thought it was a bit too hot. When I added the Bulleit to the drink, I played with the mixture of lime and ginger and had much better success where it tasted more like ginger ale. I think drinks like this come down so much to personal preference that you just have to play around with it until you find the right taste and balance.