Gin Gin: a Little Bit of the Sauce

This is a drink I came up with a few weeks back. Three ingredients and pretty tasty. I say that I came up with it, but there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to mixed drinks and this probably exists out there somewhere under a different name. I couldn't really think of a good name for it so I asked around. I've chosen the one my wife came up with, the obvious and fitting, Gin Gin.

* Your favorite mixing gin - I use Beefeater because I think it mixes well with other things--my favorite straight gin is Millers followed by Bombay Sapphire.

* Ginger Ale -  Here it is Canada Dry. Another of our favorites is Vernor's, but that may be a little too strong for this.

* Fresh mint - It's hard not to grow mint. Plant it and it will practically take over the world.

That's it for ingredients. You'll need this hardware:

* Collins glass filled with ice.

* A muddler - I use a homemade one. I made it out of a an untreated oak dowel that I shaped and smoothed with an orbital sander.

* Something to muddle in - Here I used a cocktail shaker.

* A jigger - You know, that little measuring thing with the strange name.

Add the mint to cocktail shaker and muddle it. Muddling is essentially crushing the thing being muddled. The object of muddling is not to disintegrate what you're muddling, but to bruise it up so that it's flavor can be easily extracted by the alcohol. Don't worry about having a perfectly clean muddle, you'll have little bits of mint leaves floating around no matter how careful you are. If you really feel that you must you can run them through a small fine mesh strainer, but odds are you'll still have very small bits of mint leaves. Leave them. They'll be so small that you won't notice them in your mouth.

Measure 2 ounces of gin in your jigger, then add them to the mint. I give the mint leaves another light muddling with the gin in it. The most straining that I'll do with this is through the coarse strainer that is attached to your cocktail shaker. As  you can see there are little bits of mint floating around in the ginny mint extract. Pour the gin over the ice in the collins glass.

Top off the glass with ginger ale and garnish with some mint leaves (or don't; I just did it because the mint would have wilted and it made for a nice picture.

This is something you might want to try if your stomach is giving you fits. Mint and ginger ale are two common folk remedies for stomach ache and how could the addition of gin hurt?

Cheers.