OT- ginger beer

Doc B

Doc B

Former President For Life
Staff member
Been dry for eleven months now and really feeling good. I have been drinking ginger ale as a mocktail in the evenings. This afternoon we stopped at our favorite local-organic-trendy-green-hippy-$$$ grocery store on the way home from Port Townsend and I picked up one of these.

I would describe the taste as a lovely cane suger lightly carbonated fizz followed by a sushi style pickled ginger tongue blistering, with a heavy witch hazel finish. By the end of the bottle I think my tongue has lost some feeling.

Holy s***.
 

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I too enjoy a good ginger beer.  In my case the stronger the ginger, the better.  In Japan that have a ginger ale called Wilkinson's that's not only cheap but also the strongest ginger flavor I've had to date.  Any other favorites Dan?
 
If you ever see Goose Island ginger beer/ale ( can't remeber which term they use) pick some up.  I would describe it as you described the ome you had.
 
I believe there is a consensus that the best mocktails are made with ginger beer. I often make something for Margie, and those are the most appreciated ones. (Second in line are those with fresh-squeezed orange juice.)
 
congrats on the eleven month - thats a long time and i am sure it feels good. my mocktail is sparkling water with organic unfiltered apple cider and angostura bitters. but it does not keep me from drinking though...
 
do yourself a favour......... add some SriLankan arrack ( you now get then in duty free) it is a fantastic drink. it is actually called Ceylon Arrack.

cheers

shreekant
 
Hah, don't you worry, I'm not missing out. My compatriots will attest to the fact that I have drunk enough for three lifetimes, the gin industry is probably still reeling from the impact of me going dry.  Queenie stopped a couple months before I did and I found out it was not that great drinking alone. After about a month of not having two martinis every night my mind started getting a whole lot more sharp. One thing led to another - lost 20 lbs., exercise started to be pleasant, business picked up a lot, lots of stuff started to get fixed around the house, new hobbies appeared, old ones became interesting again and so on.

I certainly miss the ritual, and if I could hold myself to one cocktail once or twice a week it would be grand, but self medicating my reconstructed ankle nine years ago made me appreciate the pain killing benefit of gin a little too much and that second martini is just too easy to knock down. Don't assume from this that I am completely without drug habits. If you ask me to quit coffee or chocolate you had better be prepared to defend yourself.
 
yes. I agree.... the ritual is very important. I have a soda making machine, which turns out sparkling water, that actually sparkels. Your tongue  will  tingle, when you have that first sip of scoth and soda at 8 pm, with some tubes glowing in the background. yes,  life is good, if you decide it is !!

shreekant
 
11 months is a big achievement, and long enough to safely call it a permanent change, congrats!

I gave up smoking and various other bad habits last August and dont remember ever feeling this healthy.  At this stage i just dont care for them anymore, and the old nightly routines are a distant memory too.  What i did find was with all this free time i needed an outlet to keep the mind occupied so the money saved got funneled into a new hobby of electronics and audio fun. Bought a nice pair of headphones, a S.E.X. amp, and the rest is history.  So thanks Doc for helping me kick a bad habit and enabling another :)
 
Hey Dan,

What brand was that -- Reed's? Gosling (same as the dark rum maker from Bermuda) is also good, and one of the strongest, if you can believe it, is that old  favorite american root beer purveyor -- Stewarts. Yes, their ginger beer really packs a punch.

I love the stuff (ginger beer), and if I get a drink when we go out for dinner, it's usually a dark and stormy -- only if they have a decent dark rum though, which a surprising number of restaurants don't. But I also agree that a plain ginger beer with a wedge of lime is a wonderful mocktail.

-- Jim


 
Not to sidetrack but here goes anyway - I've recently and experimentally cut out my beta-blocker. I almost instantly stopped oversleeping, have the energy to double (or more) my exercise level, and I'm not depressed anymore. I may be in trouble with my doctor and cardiologist, but it feels great!

Just reinforcing the notion that all drugs/foods have side effects, most of which we underestimate.
 
Doc B. said:
my reconstructed ankle nine years ago
Click to expand...

Wow, that was nine years ago. I still think you could have got a discount for them using drywall screws, long ones at that...John
 
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they used a whole box. Woulda been nice if they used some that sat a little more flush under the skin. Still have a couple spots that make me see stars and scream like girl when they bump into something. But all things considered I'm glad the leg works as well as it does. I'm able to run 5K every other day and I'm getting faster. Well, less slow anyway. I even passed a couple of fit looking 30 somethings on a particularly strong day on the running trail a few months ago. Just don't ask me to play basketball.

Shucks, five or six kinds of Stewarts soda at the corner store, but no ginger ale. BTW Jim, the one I had last night is Maine Root spicy Ginger Brew.
 
Those who balk at the prices of boutique ginger beer might like to have a go at a ginger beer plant (GBP). If drunk early in the fermentation process it'll be just 1-2%. Must be 40+ years ago that we used to have  a constant supply from the set-up in the family pantry, but I remember it well.
Home brew loonies can start here. http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f95/real-ginger-beer-how-much-alcohol-can-plant-tolerate-223086/

Enjoy.  ;)
 
Hi everyone- Great to see the emphasis on health & well-being. Congrats Doc on such a positive 11 mos!  I never started drinking gin because my Dad, a martini-drinking Marine, told me when I was around 22, that he wanted to give me some serious fatherly advice. I was all ears, and he said "Never start drinking martinis."    I've always liked ginger beer- my current fav is  Fever Tree, a UK brand.  It has 3 types of ginger in it for some flavor-layering.  If you get one of those little Japanese slicers (like a mandolin), it's easy to slice fresh ginger into paper thin slices to make your own ginger beer/tea.

Stay healthy!
 
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