Happy Tuesday! I know it’s a bit early in the week for a cocktail recipe, but I promise this Ginger Cuke Cocktail is mild, well in alcohol, not in flavor.  You can drink a few of these and still have the energy to cook dinner or work on whatever project you have going on at the moment.  I’m in the middle of a macrame wall hanging that I started months (!!) ago and kind of just walked away from.  These Ginger Cuke Cocktails are the encouragement I need to plow ahead!  The spicy ginger beer (a nonalcoholic ginger ale, but oh so different from standard american ginger ale) is absolutely essential to this drink.  If you make it with regular ginger ale you will be sorely disappointed and I’ll feel really bad about it so PLEASE use ginger beer. You’ll want to make me one in gratitude after you finish your first, second, third drink.  You can find the best and cheapest ginger beer in Jamaica, but if you’re in the states like me then head to your grocery store and look in the international aisle or where mixers are sold like tonic and seltzer water.  Ginger beer is really yummy on its own too if you like a soda once in awhile.  It’s not spicy, not sugary, which is why I’m a big fan.  Enough about ginger beer (the essential ingredient!) on to the story of why I created this cocktail.

A couple weeks ago, I had a birthday – whoop whoop! I talked about my celebration here, but in short, I had a couple delicious mule variations at Venable.  I couldn’t stop thinking about those spicy sage, yet fresh and limey drinks so I decided to mix one up! It took some tweaking, but I came up with the refreshing afternoon, afterdinner, afterdessert drink that I was craving.

Ingredients:

• .5-1.5 oz vodka (depending on preference)
• 1 oz fresh cucumber juice
• 2.5 oz spicy ginger beer
• 2 tsp fresh lime juice
• 4 sage leaves

Recipe:

• Wash, peel and juice one cucumber.  If you don’t have a juicer, simply blend the cucumber and strain out the juice through a mesh colander.
• Add the vodka, cucumber juice, freshly squeezed lime juice, 2 sage leaves and a few ice cubes to a shaker.
• Shake forcefully for about ten seconds to break up some of the cubes, crush the sage leaves and mix the juices together.
• Fill you glass half full with ice cubes and pour the mixture in.  Top it off with ginger beer and garnish with a few sage leaves.
• Enjoy and refill as necessary 😉

I hope these photos have you running out the door for ginger beer! Let me know how much you love this ginger cuke coctail @liveseasoned . XO