Summer is here, and that means sitting on a nice hot patio hopefully with something cool and wet in ours hands. That leaves a lot of options, but with Blue Roof Distillers now producing their premium vodka here in New Brunswick we decided to visit Wilser’s Room in Fredericton to see what summer cocktails we could come up with.
Disclaimer: I don’t like vodka, but …
At some point in my life, between the writing and the drinking, I became a cocktail bartender. It’s an awful lot like being a foodie, but with a lot less chewing. Vodka is a wonderful and versatile base for most cocktails, and as far as I was concerned that’s where its beneficial properties start and end. After making thousands of cocktails all I ever wanted to taste was something out of a Scottish peat bog.
That being said, Blue Roof Vodka is something else entirely. It is easily the only product that I would ever consider a ‘sipping vodka’. For all of our research – and it was extensive – we couldn’t find anything that could beat dropping a couple ounces of this in a glass with an ice cube.
Maybe we can attribute its smooth caramel and banana-esque flavour to their unique process of distilling from their own tiny spudlings, peels and all. Or maybe it’s sorcery. Whatever the case, Blue Roof Vodka is fantastic on its own.
If you’re still keen to get creative though, here are five summer cocktails we came up to make with Blue Roof Vodka.
Cucumber Smash
Here’s one of your basics. Simple to make with a little bit of preparation, but with all the light and refreshing goodness of both cucumber and citrus. You can drink these guys all day long (in moderation).
Ingredients
2 oz. Blue Roof Premium Vodka
1/2 oz. simple syrup
Cucumber
Basil Leaves
Lime
Club Soda
How To Mix
Muddle cucumber, basil leaves, lime, and simple syrup in a shaker. Add Blue Roof Premium Vodka to shaker with ice. Shake until chilled and strain into a mason jar (or any vessel suitable for containing liquids. It’s what’s on the inside that counts). Top with soda. Garnish with cucumber slice.
Smashed Cherry Mule
The Moscow Mule is a classic, works great with Blue Roof Vodka, and it’s great on a hot day. We wanted to give this a little twist though, and so we incorporated cherries into the mix. The first step to making any Mule is to own a lot of copper mugs. The mugs retain the temperature, keeping your drink frosty cold. The other option might be to toss a handful of pennies in your drink, but we don’t recommend it.
Ingredients
2 oz. Blue Roof Premium Vodka
4 Cherries
1/2 Lime
Ginger Beer
How To Mix
More muddling! Pit those cherries, and muddle them up with a lime, and then add them to a your Blue Roof Premium Vodka and ice and shake the heck out of it. Top it up with some ginger beer (AFTER shaking it!) and pour into your copper mug over more ice. That thing will keep cold for days.
Sparkling Sage Grapefruit Cocktail
Alright, we went out on a limb with the Sparkling Sage Grapefruit Cocktail by combining two things I rarely use alone, let alone together. But if a cocktail can provide a breakfast while purifying your space of bad juju we’re all for it.
Ingredients
2 oz. Blue Roof Premium Vodka
4 oz. Grapefruit Juice
1 tsp. Agave Syrup
Sparkling Wine
Sage
Grapefruit
How To Mix
Toss some sage into a shaker and beat the heck out of it. Like, really mess it up. We want bruises and questioning looks from the neighbours. Strain and add fresh ice along with the agave syrup, grapefruit juice, and Blue Roof Premium Vodka. Give it one last thrashing before pouring in your sparkling wine. Strain over ice. Serve with a wedge of grapefruit and a sprig of sage if any has survived (oops).
Strawberry-Rhubarb Cocktail
The Strawberry-Rhubarb Cocktail is the one that got us excited about this in the first place. After so many days of staring at that patch of rhubarb, imagining what we could do with it, finally it dawned on us – let’s add alcohol! Also we learned this one takes the most prep. Step one: sneak into your neighbours rhubarb patch.
Ingredients
2 oz. Blue Roof Premium Vodka
All The Rhubarb
Strawberries
Sugar
Club Soda
How To Mix
Chop your rhubarb up, all of it. So much rhubarb. Ditto your strawberries. Toss it all in a frying pan, cover it with water and let it boil. Sprinkle in some sugar. This is the complicated part. This cocktail can vary between sweet or tart depending what you do at this stage, but it’s a matter of personal preference. After 10-15 minutes all of that is going to breakdown. Strain the juices out of it and KEEP THEM. Let those juices chill before adding in your Blue Roof Premium Vodka and shaking with lots of ice. Pour into a tumblr with ice, top up with some soda and garnish with a rhubarb stalk.
Jalapeno Vodka Cocktail
This is one inspired by something right off the Wilser’s Room Cocktail Menu. We took it one step further for some extra spice. You might want to be careful about how many of these you have. The heartburn is worse than the hangover.
Ingredients
2 oz. Blue Roof Premium Vodka
2 oz. Lime Juice
Jalapenos
Brown Sugar
How To Mix
Step one: stick some jalapenos in a jar of Blue Roof Premium Vodka. Leave them there. Maybe stick them in your fridge for a while. For extra zest maybe leave them in the back seat of your car on a hot day. Take them camping. Introduce them to your friends. Then take them out and set them aside. Maybe try to distance yourself a bit if you’ve formed any emotional bonds because you’re going to chop them up next.
Then make some simple syrup. If you haven’t already googled that by this point in the article here’s the short version: boil a couple cups of water and saturate it by dissolving roughly an equal amount of sugar into it. Add in your spicy new friends and let it cook some more. Strain and let it chill before putting into a squeeze bottle.
Take the jalapeno syrup you’ve made and use the squeeze bottle to rim a glass. Take the jalapeno steeped vodka that you set aside earlier, and put it into a shaker with the lime juice and ice. Shake and strain into the glass. Serve with a lime wedge. Dress it up with some Sprite if the spice gets to be too much.
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