Good news this past week! The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission recently changed regulations on patios for businesses serving alcohol. No longer must you be made to feel isolated from the world by meter-high barriers on your favourite patio, and opening up patio space not directly adjacent to a licensed space is no longer necessary, giving more options for restaurants to open rooftop patios and the like.
Changes like these are a step in the right direction to (literally or figurateively) erasing the barriers between business space and community, and allowing restaurants and imbibers alike to represent and police their own responsible drinking practice. So stay safe out there folks, and remember not to be a drunken asswipe in public!
These welcome changes come right in the heat of patio season, and what a mighty heat it's been. I'd advise you to keep cool with some marvelously made summertime refreshments. If I may make a recommendation: today's drink, the Cucumber Bramble is just the yardstick you need to beat that nasty heat. A beautiful fusion of gin, cucumber, lemon, and blackberry kept at sub-summer temperatures over crushed ice is reeeeal nice. The original Bramble recipe demands Rutte dry gin, and a dry gin will certainly play nice with the ingredients. Hendricks in particular is built very naturally complimentary to this cucumber variety, but I've opted for a slightly more tart version using a seaberry gin from local distillery: Strathcona Spirits. If you have a chance, I recommend you get your hands on some.
The Cucumber Bramble
- 2x 1/2" slices cucumber chopped into quarters
- 1/2 oz rich (2:1) simple syrup
- 1 1/2 oz dry gin
- 3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
- 1 barspoon blackberry liqueur (creme de mure if possible)
- crushed ice
- cucumber slice / blackberry garnish
Spa time is over: take those cucumbers from your eyes and put them into a shaker with your syrup, muddle them down into a refreshing cucumber pancake, then add your gin and lemon juice with ice. Give your tin a few short shakes; just enough to cool your cucumber, and double strain into a rocks glass after you've removed the rocks and replaced them with crushed ice. If you're like most people and don't have access to crushed ice, all you need is a semi-durable and clean fabric bag that you aren't too in love with, and a wide based bludgeoning device of some kind (rolling pin works great). Simply place ice in bag, grab hold of your bludgeon with one hand and the bag opening with the other, imagine the ice has transmogrified into hundreds of spiders, and voila: crushed spiders... erm... ice. Anyways, once you have your spider-less glass of drink and crushed ice, drizzle a barspoon of your blackberry liqueur over the top of the beverage, garnish, and allow a delightful two-hit combo of Bramble and patio to help you forget you live in a world where spiders are probably waiting to ambush you.