Welcome to The Session, a monthly event for beer and brewing bloggers! This is Session #27, for which Beer at Joe’s writers Joe and Jasmine has chosen the topic, “Beer Cocktails: Beyond the Black & Tan”.

This is probably going to be the shortest Session post ever. I call it a Ginpel. Ready? Add a shot of gin to some tripel. Imbibe.

I’ll wait until you’ve picked yourself back up off the floor.

Let’s make it official with a formal recipe:

Ginpel

Ingredients:
2 oz gin
12 oz Belgian style tripel

Pour tripel vigorously over gin to raise a good head. Drink. Seek local non-profit organization to help you recover.

The first time I did this, I used our homebrewed tripel and Dogfish Head Jin. Dogfish makes the best gin ever, but unfortunately it’s almost impossible to find if you don’t live in Delaware or South Jersey. We’ve only ever seen it at their brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, ourselves.

What makes their gin special, apart from the spelling, is the use of rosemary, pineapple mint, and green peppercorns in addition to the usual juniper berries, giving it a crisp mix of citrusy and spicy flavors, and also making it immensely fragrant. All of these qualities blend superbly with the sweet and fruity tripel.

If all you have on hand is regular gin, the cocktail will still taste good, but it might pay to steep some of your gin with the missing herbs and spices for a few days, at least if you can find them. Pineapple mint and green peppercorns will probably be difficult to locate, but I’m betting regular mint and black or white peppercorns will be a decent approximation. If anything, you should be adding a branch of rosemary to every bottle of gin you bring home anyway.

Okay, so I guess that wasn’t as short as I thought it would be.

This discovery inspired us to try adding juniper and rosemary to our next batch of tripel. We’ll probably do it in August or September, so keep an eye out for that.

Recipes, The Session 3 Comments »