I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last posted to this site. I was blogging before the word “blog” existed! How dare stress and depression conspire to prevent me from continuing this holy endeavor.

So… I’ll post about gin again. I swear to god I don’t drink as much as this blog would suggest… there just hasn’t been much else of interest in my life to write about lately. Is it sad to know the most exciting thing to happen to me so far this week has been that I improvised a cocktail? The answer, of course, is yes. Very, very sad.

This one is a variant of the classic gin fizz. I didn’t have lemons or simple syrup, though, so I had to switch things around. I used some of the lemoncello my brother-in-law gave us a few months back for the tart and St. Germain for the sweet. The base for this one was Tamworth’s Apiary gin, an unusual gin I picked up mainly for my mother. Well, I picked it up to give her the bottle — she doesn’t care much for alcohol, but she likes (1) interesting bottles and (2) bees, and this one combines the two. The gin itself is quite unusual — the taste of your standard gin botanicals fade back in favor of the rich sweetness of the honey infused into it. You can’t really use it like a typical gin as a result (the bitterness of tonic, for example, pairs horribly with the honey flavor), but in recipes that accentuate the sweetness it’s proven to be pretty good.

This fizz, for example, works beautifully. The lemon and elderflower go nicely with the gin’s inherent flavors. The egg white makes it smooth. And the club soda makes it light. If you ever stumble across a bottle of this stuff, this is a pretty good use for it.

Honeyed gin fizz recipe

2 oz. Apiary gin
1/2 oz. lemoncello (or lemon juice)
1/2 oz. St. Germain
1 egg white
Club soda

Throw everything but the club soda into a shaker with ice and shake until the ice vanishes or your hands like to fall off from the cold. Pour into a lowball glass (without ice) and top with club soda to taste.