The Jolly Inebriate

One of my favorite things they do to beer is adding flavorings to beer to create something new. Fruits and spices make for great adjuncts so when I picked up a bottle of Hitachino Nest Real Ginger Brew (171546, 330 mL, $3.95) I figured I might be onto a good thing.

I like non-alcoholic ginger beer and ginger ale. Some of the best I’ve ever had was made by Kyle Burch of the sadly defunct Bespoke Bar blog from his house. He’d brew it in leftover Beau’s Lugtread Ale ceramic bottles. It was peppery as all hell with a much softer carbonation than was found in the commercial recipes. Both types go very well with West and East Indian food; the spicier the better.

Anyway, I decided to make a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches to eat with the ginger beer. There were some interesting odds and ends in my fridge and I’d had a hankering for one ever since I visited The Grilled Cheese, a little cafe serving just that in Kensington Market at 66 Nassau St.

There I’d dined on a pizza version which contained mozzarella cheese, pesto and bacon, grilled panino style. While delicious I wasn’t about to go shopping. Anyone who knows will tell you the best part about making a sandwich is using what you have (this assumes you actually make dinner at least once a week and have leftovers).

The star of the show is always the cheese and so it should be your first consideration. I had just enough bocconcini and old cheddar to make one sandwich of each.

With the former cheese, I decided to keep it traditional and add some fresh basil picked from my roommate’s herb garden along with some Roma tomatoes. To jack it up a bit, I rolled the balls of cheese in some chili garlic sauce to which I’d added a couple dashes of lemon juice.

With the cheddar, I sautéed some red onions in sesame seed oil and layered them overtop. Feeling pretty fly, I put some over the bocconcini as well. One can never have enough right? The cheddar also got a liberal grind of black pepper.

Both sandwiches used StoneMill Sprouted Grain bread which is pretty much all I’ve been buying lately. I lightly slathered both sides of the bread with salted butter and off they went to the frying pan. Less than a couple minutes later they were ready to go and so was my beer.

I’d left the Ginger Brew on the counter so it would have time to warm up just a bit; a beer that’s too cold doesn’t reveal its full flavor.

It poured a cloudy amber with a head that took no time at all in disappearing. My first whiff left me with a whole lot of ginger and a touch of sweet malt and caramel. The flavor was interesting to say the least; I could almost taste pine for some reason. While the ginger dominated, I got less of the malt and the ginger lingered on a bit afterwards with some bitterness. It got a bit much towards the end of the glass and I found myself wishing for more of the carbonation that seemed to have gone with the head.

The Ginger Brew wasn’t half-bad with the grilled cheese, especially the salty, spicy and garlicky bocconcini. At the end of my meal, I had to say I enjoyed the sandwiches way more than I did the beer. I’d like to try another bottle just to make sure I didn’t get a bum sample but I don’t think I’d make a habit of buying this. It would probably go really well with Korean food or that delicious Ultimate Sandwich (fried eggs, kimchi, bacon and garlic mayo on sourdough bread) you can get at Mitzi’s on College St. Now that’s a sandwich!

I prefer ginger in my cocktails or in my cooking.