Dean Carroll: Here are three great summer drinks to try when you want a break from beer
An Irish cider, a new ginger beer and a hard kombucha are all worth picking up
It’s not uncommon for the mind to wander ever so slightly when the days get longer and the weather heats up. You might be looking past what has served you so well in the past, glancing at something new and exciting.
I’m talking, of course, about alternatives to beer. There are many options available, and here I’m suggest a few to try next time you’re looking for a bit of strange.
Dan Kelly’s Cider, 500ml bottle €5.45, Baggotstreetwines.ie
This is one of the few ciders produced in Ireland, with the apples grown in-house on an 80-acre farm in Stameen, near Drogheda. Not only that, but they are hand-picked and have no sulphates, colours or sweetness added - just apples and fermentation.
It’s a medium dry cider, and not too sweet, with a hint of oak to finish. If you’re generally not a cider fan, this could be the one to convert you.
Zingibeer, INFO MISSING FROM DEAN’S COPY
There are few things better than a local producer getting into a market for a product category I enjoy. Enter Zingibeer, an Irish-made ginger beer. A marriage of ginger, lemon and a secret medley of botanicals, it forgoes any sickly sweetness and replaces it with a subtle complexity.
It’s a versatile bottle to keep in the fridge, offering up usages in cocktails and cooking, as well as being incredibly refreshing over a tall glass of ice.
Jiant hard kombucha, 355ml can €4, nutsaboutwine.ie
Hard kombucha isn’t a category that has been tackled by an Irish producer at a large scale just yet. That doesn’t take it out of the category of things I crave occasionally, though, so it falls on an American import for this one.
Produced from green tea, Jiant then adds brewers yeast for secondary fermentation and lets it sit over fruits to add delicious flavour combinations. These are surprisingly light in body, making them a nice alternative to the bigger brand alcoholic sparkling waters.
