Yesterday, the Ophelia Cocktail came to my attention because of this article. And so I looked at several other proximal versions. Most of them seem to use rosemary-infused syrup, some of them use soda water instead of ginger beer. I was stopping at the market anyway, so on the way home from work, I picked up some fresh rosemary and served these with dinner.
They were nice enough, but not the best thing ever. I think rosemary syrup would be a better way to go -- the simmering in syrup would extract more of the herb's flavor, I imagine. Also, I think the ginger beer I used was too sweet and not spicy enough. A real pallet-wrecker of a brew would be better! But I definitely think using ginger beer instead of soda is the way to go -- a little Moscow Muleish, I suppose.
That recipe called for Hendricks or Botanist and I had the Botanist on hand, that's what I used. I think it was a good choice. It has a strong flavor without reminding us of paint-thinner. I think you could use any gin in this recipe and it might even be fun to sub it out for a strong caraway Akvavit. Just use whatever herbal infusion you like -- it's not going to harm the ginger, and probably not the rosemary, these are all flavors that can stand up for themselves.
So, to recap:
