(StatePoint) Whether grilling for neighbors, hosting a dinner party or relaxing on your deck with a drink, you can make the experience more refreshing by pairing your favorite spirit with ginger beer. Not every host feels comfortable crafting their own alcoholic beverages and many rely on the best alcohol delivery Denver has available. This alcohol delivery service makes it easy to have beers, spirits and even wine delivered to someone’s front door. This makes hosting a party so much easier!

While most people know that for cocktails like the famed Moscow Mule (check out 15 moscow mule variation recipes) or Dark & Stormy to be truly great, inferior liquors just won’t do. However, many do not apply that principle to selecting mixers.

“People today spend good money on artisanal and premium spirits only to dilute them with a poor quality mixer,” says Tim Warrillow, Co-Founder of Fever-Tree, the world’s first line of premium natural mixers. “Three-quarters of your cocktail is the mixer, so use a high-quality one that enhances the flavors of the spirit, such as an all-natural ginger beer with a fresh, clean taste.”

Superb on its own, ginger beer is a soft drink being used increasingly in cocktails around the world to add intense flavor to mixed drinks featuring whiskey, gin, rum, tequila, liqueurs and vodka. Making cocktails always brings me back to my youthful days where my friends and I would buy a fake id online before getting all the ingredients for the cocktails we’d seen in movies. It goes without saying that are cocktail-making skills could have done with some refinement.

Produced since the 1700s in the UK, ginger beer is made by brewing root ginger, resulting in a noticeably stronger ginger flavor than ginger ale. Interestingly, many mass producers of ginger beer no longer include real ginger, as it is an expensive ingredient. While nonalcoholic, ginger beer’s deep flavor makes it anything but innocent.

Ginger beers vary greatly in flavor and sugar levels, but mixologists across the country are fans of Fever-Tree’s Ginger Beer, which is naturally brewed and uniquely fresh because it blends a trio of three gingers from around the globe harvested exclusively for them.

Of note is a fresh, green ginger sourced from the Ivory Coast. With a zesty aroma, the oils are extracted immediately after the ginger is harvested rather than drying the ginger root first. Nigerian ginger, prized for its fragrant intensity, adds depth and complexity to the flavor profile with ginger from Cochin, India rounding out the group.

With ginger beer as your base, mix up these classic cocktails.

Dark & Stormy

  • • 2oz, rum of choice
  • • Fever-Tree Ginger Beer
  • • Fresh ice – at least 4 big cubes
  • • Fresh lime juice
  • • Lime

Method

Fill a highball glass with fresh ice. Pour the dark rum (can be spiced) over the ice and add a generous squeeze of fresh lime juice. Pour ginger beer, garnish with a couple of lime wedges.

Moscow Mule

  • • 2 oz, vodka of choice
  • • Fever-Tree Ginger Beer
  • • Fresh ice – at least 4 big cubes
  • • Fresh lime juice
  • • Fresh mint

Method

Pour vodka over stacks of ice in a tall glass. Add fresh lime juice and chilled ginger beer. Garnish with fresh mint sprig.

For a lighter, low-calorie alternative with the same ginger taste, pair Fever-Tree Naturally Light Ginger Beer with other dark spirits.

The brand also offers ginger ale and tonic waters, all with carbonation that carry the flavor of the botanicals in each mixer. Recipes and entertaining ideas are available at www.Fever-Tree.com.

This summer, spice up cocktails with ginger beer, to enhance, not mask, the flavor of premium spirits.