raspberry gin seltzer

A fruity spin on the classic gin rickey cocktail, this Raspberry Gin Seltzer is a fizzy, light and refreshing cocktail perfect for spring and summer sipping!

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I remember the first time I made cocktails at home.

It was the summer of 2012.

I was studying for the bar exam.

Cocktails were necessary.

It was my first foray into fancy cocktail making. Sure, I had mixed a drink (or two, or more) at home before, but do we really count pouring equal parts Mailbu and coke into to a solo cup on top of a dorm fridge cocktail making?

So the summer of 2012 is when things started getting sophisticated.

I had finally (thank god) gotten off the Mailbu and coke train (several years before in fact), found out I had a love for local beer, and was starting to develop an affinity for red wine. It only made sense that at home cocktail making was next.

I lived in a pretty small, pretty dumpy apartment in Madison, Wisconsin, where I spent the entire summer cooped up with my cat, Pheebs, studying for the bar exam.

Standouts from that summer include:

Listening to law lectures on my iPod everywhere I went. You name it, there was a law lecture. In the car, while grocery shopping, on a walk to meet friends for a drink.

Any opportunity I had to jam some headphones in my ear and listen to some man drone on about secured transactions I did it.

A brief period of time where I did not take a shower and only ate pizza chips.

Another brief period of time (that may have overlapped with the pizza, chips, san shower situation) where I had no human interaction.

A few crying phone calls to my mom.

And a very, very hot July in which Pheebs and I confined ourselves to my apartment’s living room while my window unit air conditioner worked the hardest I had ever heard an air conditioner work in my entire life, cooling the living room down to a balmy 84 degrees.

Let’s just say the summer of 2012 was not the most glamorous summer I’ve ever had.

Somewhere in between studying, sole pizza subsistence, and Googling “at what temperature does a cat overheat?” I decided I deserved a fancy cocktail.

And so I muddled some fruit in the bottom of a glass, topped it off with some seltzer and liquor and a home cocktail connoisseur was born.

Since my first foray into at home cocktails seven years ago, making cocktails at home has become one of my favorite things, and we’ve made everything from a whiskey old Fashioned, to strawberry bellinis, plus our fair share of hurricanes, pina coladas, Corona floats, quite a few rounds of blackberry basil gin fizzes, classic margaritas, watermelon frose, and of course, we love a good build your own Bloody Mary bar.

One of my favorite things to do is experiment with what we have in the fridge and liquor cabinet and play around with new drinks and new flavor combinations.

And so today we’ve got a nod to my at home cocktail making, fruit muddling roots, with this Raspberry Gin Seltzer, made with Brizo Hard Seltzer from one of my favorite local breweries, NoDa Brewing Company!

WHAT IS HARD SELTZER?

Hard seltzer is a malt beverage that is made by combining a malt base or fermented sugars with fresh and natural ingredients, plus carbonation.

So you get effervescence and hint of flavor reminiscent of the popular canned seltzer water currently on the market, with alcohol already included.

It’s boozy fizzy water and I’m here for it.

(If you’re a fan of sparkling water or vodka sodas, hard seltzer will be your jam too. I promise.)

On top of being bubbly and boozy, hard seltzer is also a gluten reduced alcoholic beverage.

IS HARD SELTZER A BEER?

No. While hard seltzer is made in a similar way to brewing beer, it is not beer.

In fact, the fizzy fruit beverages are often much lower in calories and carbs than beer, making it a great option for people who are looking for a more health conscious alcoholic beverage or folks who just don’t like beer.

While beer is made generally with fermented barley, hard, or alcoholic, seltzer is generally made from original base containing malt (similar to beer), but then stripped of malt character and then flavored or made with fermented sugar.

WHAT KIND OF HARD SELTZER SHOULD I USE IN A GIN SELTZER COCKTAIL?

There are a ton of different hard seltzers on the market (the last time I cruised down the beer aisle at the grocery store I saw no less than like eight different varieties) so how is a girl to choose which hard seltzer is the best for imbibing and gin seltzer cocktail making?

When in doubt, go local of course!

Y’all know how much I love all things Charlotte (I mean, Off the Eaten Path started as a blog just focused on local Charlotte restaurants, I can’t stop talking about our local farmers market and did you catch my Charlotte gift guide last holiday season?) so when I can find amazing local products and food to use in my recipes, it’s always my first choice.

Lucky for me, one of my favorite Charlotte breweries, NoDa Brewing Company, released Charlotte’s first (and only!) craft spiked seltzer last year, and this year their canning it!

NoDa’s Brizo Craft Spiked Seltzer (named after the ancient Greek goddess of sailors) is brewed using a clear and neutral malt base. The neutral base is like a blank canvas, giving limitless flavor options NoDa can create, using all natural ingredients.

By using all natural ingredients to create Brizo’s different flavors, Brizo has a different mouthfeel than other spiked seltzers on the market; Brizo’s taste is cleaner, fresher and brighter. I also love that while there’s a hint of fruitiness and flavor, it’s not overpowering or overwhelmingly sweet (making Brizo the perfect mixer for a light, refreshing gin seltzer cocktail!)

Currently NoDa offers four different flavors of Brizo on draft in their taproom, Ginger Lime, Ruby Red Grapefruit, Raspberry Lemon and Lemon Makrut Lime, and two flavors in cans, Ginger Lime and Raspberry Lemon, that you can buy at the brewery or at local retailers to enjoy at home.

WHAT ALCOHOL GOES BEST WITH SELTZER?

So we’ve got the seltzer part of our gin seltzer cocktail, so now we have to round it out with some muddled fruit and liquor.

And okay, okay, okay, maybe I’ve already answered the above question by calling this cocktail a gin seltzer, but let’s talk about liquor anyways.

I really think any liquor would be a great choice to mix in a hard seltzer cocktail, it just depends on your personal taste preferences and flavor combinations.

For me, gin always reminds me of summer (maybe because a gin and tonic is my dad’s summer porch drinking drink) so when I make spring and summery cocktails I often turn to gin because I love the flavor and how it pairs well with other classic cocktail flavors like ginger, lime and mint, but also totally because of a nostalgia factor.

Don’t like gin? No problem. Vodka could easily be swapped for the gin with the flavors in this specific raspberry gin selzter recipe…and rum would actually work really well with these flavors too.

Now that I think about it, tequila would also work with this recipe, and you’d get a little bit of a margarita vibe going on, or a white wine for a more sangria feeling.

The only thing I’d probably stay away from with this particular recipe would be whiskey or bourbon, but you could definitely combine whiskey and spiked seltzer depending on the flavor combination! ‘

(And PS: the Brizo raspberry lemon flavor would go great in this raspberry lemonade punch.)

And since we’re talking flavors, lets talk fruit for a quick sec…do you have to use raspberries in this gin seltzer recipe? No.

The reason I picked them is because raspberry is a complimentary flavor to both ginger and lime, so I knew it would pair well with the ginger lime Brizo, but any fruits you have on hand that you could muddle would also be delish…strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, or even citrus, cucumbers, kumquats or watermelon!

HOW TO MAKE A RASPBERRY GIN RICKEY

A gin seltzer cocktail is also masquerading around as something called a gin rickey.

A rickey is traditionally mixed with a simple combination of gin, lime juice and soda water.

So it’s like a drier version of a gin and tonic.

The rickey was actually originally created with bourbon at Shoomaker’s Bar in Washington, D.C. in the 1880s by bartender George A. Williamson in the 1880s, purportedly in collaboration with Democratic lobbyist Colonel Joe Rickey.

The popularity of the rickey cocktail substantially increased about a decade later when it was mixed with gin.  

Ok, sorry for the history lesson sidetrack, let’s get back to gin seltzer cocktail making.

First, you muddle the raspberries, which means you mash them up into a coarse puree. Muddling intensifies the raspberry flavor in the drink.

You can muddle in the bottom your cocktail glass or in a cocktail shaker if you’d like to strain out the fruit bits later and just enjoy straight liquid. 

Muddle the raspberries with about a teaspoon of honey and a squeeze or two of lime juice to add some sweetness. You can also throw a few fresh mint leaves in for good measure.

I like to use honey in cocktails rather than sugar just to get a more subtle and natural sweetness in the drink, but if you don’t want to use honey, some simple white sugar or adding a simple syrup later on will also do. (I highly recommend simple syrup if you like your drinks on the sweeter side.)

Next, if you muddled the fruit in your cocktail class, add the gin and more lime juice, some crushed ice and then top everything off with a generous pour of Brizo.

Give it a stir and you’re done!

(If you opted for the cocktail shaker route, add gin, lime juice and Brizo to the cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and then strain into a high ball cocktail glass.)