Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage (or food) that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Badger Beverages isn’t based in Wisconsin. Maybe I’m the only one that assumed that based on how the local university and its general lack of mascot copyrighting has inspired a host of mustelid-inspired companies. Instead, its founder hails from Ridgefield, Connecticut.
David Vogel wanted to create a relentless brand of top shelf cocktail mixers, which isn’t the modifier I look for when it comes to my drinks, but, sure. Enter a lineup of classic beverages for home and commercial bars. The original lineup of club soda, ginger beer and grapefruit soda is a handshake extended to lazy bartenders like myself unwilling to add a fourth or fifth step to their cocktail.
Badger’s premium branding suggests, yeah, you can roll with this and a twist and do just fine with your simple sipper. Let’s see if it lives up to that standard.
I don’t typically do Tom Collins-es (Toms Collins?). I don’t generally do club soda in general, as carbonated water is merely a vessel to make water worse. But I have good gin (Empress 1908’s Indigo Gin, which is both tasty and gorgeous to pour. Look at that purple drink!) and a surfeit of lemons thanks to a shockingly successful summer break six-year-old lemonade stand ($70 donated to the humane society!), so let’s run it back with a classic.
The club soda doesn’t offer much in terms of scent after an effervescent pour into a Collins glass. The first sip is cool and refreshing, with a floral gin that finishes sweet (and a little bit of simple syrup) waging a tug-o-war with the citrus. It’s very much an adult lemonade, carbonated and leaning into the botanical elements of the gin rather than Country Time sweetness.
It’s a pretty great cocktail, even if it leaves little feedback on the club soda itself. A swig from the bottle reveals a dry, slightly salty sparkling water. It’s more interesting than regular water, but… yeah, it’s bubbles and water and a little bit of sodium, it seems. I like it, but I wouldn’t drink it on its own. In a cocktail, though? Yeah, that works.
The soda pours with a crisp citrus smell and a cascade of bubbles tumbling skyward. This time around I’m mixing it with Beattie’s strawberry vodka, in part because Beattie’s is a great product but also because my unflavored vodka supplies are low and I may want a bloody Mary tomorrow.
Adding the vodka turns that smell off the top to strawberry, which could taint my whole review. Instead, the two sides work *awesomely* together. It’s got a tart-sweet-tart feel that packs a lot of flavor before finishing dry. Whoa. This is the cocktail I should be drinking in the morning (though, since I can’t use a beef stick as a stirrer in this I will likely return to my bloody roots).
Sipping the Badger Sparkling Grapefruit on its own reveals a full-bodied soda whose reliance on cane sugar rather than corn syrup pays off. It’s sweeter than you’d expect as a result — and it clocks in at 90 calories for just over eight ounces — but it runs its flavor out to the borders of that calorie count, making for a rich, extremely drinkable cocktail.
So, full disclosure; I was somehow without limes, so I used a lemon instead. And I forgot I had regular vodka, instead using Beattie’s sweet potato vodka. That doesn’t mean it will be overwhelmingly potato-y, but… yeah, it might be a little weird. Hey, at least I have the copper mug!
And, yep, this one is saved by the strength of a solid ginger beer. Badger is crisp and spicy, working with the citrus to create a solid counterpunch to the sweetness of the vodka within. The aftertaste is slightly fiery, which is what I want. It’s a wonderful cheat code for what is, let’s be honest, a stupid bootleg remix of a much better cocktail.
On its own it starts off in the ginger ale realm before that spice kicks in and gives you something to linger on. If you’re not a fan of heavy ginger then, sure, this won’t be for you. But as someone for whom Vernor’s was a special vacation treat growing up, hell yeah. The once concern is it is a little sticky sweet toward the end, which knocks it down a bit but still leaves it as a pretty dang good mixer.
This is a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink Ja cocktail with Badger mixers over a cold can of Hamm’s?
Yep. These are solid on their own. But they’re great in a handful of easy-to-make, stir-and-sip cocktails.
