- It's 10:27 in the morning
and it's snowing
and we're gonna start drinking.
(theme music playing)
This is my show gosh, darn
what's up friends.
I am Miranda
and we're making cocktails today.
Just so you disclaimer, disclaimer,
(beep)
I'm not a bartender,
but I'm gonna be a bartender for today.
You all asked for a video on camping cocktails.
I've mentioned how I like to bring alcohol
as one of my luxury items.
And then I reached out to you all to get some good recipe
ideas. So today we're going to make those.
You might be used to carrying beer or boxed wine or whiskey
in a flask when you go backpacking.
So this is just going to be a little bit
of an elevation of your standard alcoholic beverages.
I have five different,
(laughing)
but five different drinks that I'm going to make.
I'll start with these simplest and then go all the way up
to an REI exclusive cocktail.
(cheerful music)
- The first cocktail that I'm going to make
is using a teabag and instant drink mix.
In this case,
I'm using Earl gray tea, gin and instant lemonade.
So here I have a teabag and some gin.
I think I have about two ounces of gin in there.
I'm using Earl gray in gin,
but if you prefer bourbon and chamomile,
then you could do something like that or really whatever
your heart desires.
So I've been infusing this for about,
I think like 10 minutes, and then into this
I'm going to add some water and my instant lemonade.
This says that you should add 16 ounces of water.
Great! We're not going to add 16 ounces of water
because the cup's not that big.
Hopefully this will be good.
I probably put more way too much instant lemonade in here.
Maybe that'll just mask the taste of gin.
Ooh, yum that's good.
Is it time to drink it now?
Oh my God.
Wow. That's so good.
- This is really delicious.
Damn! I kind of can't tell there's gin in it,
which feels really dangerous.
I think this would also be a really good option for a hot
drink, like a hot toddy,
boil some water and then add your teabag to infuse your gin
in the hot water and then add your instant lemonade.
There's our first easiest backpacking cocktail.
I'm going to chug this and then we'll do the next one.
I'm just kidding I'm not going to do that.
(cheerful music)
- For our next cocktail,
we are going to be muddling and re-hydrating dried fruit
with liquor.
This is actually one of my favorite ways to elevate my
liquor drinking experience in the back country.
So here I have a variety of different dried fruits and fresh
fruits. I have crystallized ginger, dried mango,
orange and dried pineapple.
And then I also have some fresh berries.
For this drink specifically,
I'm going to use crystallized ginger and bourbon.
I think.
May use crystallized ginger and the crystallized
orange peel.
We're going to do it.
So we're going to do, ginger and orange.
I wonder what that would be.
Ginger orange and bourbon is what kind of drink is that?
All right. So I have my crystallized ginger,
as well as my candied orange peel in here
and we're going to add some whiskey to it.
Whiskey is my favorite alcohol.
So I'm going to add a little bit of whiskey in here.
I'm using a measurer,
cause I don't actually know how much is the right amount,
but obviously you don't have to measure.
Alright.
So that was about two ounces, probably.
Hard to know for sure.
(laughing)
Don't you like I'm using the measuring the measurer.
I'm actually gonna let this infuse for a little bit,
kind of similar to how we did with the gin.
You can leave it in there for as long
or as little as you want.
So I'm kind of like mashing my ginger in here
I guess I don't have to do this.
You could just eat the crystallized ginger out of here,
but I'm trying to like get the best of both worlds
and I want fruit that is reconstituted in liquor
and I want liquor that tastes like fruit.
So I'm calling this a drink,
but I feel like it's more snack cause you like have the
alcohol, but then you also can snack on the dried fruit.
Cool. Let's see where we're at.
Wow.
Hmm, that's so good.
I should have added some water to this,
it's just straight whiskey.
There you have it, dried fruit and whiskey.
Tastes like whiskey.
(cheerful music)
- Our next drink mix actually uses fresh fruit.
This was a drink recipe recommended to me by Katie,
she calls it the Bishop boulders bourbon.
It is a satsuma orange or a Tangerine mixed with bourbon
and brown sugar.
Katie said that this was one of the drinks that she uses to
make friends at the crag. I'm all about making friends.
So what I'm going to do is peel this little,
what is this tangerine, clementine or jello?
What is this this thing, tiny citrus?
Satsuma.
So we have our clementine in the bottom of our cup here.
And then we're going to add some whiskey.
I don't know why I'm bothering with measuring anymore.
Probably two ounces of liquor.
And then I'm going to add a little bit of sugar.
So I have a sugar packet here
I'll only add half of this
whole sugar packet seems like a lot of sugar.
I'm gonna add the whole sugar packet.
So I have my sugar in here with my alcohol and I also have
my fruit.
I'm a big fan of orange and whiskey.
This is basically just a fresh version minus ginger of what
we made earlier.
So this really would be like an old fashioned.
Muddling the orange in here now, right?
I'm going to whittle a muddler
and grow tuition to monitor.
We're upgrading.
You have an actual muddler here.
True muddler.
Alright.
I feel pretty good about this.
Should I add some water to this? I probably should right?
Yeah, right?
Yeah.
- So I have my satsuma orange in there,
some brown sugar or just sugar in the raw in this case,
some whiskey and then a tiny bit of water.
(sprinkles sounds)
- Hmm, that's great. And I do love whiskey, so good.
I think this would be an easy one to make with like any
fruit that you have.
The nice thing about things like tangerines or satsuma
oranges is that they're really small
and their great as snacks.
So this is just a great way to like add this to your flask
or added into your drink to make it a little bit tastier.
There you go. Fresh fruit muddled with some sugar.
Yeah.
(cheerful music)
The first three cocktails that I made are great for
backpacking because they use dried fruit ingredients,
things you might already have for your oatmeal
or fresh fruits that you might snack on.
And they're really easy to mix into your cup.
Then next cocktail that I'm making,
it's definitely better for camping because it requires a
little bit of prep work.
Cool, forgotten what was in it.
Generic peach, citrus, sparkling beverage.
I have Tajin, which is a spice mixture.
What's that song about tequila?
(laughing)
So this next cocktail that I am making comes
from an REI employee.
This is what she refers to as a Palomita.
So to start, we are going to chop up our lime.
I just want like an eighth.
We're going to squeeze that in the bottom.
Next we're going to add a few shakes of Tajin.
Is this stuff, do you know?
Chili pepper, sea salt, citric acid, acid, lime juice,
and then some other stuff. Oh, so there's like extra lime.
All right. So we're heading on tequila.
We're going to stick with the same two ounces of alcohol as
we've been doing for all of the drinks one and a half.
Cool. So next is, grapefruit soda.
I guess I don't want to put in,
Just half of the grapefruit soda.
There you have it. Let's see how it tastes.
Whoa!
Well that's so good. Dang.
Oh, wow.
This is delicious. So this is like a full-on drink.
This is like something you could like order at a bar.
It's so good.
It's so, so, so good.
I mean, to be fair,
I'm also have been drinking alcohol for the past hour and a
half. So I think everything tastes good now.
Now Chow, thank you.
This is delicious.
I never would've thought of a drink like this.
Great, Palomita.
(cheerful music)
So our last cocktail is actually a personal
favorite of mine.
This recipe comes from one of my old coworkers, Josh,
and the name of the cocktail is high-maintenance.
I'm going to be mixing this cocktail in my Stanley thermos
because it is a good one to make multiple servings of
and then share with other people.
So that's what we're going to do.
For this cocktail we need bourbon or whiskey in this case,
sweet vermouth, fresh orange juice, cherries.
Not just any cherries though, Maraschino cherries.
One and a half times two is three.
I'm just going to guess we would need one more ounce.
That's four ounces of whiskey.
Next up is one and a half ounces of sweet vermouth.
(cheering)
Everything's fine.
Half an ounce of fresh orange juice.
This is one ounce, so we'll do half of this.
This doesn't seem like very much, but I'm not mixologist.
And then we're doing a spoonful of cherries
and two to three dashes of bitters.
Oh, bitters?
Bitters!
and then cherries.
All right. So a spoonful of Luxardo cherry juice.
We've got two little cherries in there too.
All right. Great.
And then we're going to give this a good shake.
This is just a straight up cocktail.
And now the chainsaw begins. Perfect.
Almost there.
Let's give it a taste test.
I figured I'd just wait for the chainsaw
to be done chainsawing.
All right. Let's give it a taste test.
Oh, that's so good.
Oh, so good.
So there is a chainsaw in the background.
(beep)
There's four ounces of whiskey in here,
one and a half ounce of sweet vermouth and some bitters.
That's a lot of alcohol for one person.
So this is a great drink to make and share
with other people.
This one again is called the high-maintenance.
Thank you Josh,
for letting me share this insider REI cocktail with the
Miranda in the wild crew. And that is my fanciest cocktail.
So I mixed five different cocktails here.
They all vary from like
really complicated with lots of different ingredients,
to something really simple that just requires
instant powder drinks and something like a teabag.
The other thing I didn't mention is that Nuun tablets were
one of the most highly recommended drink mixers
in the REI community.
So Nuun, I know you guys make
really great stuff for sport and exercise and electrolytes,
but apparently also make excellent drink mixes.
So if you want to get your electrolytes
and also get your drunk on, Nuun.
(laughing)
Hopefully this gives you a good idea for different ways that
you can vary your back country bartending and maybe you'll,
chainsaw.
Obviously being outside can be dangerous.
So please drink responsibly and make sure that people know
where you are and don't drink more than you can handle.
If you enjoyed this episode, hit the like button.
If you have any of your own favorite cocktails,
please let me know in the comments below.
I'm always looking for new ways
to up my back country bartending skills.
I will see you all in the wild.
Cheers!
(playful music)
I am seeing double in these camera lights right now.
(laughing)