Indie Pop Stars Black Castle Drinks in The Sunday Irish Times!

This bank holiday Sunday we were featured in an excellent article on the soft drink movement in Ireland written by Corinna Hardgrave for the Sunday Times in Ireland. 

We were thrilled to be the featured so prominently and love the picture - John's face makes us laugh out loud!! Our Black Castle craft sodas were in good company too, with Poacher's Tonic and Wild Orchard soft drinks also featured. 

Link to Sunday Times http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ireland/indie-pop-stars-ntxtzlwnj

Our delicious craft soda cocktail, The Red Setter also appeared! It's a citrus and spicey twist on a classic 'Jemmy & Red'. Check out the cocktail recipe below. 

THE RED SETTER

This twist on the ‘jemmy & red’ is made up of refreshing citrus flavours and fragrant spices using our Spiced Red Lemonade.

You’ll need:
Black Castle Spiced Red Lemonade
40ml Irish Whiskey
20ml Triple Sec
2 Dashes of Aromatic Bitters

Garnish with a large wedge of pink grapefruit and enjoy! 

Cardamom: The Queen of Spices

Did you know that we use a spice fit for royalty in one of our drinks? While Black Pepper is considered the King of Spices, the little green pods called Cardamom are known as the Queen of Spices. Fancy!

So with such acclaim we decided to use it in our very own Spiced Red Lemonade. The exotic spice gives our Red Lemonade a distinctly grown-up and sophisticated flavour with sweet floral notes as well as a hint of pepper, mint and lemon coming from the pods. There are 3 types of Cardamon; Black, Madagascar and Green Cardamon which are found in a variety of foods from Indian curries to Turkish coffee! While it is one of the priciest spices we chose to use the whole green pods for their fresh potency.

Cardamon is said to have a number of health benefits: it aids digestion, acts as an antioxidant, helps prevents colds and flues and is even said to help prevent and slow down cancer.  More great reasons to include it in our Red Lemonade!

Cardamom combines brilliantly with other spices, so we paired it with beautiful Allspice Berries to infuse the water we use as a base to our lemonade. Again we use Allspice berries whole to give even more depth of flavour - hints on nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon. Yum!

With all this lovely sweet flavour coming from the spices we've been able to keep the sugar level low while maintaining a full flavour which tastes great on it's own, but also pairs perfectly with smooth Irish Whiskeys.