1 1/2 oz cinnamon-apple tequila

1/2 oz fermented bean paste

1/4 oz garlic-ginger soy sauce

1/2 oz lime juice

2 cucumber slices

ginger beer

combine all over ice.  shake and strain over fresh ice in a salt-rimmed bucket.

what do you do when someone wants a savory drink and you don’t feel like making a bloody mary?  well, if you’re me, you throw together something like the above, a one-time pad of a cocktail that existed for about an hour last night and will likely never exist again.  not that it was bad; it was actually kind of good.  but the cinnamon-apple tequila was just an experiment, for one thing, and though i’ll likely mess around with it some more it’s unlikely i’ll make it quite so spicy as it was (man, was it spicy; a little crushed red pepper goes a long way).  and while i’ve been wanting to try and integrate some of revel’s sauce quartet into my cocktails, i think the fermented bean paste might be a bridge too far for most people (though savory girl liked it pretty well, and so did i).

on the plus side, i did manage to sell that tequila, which i was not expecting i would, since it was so spicy and i didn’t tell anybody about it (i mean, besides the internet, and who reads that?), but savory girl’s friend asked if i had some spicy tequila lying around, and lo and behold, i did.