Spicy brew: Missoula restaurant's hot ginger drink goes down smooth on a cold winter's day

By MEA ANDREWS of the Missoulian
The makings of Tipu’s Tiger’s ginger brew - sugar, honey, cinnamon, cardamom, lemon, ginger root and a hint of fennel - are brought to a boil and simmered for 20 minutes before serving.

Photo by LINDA THOMPSON/Missoulian

It's a caffeine-fueled, doppio-espresso, macchiatoed world of drive-up coffee out there, but Missoula's favorite vegetarian-vegan restaurant has an alternative: ginger brew.

Carefully concocted on site, its a spicy pick-me-up that lifts a gloomy midwinter day. It has no caffeine, but is steeped in spices that lounge on the tongue long after each sip.
“I played around with the recipe until I got it to where I liked it,” says Bipin Patel, owner of Tipu's Tiger, which opened 8 1/2 years ago with a full menu of vegetarian Indian cuisine, from Patel's childhood in East Africa, India and England.

His inspiration for ginger brew came from a Jamaican ginger beer he tasted and loved.

“Ours is a little spicier than most,” he said. “Sometimes you end up with bits of ginger and spices in the brew, but that's part of the process of being homemade and not made in a factory.”

The “brew” in Tipu's ginger brew is a salute to stovetop cooking, not alcohol. Tipu's recipe uses fresh ginger root, bought in 30-pound boxes and pureed, peels and all. Fresh cinnamon sticks, cardamom seeds and fennel seeds are crushed and added to the brew, along with lemon juice, and for sweetness, honey and sugar.

The entire brew is brought to a boil, then simmered for 20 minutes to infuse the spices into the water and juices; the mixture is then strained and served, hot or cold depending on preference.

Ginger brew is one of Missoula's more unusual hot-drink flavors. Spice teas are easy to find, and coffee drinks are plentiful. But Tipu's mulled-from-scratch hot drink is converting some drinkers, especially those trying to forgo caffeine but who want a drink with zing.

Missoulians are probably more familiar with Tipu's chai than its ginger brew. Chai is the restaurant's No. 1 liquid seller; it is brewed on site for restaurant clients, but also is produced as a commercial mix at the Mission Mountain Market in Ronan, and sold as a mix for home use and at least a dozen Missoula outlets, including the University of Montana, Butterfly Herbs, Liquid Planet and Rattlesnake Trading Co.

“If you order chai around Missoula, you might be drinking our chai,” Patel said.

Chai is made with soy milk or regular milk, and has caffeine, but its ginger and spices are similar to the ginger brew, Patel said. Still, the flavors fuse in a totally different way; the milk softens the spice of the chai.

“The chai recipe goes back to my grandmother, so it is 80 or 90 years old,” he said. “One of my earliest memories is getting up and every morning, seeing either my mother or my grandmother brewing chai.”

Ginger brew is a newer experiment, tweaked over the past few years as Patel looked for additions to the menu.

In midwinter, when days are gloomy and cold, the hot version of Tipu's ginger brew hits the spot. It goes down smooth, warming the throat and innards, with its steeped-in ginger zip staying behind, sitting on the back of the tongue.

Tipu's makes no health claims about the brew, but the ingredients hint at some of the possibilities. Ginger is considered a digestive aid that helps neutralize stomach acids and enhance digestive juices, which is why moms everywhere serve ginger ale to stuffy-headed kids. Ginger and cinnamon also may have some anti-inflammatory properties, and honey, fennel and cardamom have their own claims to curative and soothing properties and digestive health.

“The dominant flavor is definitely ginger,” says Patel. “It's slightly peppery, I think; it's got a hot aftertaste that changes, depending on whether you drink it hot or cold.”

Patel said the restaurant brews its ginger brew several times a week, as needed. “Ginger beer” is also on the menu, a fizzed-up version of the ginger brew, made for people who want a carbonated, soft-drink interpretation of the drink.

So far, ginger brew is available only at the restaurant; a tall glass runs $2.25.

Like the chai, however, it could become a spinoff commercial business in the future, if the flavor finds a following.

“We never expected the chai to take off as it did,” Patel said. “You never know.”

Reporter Mea Andrews can be reached at 523-5246 or at mandrews - at - missoulian.com. Missoulian Archive Article