Släckdrünk — The Crazy Forest Guy (Eräjorma)

What we’re making

In addition to inspiring the name for this blog, the Finnish language gives us another word we didn’t know we needed — eräjorma (air-a-yor-ma), roughly translated as crazy forest guy. But it’s less about the guy and more about the look. In Finland, eräjorma is what you look like when you’re tromping through the forest looking for wild mushrooms or padding around the summer cottage on your way to the outhouse. Visualize athleisure clothing (less ath; more leisure), Carhartts, romeo slippers (or any slippers, for that matter), and a come-as-you-are approach to self-grooming.

Crazy Forest Guy (Eräjorma), the drink, is inspired by a popular alcoholic carbonated beverage that Finns invented for the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics. Faced with the possibility of not being able to efficiently slake the thirst of visitors coming to Finland’s capital, soft drink manufacturer Hartwall invented the Long Drink, a canned pre-mixed blend of gin, grapefruit, and pure Finnish water. Popular with visitors and locals alike, it has been bottled (canned) ever since. It could be considered the grandfather of hard seltzers, created nearly 70 years before the recent advent of White Claw. In Finland, the Long Drink (in Finnish — lonkero) sits alongside vodka, cheap beer, and adulterated brandy in the pantheon of fine Finnish alcoholic beverages.

For those of you wishing to recreate the lonkero at home, I recommend the gin blog The Gin Is In which has lovingly engaged in research and development with not one, but SIX recipe variations. For gin lovers, this is a mecca for helpful/geeky reviews and recipes for gin and gin-based cocktails. Rather than second-guessing my fellow drink bloggers, we’re going to take it to the next level. Crazy? Maybe. Crazy Forest Guy? Absolutely.

The Crazy Forest Guy

The booze

2 oz of gin

The adjustments

1/2 oz fresh grapefruit juice

5 oz of Squirt or similar grapefruit soda

Ice cubes

The swirl

Twist of grapefruit peel

Tablespoon(s) brandy or cognac (nothing fancy…remember, this is very casual)

1. Combine gin and grapefruit juice in a shaker or highball glass. Shake or mix to blend the ingredients.
2. Pour gin/grapefruit mix into the serving glass, add ~5 ounces of Squirt. Adjust amount to your taste.
3. Fill almost to the top with ice.
4. Dribble a tablespoon (or more) of brandy or cognac to the top. This is called a float — when drinking you can either stir it in or just make the first sips the best sips.
5. Twist a thick peel of grapefruit onto the top of the drink to expel grapefruit oil onto the top of the drink. Toss it into the drink as a garnish. If you have reusable or compostable straws, you can use one. But most forest hovels don’t stock straws, so don’t sweat this detail.
6. Pull up your sagging Carhartts just a bit, find your slippers and then settle down for the long drink. Or three.

Crazy Forest Guy Playlist Starters

Hard Rock Hallelujah— Lordi (Winner of 2006 Eurovision Song Contest)

Forest — System of a Down

D.B. Cooper — The Orcas

Almost anything— ZZ Top

Crazy Forest Guy Binge Watching

Bordertown — This Finnish police procedural can be found on Netflix. Imagine CSI set in a town about the size of Bismarck, North Dakota. Watch in Finnish with English subtitles just for kicks. The dubbed version isn’t as much fun.

Into the Wild — The movie about that guy who decides to live in the Alaska wild. Yeah, it doesn’t go well.

Grizzly Adams — 1970s series featuring Dan Haggerty as a mountain man that could speak to animals. Kind of.