Happy belated Rickey Month! It turns out that July is good for something besides sweating your face off—drinking plenty of variations of D.C.’s official cocktail, for one.

For John Uselton and Michael Lowe, that the Rickey became the District’s official cocktail last year is something of a nice coincidence. The two, after all, are planning on producing gin and whiskey — both of which can be used in the cocktail — once they open up their planned New Columbia Distillery this summer.

By now, everyone in D.C. should know how to make a rickey, our native cocktail, but yesterday the D.C. Craft Bartenders Guild announced the city’s top six finalists in this year’s 2011 Rickey Month Competition.

The final stage of judging to determine D.C.’s best rickey will be held Monday, August 1 starting at 6 p.m. at Jack Rose. Admission is $10 and includes a free rickey.

In case you missed it last week, here’s MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow denouncing Congressional toying with the autonomy of the District the best way she knows how: demonstrating how to make the District’s newly-named native cocktail, of course.

The official D.C. bird is the wood thrush. The official D.C. flower is the American Beauty Rose. And now, D.C. will have an official cocktail: the Rickey, joining Louisiana (the Sazerac) as the only other state place to have an official cocktail.

There’s nothing better on a hot summer day than a rickey.