Working Class Cocktail: The Mailman

By Jared | August 2, 2012 - 8:36 pm | Classic Drinks, Original Cocktails, Unusual Ingredients

Cocktails have the reputation, I think, of being the drink of the frivolous upper-class. The drink of the oppressor. While the rest of us slave away at our nine-to-five, those blue-bloods drink tiny concoctions of unnecessary complexity. It’s as if their sense of entitlement is so pervasive it has affected even their beverage choice.

Well, no longer, friends. Tiki Speakeasy is here to liberate the cocktail from its upper-crust trappings, and to recreate the entire idea of a mixed drink into something the everyman can enjoy! Let us imbue the act of drinking with the humility it deserves! Vive la revolution!

First against the wall, a classic drink called the Airmail. It’s essentially a honey-daiquiri topped with Champagne, that haughtiest of wines. But how to equalize such a drink?

The Mailman

1 oz gold rum (may I suggest Flor de Cana 4?)
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz honey syrup*

Shake. Add 1 oz Shitty Proletariat Lager to the shaker tin. Strain into chilled flute. Put a lime wedge or something on there, if you’re feeling bougie.

*Honey Syrup: Combine 2 parts honey and 1 part near-boiling water in a sealed container. Shake to combine. Store in the fridge.

Fit for the opposite of a king.

There you have it: a delicious summer sparkler that is true to the experience of the common man. And when you’re through drinking it, you’ve got 11 more ounces of Shitty Proletariat Lager to enjoy! It’s the perfect way to keep cool while you’re building guillotines.

St. Cecilia Punch In Exile

By Jared | July 25, 2012 - 8:37 pm | Classic Drinks, Original Cocktails, Punch

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I am, for the time being, not in Charleston. It’s a less-than-desirable situation, to say the least. Ovid was 50 years old when he was banished to Tomis; I am half that age, and just outside of Columbia, SC. If I knew Latin, I might write epistles detailing my misery—as it is, I just drink liquor.

It’s the combination of necessity of liquor and separation from Charleston that led me inexorably to St. Cecelia Punch. I defy anyone to name a drink more uniquely tied to Lowcountry tradition. By god, it’s the first recipe in Charleston Receipts:

St. Cecilia Punch

6 lemons
1 quart brandy
1 pineapple
1.5 pounds sugar
1 quart green tea
1 pint heavy rum
1 quart peach brandy
4 quarts champagne
2 quarts carbonated water

Slice lemon thin and cover with brandy. Allow to steep for 24 hours. Several hours before ready to serve, slice the pineapple into the bowl with the lemon slices, then add the sugar, tea, rum and peach brandy. Stir well. When ready to serve, add the champagne and water. 80-90 servings.

(As printed in Charleston Receipts.)

And there’s the issue: the only place I could ever find enough people to consume 80-90 servings of anything (much less liquor) is in Charleston. In Columbia, I necessarily drink Thorogood-style—that is, alone. So I set out to make a single-serving version.

I’m sorry, you venerable old book. I’m going to fuck with tradition.

Here’s where I ended up:

St. Cecilia Punch In Exile

1.5 oz Martell VSOP
.5 oz Ron Matusalem 15
.75 oz lemon juice
.5 oz pineapple syrup
.25 oz Marie Brizard Apry
1.5 oz sparkling green tea*

Shake all but sparkling green tea. Strain over fresh ice in a tall glass. Top with with sparkling green tea. Garnish with the tears of a man estranged from his people. Or maybe a lemon wedge and some mint. Drink until you forget.

*Sparkling Green Tea: Make enough weak green tea (let’s say 1 bag/10 oz boiling water, steeped 4 minutes) to appropriately fill your soda siphon. Chill. Charge with CO2. Dispense as needed. If you don’t have a soda siphon, just use the chilled weak green tea without charging. Oh, and black tea works, as well.

Temporary contentedness.

Some things I’ll point out:

There’s no champagne. This is your penance for leaving. You don’t deserve to feel classy.
The drink leans a little sweet. This is to compensate for the bitterness of your daily life.
Apricot instead of peach. They’re close enough, and there’s a real dearth of good peach spirits anymore (if you know of one, please tell me; SoCo doesn’t count).
Don’t feel tied to the base liquor. Cognac and rum are the old-school way, but I have had great success with other combinations. I’m especially fond of 1 oz Plymouth gin and 1 oz cognac. Or 2 oz bourbon, or 2 oz dry gin, or whatever. It would probably be good with pisco, too. Don’t get picky is what I’m saying—you’re drowning sorrows, not entertaining.

Maybe after you’ve had a few, you’ll regain some semblance of happiness. I can’t guarantee anything. And if you’re the type that likes to dance when you’re drunk, here’s a video to teach you how to do the Charleston. It’s approximately as sad as you are, and dancing won’t make you feel better, but it might do to fill some small part of the void in your soul, at least until you pass out:

Unusual Ingredient: Rainwater Madeira

By Jared | July 18, 2012 - 12:27 am | Original Cocktails, Unusual Ingredients

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That’s right, today’s topic is an “Unusual Ingredient,” and it’s unusual for a number of reasons. The first that comes to mind is: this is a rum blog. But I say to you, dear Reader, that I should not have to start a Madeira blog to talk about something this delicious.

The second reason is the particular style of Madeira we’ll be talking about—Rainwater—and it’s a style that has a flavor profile strikingly different than most Madeiras. But we’ll get to that. It’s fairly hard to find, there’s not a lot being made, and almost all of it is exported to the US.

America: The Land of Rare Portuguese Wine

Madeira is a fortified wine, which means that neutral grape spirits have been added to the wine itself, which raises the alcohol level (obvs), and makes it a bit less prone to spoilage. What’s important is when the spirits are added to the wine, because this stops the fermentation process. If you add the spirit in early in the fermentation process, there’s more sugar that hasn’t been converted to alcohol, so you get a sweeter wine. Add it later, and you get a dryer wine for the opposite reason.

Unlike most fortified wines, Madeira is also subjected to low levels of heat during the aging process, and it’s deliberately oxidized a bit. This makes Madeira even further shelf-stable (it’s not as stable as liquor, but it’s surprisingly close).

Rainwater Madeira has a lot of contradictory origin-myths, and I won’t subject you to them. You can look them up, if you’re interested. What’s important is it’s a light, semi-dry Madeira, normally with a strong fruitiness—mostly dry citrus, to my palate, and floral. Which means it works well in cocktails with citrus.

Now, I won’t go on about how hot it is outside; suffice to say, it’s fucking hot. And I’ve been making a lot of tall drinks in an attempt to defy god’s will. What I look for most in a summer drink is clarity of flavor—I’m not looking to be bogged down with heavy alcohol or sweet or herbals. I just want a nice thing to sip on that isn’t demanding, but can stand up to scrutiny. Is that so much to ask?

Dutch East India Fizz

1 oz Hayman’s Old Tom Gin
.75 oz Sandeman Rainwater Madeira
.5 oz lemon juice
.5 oz simple syrup

Shake briefly. Stain over fresh ice in a tall glass. Top with 2.5 oz seltzer water. Garnish with a long peel of orange.

It’s a simple drink, sure. The main thing going on is the interplay between the gin and the Madeira, which is exactly what I wanted. The lemon just brightens it up a bit. There’s a lot of potential to liven up the flavor profile, though, if you get bored. I like to roll the orange peel up like a flower and stick it on a cocktail pick, then put a few drops of orange flower water in the middle. That floral element, just on the nose, really brings a new world into the drink. You could also use whatever freaky simple syrups you have around—pineapple, vanilla, raspberry, whatever. Or you could straight up add some white grapefruit juice to the mix (maybe .5 oz), bring some sweet bitter to the party. You could muddle in some mint, or sage, or who knows? The possibilities are endless!

Of course, you could always drink the Madeira by itself, slightly chilled. It’s kind of perfect on its own.

What To Hear With What You Drink: No. 2 Edition

By Jared | July 12, 2012 - 1:58 am | Classic Drinks, What To Hear With What You Drink

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Thirteen years of Prohibition in the United States meant that, even after repeal, there wasn’t much domestic liquor to be had in the 30s and 40s. And while everyone in the US wanted Scotch, the sudden increase in demand meant prices were sky-high. There was plenty of inexpensive rum around since the sugar islands were not under the thumb of prohibition; and, since rum’s main market had been out of the picture for 13 years, the rum available had for the most part spent an above-average time in barrels. But rum didn’t have the cultural caché whisky had, and people just didn’t buy it. Liquor distributors, tired of maintaining waiting lists for Scotch while their warehouses brimmed with rum bottles, started requiring the purchase of multiple cases of rum for every case of whisky. So that left many bars looking for creative ways to sell rum.

One New Orleans bar, Pat O’Brien’s, came up with a cocktail that became an institution in that town—and that has defined the “Umbrella Drink” for generations since. Here’s what you need to know:

Hurricane

4 oz dark Jamaican rum
2 oz lemon juice
2 oz passion fruit syrup

Shake. Strain over crushed ice in a 20-oz Hurricane glass. Garnish with an orange wedge and a cherry and a straw. You can put an umbrella on if you really want to, I guess.

Notice the ingredients; specifically, that there is no red ingredient in the drink. A Hurricane by this recipe (which, according to Jeff Berry, is the original recipe) will not be red. It will be brownish-yellow, like most sours made with aged spirit. Apparently Pat O’Brien’s decided at some point to make their Hurricanes with a pre-packaged Hurricane Mix, and it became the artificial cherry-flavored monstrosity they serve on Bourbon Street to this day.

Do you have any idea what’s in that packet? Neither do I.

But that original Hurricane is a beautiful drink, one that is built around the rum and doesn’t get in the way of the rum. It’s the kind of drink that reminds you how wonderful it is to be alive (and drinking rum). It’s also the kind of drink that gets you drunk—four ounces of liquor will do that. But, lucky for non-alcoholics everywhere, many Hurricane glasses are available in 12-oz sizes, so you can just cut the recipe in half. Then you can drink twice as many!

And while you’re lounging on your lawn chair with your huge drink with a tiny umbrella in it, I encourage you to take a moment to reflect on all the things you may normally take for granted. Nina, as usual, says it best:

What To Hear With What You Drink: Edition the First

By Jared | July 9, 2012 - 4:22 am | Classic Drinks, What To Hear With What You Drink

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When people come over to my house, I like to offer to make them a drink. It makes me feel classy, and it makes them feel special. And if the drink I make them happens to involve tequila and lime, as often it does, they will inevitably say something like, “Jared, this drink is so good I feel like I should be listening to Jimmy Buffett.” And it is at this point in the conversation that, three inches from their face, I hiss, Jimmy Buffett has no place in this house. Your insolence will not be tolerated again.

When did that clown co-opt our idea of island/beach life, anyway? He writes shitty country songs with goofball lyrics and no discernible melody. And he needs to stay the fuck out of my liquor cabinet. He sells a frozen margarita machine, for god’s sake. His beer manages to be an even shittier Corona.

Neon green slushy! Run for your lives!

It is with your well-being in mind, dear reader, that I have started this new series, What To Hear With What You Drink. The goal is two-fold: to showcase a classic (and probably mistreated) drink, and give you the perfect piece of music to listen to while you drink it. And what better drink to start with than the best-selling cocktail in the world, The Margarita. This is my top secret recipe, but you can have it because we’re friends:

Margarita

2 oz reposado tequila
.75 oz lime juice
.75 oz Cointreau Noir

Shake. Strain into a cocktail glass with salt on half the rim.

A few important points:

There are three main categories of tequila. The clear stuff is “blanco” or “silver” tequila. Most margarita recipes call for that, and I wouldn’t fault you for it except reposado tastes so much better. Reposado has spent anywhere from 2 months to a year in a barrel, so it’s got just a bit of color on it. Anejo tequilas are aged from 1-3 years, and anything above that is Extra Anejo. Older tequilas like anejos and extra anejos are delicious, but they’re too heavy for a margarita—you want the drink to be summery and refreshing and shit, don’t you? Of course you do.

Cointreau Noir—my secret weapon. Most reputable recipes for a margarita call for Cointreau as the sweetener. It’s a pure-alcohol-based liqueur flavored with orange peels and junk. It’s the original triple-sec, it’s all over the place in classic cocktails, and it’s beyond delicious. There are those recipes, also, that call for Grand Marnier; you may know this drink as a “Cadillac Margarita.” Grand Marnier is a cognac-based liqueur also flavored with orange peels.

Each liqueur has its advantages. Cointreau is clean and bright, with an assertive flavor of orange peel. Grand Marnier is darker, brooding, and has a more subdued orange presence. Personally, I like the weight GranMa adds to a margarita, but I miss the orange. Enter Cointreau Noir.

So Cointreau took their 137-year-old product and blended it with cognac, producing what is, in my opinion, the perfect margarita liqueur.

Classy as hell.

As far as salt rims go, just rub a wedge of lime on the outside of the lip of the glass, and rub it in some salt. Try to make it pretty, and make sure not to get salt in the glass.

Now, some people like their margaritas over ice. So they can sip on them over a longer period of time, or something. I don’t know, margaritas rarely last longer than 90 seconds in my glass. But if you’re going to put it over ice, I recommend crushed ice (maximum chill) and throw .25 oz of agave nectar in the tin when you’re making it (extreme cold tends to cut sweet and accentuate acid). And put it in a lowball glass, for fuck’s sake. None of that bulbous “margarita glass” bullshit with the goddamn cactus for a stem. You are not twelve.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES.

As for the soundtrack, I give you the masters of warm-weather cool, Steely Dan:

Meme Drinks: Scumbag Steve

By Jared | July 4, 2012 - 3:44 am | Meme Drinks, Original Cocktails

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What is rum? I ask myself this question nearly every day.

At times, rum is many things to many people. It is friend, confidant, mother, father, wife, and country. It comforts you in times of need, and celebrates with you in times of great success. For others, rum goes even deeper; it is an obsession. The subject, in one way or another, of their life’s work. And for some, like me, it’s a delicious thing to drink.

In truth, rum is an alcoholic beverage produced by the distillation of sugar cane product or byproduct. Mostly, it is distilled from the fermented byproduct (that is, molasses). There’s a history lesson to be had in this, but understand: any rum islands that were once colonies of England or Spain or the old USofA are probably making molasses-based rum. This has a lot to do with the fact that those countries were very interested in sugar, and the molasses left over from sugar production had to be used for something. Why not alcohol?

France, however, had a bevy of sugar beet refineries at home, and no real need for the sugar they were growing on the French colonial islands. So it was that those islands (Martinique, Haiti, and Guadeloupe among them) started producing rhum (in the native French) from the juice pressed directly from cane sugar. As you might expect, the results are markedly different. They call it rhum agricole, and so do we.

Speaking in unfair generalities, rhum tends to be drier than molasses-based rum, and often with a stronger fruitiness and/or a distinct grassiness in the nose. There’s also a very common “gasoline” quality to the stuff right out of the still, though it typically calms down after some quality time in a barrel.

Aged rhum agricole might be the most delicious category of spirit known to man, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about a drink; that drink is made with white rhum agricole.

Scumbag Steve

2 oz Clément Première Canne
.75 oz lime juice
.75 oz pineapple syrup
1 dash Peychaud’s bitters

Shake it all around. Serve up in a cocktail glass. Maybe drop a rum cherry in the bottom, if you’re feeling frisky.

This is not a spirit for the faint of heart, white agricole. Merely pass the open bottle under your nose, and you will know what I mean. There’s lots to love: plenty of banana, mango, other yellow fruit, cut grass, sweet almond, citrus. All good things. But there’s also a dominating presence of gasoline or acetone or something equally unpleasant (if you’re unprepared). As you spend some time with it, you’ll learn that the gasoline element is perhaps what you love best about it. Which is to say, you’ll understand when you’re older.

Thank you, Sir. May I have another?

And the drink is not designed to hide it. Why would it? If you don’t want to taste nail polish remover, just use some Puerto Rican white rum and get on with all the adventures you’re not having.

As for pineapple syrup, I don’t do mine like most people say you should do it. I just get equal parts (actually I normally do 4:3, but whatevs) of white refined sugar and pineapple juice (by volume), put them in a bottle, and shake the shit out of it until the sugar’s dissolved. Fuck waiting.

In reality, this drink is just a daiquiri. Sure, you’re using rhum instead of rum, and the simple syrup is actually pineapple syrup, and there’s bitters in there. But is it really that different from a daiquiri? Not when you write the recipes down right beside each other. But you make the drink and tell me it tastes anything like a “normal” daiquiri. I dare you.

The resulting drink is perhaps cleaner than you’d expect, tasting the spirit. That pineapple really shores up the intense aromatics of the rhum into a fruit-forward pleasantness. The lime, of course, does its thang. But I think the real clencher is the Peychaud’s—the subtle cherry and anise quality gives the rest of the drink a kind of upward momentum, and opens up the palate for the next sip. Try it, you’ll see what I mean. And then there’s that lovely pastel pink color. What’s not to like?

Today’s shitty, dimly-lit picture featuring: Dirty Counter!

So, yes, it’s a daiquiri. But it’s a daiquiri that is importantly different from other daiquiris, and took some real time and consideration to construct. You’ll know when you taste it.

Meme Drinks: Karate Kyle

By Jared | June 23, 2012 - 7:02 pm | Meme Drinks, Original Cocktails

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Coming at you in four parts!

1. If you don’t already, you should really get to know Mr. J. Wray. Here’s a handsome portrait:

Stoic, unpretentious, versatile. Perfection.

Yes, it’s overproof, but it’s bottled a bit shy of 151 (126-proof if my math is correct). It also apparently accounts for 90% of liquor sales on its native island of Jamaica. For what that’s worth.

J. Wray is my go-to “secret ingredient.” If a drink is a little… lackluster, I try adding a touch of J. Wray. You’d be amazed. The Kaiser got me putting .25 oz in my Chartreuse Swizzles, and I’ve never looked back. It doesn’t work for every drink, but when it does–dynamite. I don’t know what kind of alchemy they’re pulling over there on the island, but the bouquet on this stuff never ends. “Too legit to quit,” as the kids say. It tastes a little like vanilla gasoline, which is to say it’s fucking delicious.

2. And no discussion of J. Wray is complete without mentioning Ting, the nearly-impossible-to-find grapefruit soda. And when I say “nearly-impossible-to-find,” I mean they didn’t have it at World Market. They did, however, have Fentiman’s Dandelion and Burdock.

Americans everywhere want to know: What the hell is this shit?

So apparently British people drink sodas made out of the roots of flowers and shit. If you believe the Pope (I don’t), the drink was invented by St. Thomas Aquinas after a bit of “divine inspiration.” The truth is the drink is a little like a weirder, Britisher root beer. (Weirder than root beer? Yes. Srsly.) It’s surprisingly light, and has a nice aniseed character over the top of what I can only assume is the eponymous flavors. It’s the kind of thing that you drink and think to yourself, “I know I’ve tasted this somewhere before,” except, upon reflection, no, you definitely have never tasted anything like this before.

I like it.

3. I have mentioned rum cherries a few times on this blog already, and it’s probably about time I told you how to make them. Because for the love of God don’t use those walking-dead things they’ve got at the grocery store.

These used to be fruit. Now they have an insatiable hunger for BRAINS.

FUN FACT: They actually soak cherries in lye to leech all of the color out so they can dye them these completely unappetizing colors! Neato!

Here’s how to make good cherries (I adapted–okay, stole–this recipe from Sloshed!).

1.5 lbs dark, sweet cherries
2 oz sugar
2 oz water
.5 oz lemon juice
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise pod
.25 tsp vanilla extract
2.5 oz aged rum (don’t use anything too expensive)

Bring sugar, water, lemon juice, cinnamon, anise, and extract to a boil. Reduce heat. Add the clean, stemmed cherries (you can pit them if you really want to, but I didn’t feel like it) and simmer for 5-10 minutes, until they look and taste delicious. Remove from heat, get the cinnamon and anise out of there, add the rum, stir. Let it cool, put it in some jars.

Of course you can do whatever you want with the spices, but this is what I did. They’re good for cocktails (I put them on like every drink, if you haven’t noticed), but they’re good on some vanilla ice cream, or on a spoon. I’d take a picture, but a big slop of wrinkly cherries in syrup is not the most attractive thing to photograph. I don’t even have any pretty jars to put them in. You’ll live.

4. Finally! A drink!

You know it’s tiki because there’s a palmetto tree behind.

Karate Kyle

1.5 oz Wray and Nephew White Overproof Rum
.5 oz lemon juice
.25 oz rum cherry syrup (that’s the liquid stuff in with those cherries you just made)

Build in a tall glass over ice. Top with 3 – 4 oz Fentiman’s Dandelion and Burdock. Garnish with a lemon wedge, three rum cherries on a pick, some mint, and a straw if you’re dainty.

You see, this drink is called Karate Kyle because, like Kyle, it will lull you into a false sense of security, its milquetoast exterior hiding a core that is truly fearsome. We recommend a bit of respect, if only for your own well-being.

Meme Drinks: Overly Attached Girlfriend

By Jared | June 22, 2012 - 8:59 pm | Meme Drinks, Original Cocktails

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I’m really bad at naming things. Which is kind of sad because I have a degree in creative writing, and you’d think I’d have a handle on that kind of thing by now (my poems all have really pitiful titles). Cocktails, for whatever reason, are a special challenge—nothing ever seems to fit.

So I tend to choose a theme, and name everything on that theme until I get bored with it. Today I decided to start naming drinks after internet memes. For all you old folks, I’m sorry: the names won’t make any sense, but that’s okay because they don’t normally make sense in the first place.

All of that’s to say I made a drink today and I think it’s okay.

Overly Attached Girlfriend

1.5 oz gold rum (I used Angostura 5)
1 oz lime
.75 oz sweet vermouth (I used Punt e Mes)
.5 oz Coco Lopez
.25 oz grenadine

Shake. Dump in a tiki mug. Garnish with mint, citrus wedge, and a rum cherry.

Shot on location on my father’s pool-deck. Special thanks to Propane Grill for its patient cooperation.

Now, I put it in a glass for the photo because I want you guys to see that horrendous color. Here’s how it happened in my head while I was building the drink:

>You know, you should do a drink with sweet vermouth and cream of coconut. That might be tasty.
>It might be disgusting, but whatever.
>It will probably be a terrifying color. I mean sweet vermouth is only red insofar as it’s actually brown. God knows how that’s going to look once you put cream of coconut in it.
>I know! Use some grenadine to amp up the red a little, really own it. It’ll be fine! Don’t worry!

Sometimes you tell yourself not to worry, then afterwards you realize you should probably have worried. The moral of the story is you should probably put this drink in a tiki mug because it’s ugly as sin.

On the upside, it tastes pretty good. I think if you handed me this drink and asked me what was in it, I’d have a hard time pulling out coconut or sweet vermouth. They pretty much combine into the strangest kind of pleasing flavor this side of Fernet Branca.

The strangest kind of pleasing flavor. Fernet Branca.

All of that coconut-vermouth-lime-grenadine business perches nicely on top of a good gold rum. I used Angostura 5, which has a bit of barrel-flavor (vanilla, caramel, etc.) without losing the fruity aromas of a really good white rum. There’s plenty of other rums out there that would work, though. With this drink, you’re looking for a rum that can stand up to some assertive flavors without competing—white rum might get lost, dark rum might muddy the flavor profile. Experiment! Play!

So, you ask, why “Overly Attached Girlfriend”? The answer is simple(-minded): It’s kind of feminine, in an unattractive way, and just under the surface lies a conflux of elements that make no sense whatsoever. Yet, somehow, it functions. It won’t hurt you as long as you’re cooperative.

See? I told you it made no sense at all.

Tiki Speakeasy Originals: A Two-Fer!

By Jared | June 21, 2012 - 5:39 am | Original Cocktails

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I think we’ve established that I love rum, but I’ll reiterate:

I love rum.

There are other things I like, of course. Cognac is one. And poorly-written post-war science fiction. But recently I’ve been having a lot of fun toying with amari. What’s amari, you say? Well. They are bitter Italian liqueurs. And there’s a lot of them.

To my mind, there’s two main categories of amari. There’s the thinner, lighter, normally colorful kind like Campari and Aperol; then there’s the thick, bolder, darker kind like Fernet and Averna. There is, of course, a whole spectrum in between, but I think most amari can be confidently grouped one way or the other. But they are all bitter, and they are pretty much all delicious.

In the interest of full disclosure, I drink an obscene amount of Fernet Branca. Nary a meal goes by that I don’t cap off with a finger or two of the brown stuff. (Forgive me. That came out differently than I’d planned.) It tastes of menthol and saffron and ginger and clove and chamomile and BITTER. Everything good, essentially, goes into Fernet Branca. I like to tell people it tastes like Christmas Toothpaste.

Drink it every day. Live a better life.

So when I discovered the recipe for a drink called the Bitter Pill, which calls for aged rum and Fernet Branca, it was love at first sip. It changed everything.

Bitter Pill

1.5 oz aged rum (Zaya, perhaps?)
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz demerara syrup
.5 oz Fernet Branca
egg white

Dry shake (that is, without ice, to begin emulsifying the egg white), then shake with ice. Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Garnish with a big orange twist.

And the moral of the story is now I want to put amari in every tiki drink ever. Here’s one attempt, playing off of a drink called Chief Lapu Lapu:

Water Buffalo

1 oz dark Jamaican rum
1 oz light rum
1 oz lemon juice
1.5 oz Amaro Ramazzotti
.5 oz passion fruit syrup

Shake. Dump it all into a tiki mug. Garnish with mint, a lemon wedge, and a straw.

Ramazzotti is a pretty mild amaro (that’s the singular of amari, guys), so I went for broke with a full 1.5 oz, and it still needed that passion fruit syrup to balance the lemon juice. I don’t often use light and dark rums together, but it seems called-for here. I used Appleton Extra for that funky-spicy-Jamaica thing it does, and Cruzan light because that’s what I had for light rum. The rums together end up light enough to play nice with the other elements without getting muddy, but they’re not deferent and boring. A gold rum might work instead, but I think blending dark and light rums adds a nice bit of complexity against the orange peel and cinnamon coming off of the Ramazzotti. Passion fruit, of course, adds that Je ne sais quoi unique to tiki drinks.

So the end result is decidedly a tiki drink, and it is also decidedly bitter. Which makes me unspeakably happy. But rum is more than tiki drinks (as we’ve said before)!

Is this how the cool kids are taking pictures of their drinks nowadays?

The Ordinary

.75 oz Amaro Nonino
.5 oz rhum St. James VSOP
.25 oz lemon juice

Shake. Up. No garnish.

You’d never guess to taste it, but this drink is based on a tiki drink called the Lani-Honi. I replaced the Benedictine in the original with the much lighter and bitterer Amaro Nonino, and I used an aged rhum agricole to get some heft and body back in there. The lemon juice is just enough to balance out the sweetness of the Nonino.

I also cut the whole recipe in half, and I serve it up, so it’s kind of a little aperitif. Sprightly, complex, drinkable. The final flavor is completely unified; it doesn’t taste like individual components, it’s one single flavor. You could wrap it up like a candy. A delicious booze candy.

Together, I think these drinks give you a pretty good idea of how I approach cocktails (especially rum cocktails). Which is to say mostly I just do unspeakable things to other people’s recipes. But that’s the name of the game, right?

Mixing Phylogenetically: The Old Fashioned

By Jared | June 20, 2012 - 9:09 pm | Cocktail Families

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There are an endless number of cocktails, and it can be scary. The prospect of needing to memorize so many recipes is terrifying. But, luckily, it’s also completely unnecessary. Drinks exist in relation to one another, and there are (in my estimation) only a handful of distinct cocktail categories.

Probably the oldest cocktail “family” (and the only one rightly called a “cocktail,” of you’re a prescriptivist) is The Old Fashioned. And I am going to insist that the Old Fashioned is a family, because there’s a million ways to make one, okay? Here’s the recipe:

Old Fashioned

Some booze
A little bit of some sweet stuff
A little bit of some bitter stuff

Stir. Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass (or, you know, up in a stemmed glass or whatever). Do some garnish, if you want.

It’s vague on purpose. It’s not even really a recipe, it’s a pure expression of universal law. The directive here is to add some sweet to some booze then balance that with some bitter (or, for left-handers, add some bitter to your booze and then balance that with some sweet). What’s important is that bit about balance. Looking at the Old Fashioned, it becomes clear that when you add things to spirit, they’d better be in balance, or your drink is going to taste like shit. So the exact proportions become less important than the way the drink tastes, which should always be true anyway.

However, this is a post about Ratios, and it’s useful to have a baseline recipe that you can play with.

Standard Bourbon Old Fashioned

2 oz bourbon
.25 oz simple syrup
2 dash Angostura

Stir. Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Squeeze an orange twist over the drink and drop it in. (Some people are really into muddling the orange zest in with the sugar to amp up the orange quotient. I’m not. Do what you want.)

90% of the time, when I just want to drink some alcohol, this recipe is where I start. And 90% of the time, when I use this recipe, I don’t do what it says at all. A typical situation:

>Man I’m feeling like some rum right now.
>Let’s make a rum drink!
>Okay, 2 oz of Clement VSOP. Great!
>I could use simple to sweeten it, but that’s kind of boring. I know! .25 oz Orgeat!
>But my orgeat isn’t quite as sweet as simple. Maybe just an extra barspoon of simple would kick up the sweet without overdoing the orgeat flavor.
>Bitters… hmm… I could use Angostura, and it would be good. But I really love the way Fee’s tastes with rum, let’s try that! But I remember the dasher cap on this Fee’s gives a really big dash—I should probably do just one dash.
>You know, orgeat is really creamy and stuff, I bet a lemon twist would cut through that texture a little better than orange.

And that’s how I make an Old Fashioned—which, in this case, looks suspiciously like a Japanese Cocktail but made with rum. It’s different every time. Maybe it’s tequila and a homemade Honey-IPA liqueur and grapefruit bitters. Maybe it’s cognac and pineapple syrup and Angostura (don’t laugh). What’s important is that none of the ingredients are mandatory, but their function is. You don’t have to use bourbon, but you do have to use something boozy; you don’t have to use simple, but you do have to use something sweet; you don’t have to use Angostura, but you do have to use something bitter.

If you change an ingredient, think about how it differs from the standard, and adjust to accommodate that. Liqueurs are generally less sweet than 2:1 simple, but they might be too assertive if you use too much; use liqueurs to taste then adjust the sweetness up with simple. Fruit bitters are generally less bitter than aromatic bitters, don’t be afraid to do a couple extra dashes and/or add in a dash of Angostura in with the fruit bitters.

Once you’re comfortable with that, you can start using more than one base spirit. Cognac and rum is a classic, as is a mixture of different rum styles; I like a touch of Calvados to bring some fruit to my Scotch; whatever makes you happy. Old Fashioned it may be, but it’s just as fun as it was 150 years ago.