Review: Wicked Dolphin Silver Rum

As a spirit industry, rum has become more and more prolific over the last 10 years or so.  I recently tasted a new rum on the market that was made from white granulated sugar; distillers are quickly learning that you don't need to own a sugar cane field in the Caribbean in order to produce rum.  And yet, many rum producers outside of the Caribbean still import molasses from the islands.  Others purchase molasses from local cane producers.

Enter Wicked Dolphin, a rum distillery that's only a few years old, located in Florida.  Wicked Dolphin's rums are pot-distilled from the juice of cane cut from fields that are only minutes away from the distillery.  This marks one of the few American rum productions which sources fermentation material locally, in the tradition of more staid American spirit industries like whiskey and apple brandy.  The result is the beginning of an aspect to Wicked Dolphin's products that I wouldn't hesitate to call terroir.  The bottle that I have (batch #13!) was sent to me as a gift for review.

Nose

Despite the fact that Wicked Dolphin is distilled from cane juice, you wouldn't be able to tell by the nose.  The first few wafts have a sweetness and buttery-ness that will belie a molasses rum.  Along with butter, there's vanilla, light brown sugar, and gentle wood.  There's a freshness that I can only describe as running water.  A big whiff ends with a slight alcoholic spark that's pleasantly subdued.

Taste

The butter continues on the tongue.  The traditional white rum vanilla notes manifest here as butter and butterscotch.  The mouth feel has a noticeable viscosity.  Its sweet state on the tongue will once again make you think this is not cane rum.  It's at this time that the alcohol will remind you it's there on your tongue and the roof of your mouth.  The finish has a freshness that's reminiscent of the chlorophyll of crisp lettuce.  Perhaps that's the sugar cane's grassiness trying to come through?

Mixing

I find that because rums can vary so widely, so can their mixability.  The bottom of the scale grinds from the drown-it-in-cola stuff all the way up to the don't-you-dare-mix-that nectar of the gods.  My take is that Wicked Dolphin white falls somewhere between fruity drinks and drunk straight.  It plays perfectly in a Daiquiri or a subtle mixer like soda or ginger ale.

Conclusion

I've drunk too many shitty American rums.  The fact that Wicked Dolphin is imminently drinkable combined with its honest American end-to-end production make it quite noteworthy.  Some price checks will have you learn that Wicked Dolphin white will cost between $20-25.  Are there better rums for cheaper?  Absolutely.  But buying Wicked Dolphin will yield a great drink as well as pay American workers, all the while helping develop the southern Florida rum terroir.  I look forward to seeing how the Wicked Dolphin distillery and rums mature going forward.

Bahama Mama

When I was a wee lad wearing a much smaller Hawaiian shirt, my family took a vacation to the Bahamas.  One of the most memorable moments from the trip was my being heartbroken over Customs telling me that I couldn't bring a coconut on the airplane home.  Oh well.

One of the other things I remember from the trip was that my parents sucked down Bahama Mamas the whole time.  They even gave me a sip on a few nights.  Do I remember the finer tasting notes of the stuff?  No.  But what I do remember is that I tasted coconut and banana, and that its color was a jewel-like dark red.

It turns out that the Bahama Mama is not just one-of-many monikers slapped onto overly sweet Caribbean crap drinks, but it actually is a concoction that, while varying from source to source, is a drink unto itself and will usually contain dark rum, coconut rum, orange juice, pineapple juice, and grenadine.

On this final Leap Day of Tiki Month 2016, I look back to a particularly poignant post from our Tiki Month proprietor Doug Winship, who shared a post by modern tiki maven Humuhumu on what she defines a tiki drink to be.  While I love being nerdy and pedantic, I fall nearer in opinion to what Doug defines as tiki, which is a bit more gentle.

Further, Doug has parroted(see what I did there?) the idea that drinks can also be Tiki Compliant, lifting the central pole of the tiki tent higher to encompass more of what might be discussed as "tiki".

Well, today I'm giving you a drink that's most certainly not a tiki drink, and really not Tiki Compliant either.  What is it?  It's a recipe that I've spent years tinkering with.  My goal was to re-create what I tasted when I was kid in the Bahamas, but also to make a mean of the recipes out there that still captures the spirit of the drink.  Oh, and to ensure it wasn't also a goopy tasteless mess.

But look, we're slumming it today, guys.  You should use a rum that's colored with molasses or caramel.  Your coconut rum and liqueur should come from the middle shelf of your local store, not ordered off a website because it's so high quality and rare.  This recipe requires the cheap stuff.  The only thing you can't skimp on is grenadine... use the real thing.  While proper grenadine will never give it the mesmerizing ruby color, the drink needs it.

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The DJ's Bahama Mama

2 oz Jamaican dark rum (Myers or Coruba)
1 oz orange juice
1 oz pineapple juice
.5 oz coconut rum
.5 oz creme de banane
.5 oz grenadine

Shake with ice and strain into a double old fashioned glass filled with crushed ice.

Simple Zombie Cocktail

Happy Tiki Month 2016!

One of the most iconic tiki drinks of all time is the Zombie cocktail by Don the Beachcomber.  Aside from the fact that the drink itself evolved bit by bit during the 20th Century, the notorious secrecy with which the Beachcomber and his competitors operated their bar programs way back when has resulted in a multitude of recipes for the Zombie.  As far as I can tell, the only things that they all have in common are: rum, and being high proof.  Most have grapefruit juice, but not all.

For a few years now I've had one such recipe scrawled on the inside of the back cover of my Grog Log.  I swear that I wrote it down when I saw Beachbum Berry post it years ago, but now I can't find any trace of it on the internet except here.  I know I didn't dream it up.  Can anyone source it?

The recipe is a simplified Zombie, whatever that might mean.  It ignores some of the more nuanced and exotic ingredients and instead sticks to a "skeleton crew" of more commons ones, while still claiming to capture the flavor of the 1934 original.  True or not... Zombie or not... this is a delicious drink, and it's easy to make.  It's my go-to recipe (along with the Reverb Crash) for impressing guests wanting a tiki drink who can handle something bitter and/or complex.

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Simple Zombie

1 oz dark Jamaican rum
.5 oz 151-proof rum (any type)
1 oz grapefruit juice
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz cinnamon syrup

Shake with ice cubes, strain into glass with more ice cubes.

Mixology Monday XC

This month's Mixology Monday is being hosted by Joel of Southern Ash. The last MxMo of Joel's that I joined was Highballs, my entry for which can be found here and the roundup can be found here.  Thanks for hosting again, Joel!  His theme this time around is "Perfect Symmetry" cocktails, which use (binarily) opposed ingredients in the same recipe.

As I've mentioned before on this site, my trial-by-fire entry into the world of cocktails was through tiki drinks, which is not something you'll hear very often.  The force that originally bridged my gap from tiki to classic cocktails is Robert Hess, a mixological champion who, if not a founding father of the modern cocktail movement, was at least in the first wave of its cavalry.

Robert Hess' main vehicle of evangelism is his website DrinkBoy, which is where I began my own adventure years ago, and luckily for us all, the site, while simple, remains just about the same today as it ever was(more on that later).  Hess also has a video series called The Cocktail Spirit, the episodes of which are linked to individual cocktail recipes on DrinkBoy.com, thereby intertwining the two resources.  Be glad!

Hess more often celebrates the artistry and nuance of established recipes than creating his own, but when he decides to flex his creative brawn, his aptitude always shows.  A recipe of Hess' that I've been making for years now is the Jolly Roger.  Leave it to the personality who pulled my attention from tiki to hold my attention with a classic-tiki style hybrid, which is most certainly my favorite drink of his.

The Jolly Roger uses both light and dark rum, a classic tiki drink trope.  However, I could swear that the recipe used to use all dark rum instead of the mix, and that Hess changed the recipe a few years ago.  Fortunately, the wonders of the internet responded to this nagging feeling of mine.  Archive.org is a website that creates frequent automatic backup "images" of many websites so that you can view how they looked in the past.  Looking back to DrinkBoy.com at January 1, 2007, shows that I'm correct, pictured below.

And so, the original Jolly Roger contained only dark rum, while the modern one has a mix of light and dark.  I'm not inclined to forget the original, as I think I actually preferred it to the newest recipe.  However, I believe the new version is interesting in a different way, and with its light-and-dark rum mixture, I wouldn't hesitate to call it a Perfect cocktail.

A note about the ingredients.  Hess seemingly changed the rums in the Jolly Roger recipe to understandably accommodate the assertive character of (my beloved) Cruzan Black Strap Rum, which he later began using for the recipe.  Astonishingly, today I will not be using Black Strap.

I will first be using the new Captain Morgan White rum (un-spiced), which deserves your attention, despite what you may think.  It's a properly good rum at its price point; notes of its vanilla and raspberry are so strong that they remain detectable while mixed in simple cocktails.

My second rum is Captain Morgan Deluxe, which is also un-spiced and unfortunately not available in the United States.  Any non-Jamaican dark rum will do.

This recipe uses falernum, the fruity and spicy syrup/liqueur used in tiki drinks.  Instead of searching out obscure bottles of the stuff or soaking spices in rum for a month, I suggest that you make your own rich falernum syrup using a recipe by Kaiser Penguin, which only takes mere minutes, but doesn't taste like it.

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Perfect Jolly Roger

1oz light rum
1oz dark rum
1oz orange juice
.25 oz falernum
1 dash aromatic bitters

Shake ingredients in a shaker and strain into rocks glass over ice.

Ralfy's SunnyD and Rum

This post deliberately comes on the heels of Tiki Month 2013.  Why?  Because although this drink isn't a tiki drink, it could be construed as Tiki Compliant^® in a fairly low-class kind of way.  Before you judge the recipe below, read on...

Anyone who enjoys reading blogs and other online amateur writing can tell you the bittersweet feeling of coming across a great blogger or website; the sweet is that you've found a new source of information that you enjoy consuming, but the bitter is that you often wonder how you've gone so long without discovering that source.

I've just recently experienced the above with Ralfy of Ralfy.com, a Scottish chap who primarily vlogs his reviews and thoughts about Scotch whisky, along with other sundry advice and tips.

Ralfy is also quite knowledgeable about the internet, much more than his age's stereotype might have you believe.  This knowledge includes internet culture, and especially YouTube culture.

In 2012 there surfaced a YouTube video of a nice lady(perhaps inebriated) named Chris Athey who decided to create an impromptu original song proclaiming her love of SunnyD and Rum - simply a mixture of rum and Sunny Delight.

In typical internet fashion, clever folk decided to endlessly remix this remarkably off-tune diddy into overly-processed musical masterpieces.  Ralfy celebrates these works of creativity and, in a moment of commemoration, tries out this much-lauded Sunny D and Rum drink.



Ralfy is not just an expert on whisky, but is also a learned rum drinker.  In a moment where Ralfy flexes his perhaps-atrophied mixological physique, he creates his own version of Sunny D and Rum using the sage choice of J. Wray and Nephew White Overproof rum.

I thought I'd give it a whirl.

The first problem was with SunnyD variations.  Uninitiated fans may not realize that there are over a dozen flavors of SunnyD in the US alone.  Being in the UK, Ralfy is using California Style, a version which isn't even sold anymore on this side of the pond, but sources tell me that the American SunnyD Smooth flavor is the almost identical to it, if not the same.

The problem was that I couldn't find SunnyD Smooth anywhere, and I looked in quite a few places.  I found Tangy, Orange, and even a 20oz bottle that didn't specify its flavor.  However, I tried this drink with all of them, and they're all good.  And I also must say, I've been around the block of processed food and drink (I even have another blog about it), and I remember SunnyD California Style from my childhood; it wasn't so different from the flavors above.

The last hurdle in this drink was overcoming my cocktailian ego.  Ralfy's recipe and preparation of this drink was decidedly obsolescent: under-iced, over-diluted, ungarnished.  I went to work in my lab and experimented extensively *hiccup* to modernize the recipe and bring it into fashion.  I tried things like making the booze-to-mixer ratio higher in booze, shaking the drink with ice and pouring onto more cubes, or crushed ice, or serving it up in a cocktail glass, garnished with a slice of orange, or even rinsing the glass with absinthe.  None of these things worked.  None of them tasted remotely as good as Ralfy's manifested rusticity, the thing for which he is known best.

This drink is surprisingly good.  The funk of the Jamaican rum cuts through the juice's artificiality perfectly while the absinthe perfumes the whole into an experience I wouldn't hesitate to call a tiki long drink.  The recipe below is transcribed as best I can from how Ralfy prepared it on screen.

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SunnyD & Rum (Ralfy Mix)

3.75 oz cold SunnyD (California Style/Smooth preferred, substitute with Tangy or Orange)
.75 oz J. Wray & Nephew White Overproof rum
1 heavy dash absinthe

Build in an Old Fashioned glass over the largest cubes/chunks of ice you have and stir.  No garnish.

Recipe & Rating: Lazy Bear

I first heard of the Lazy Bear only recently from Frederic Yarm of the Cocktail Virgin Slut.   Fred in turn got this recipe from Jacob Grier, one of perhaps the greatest bartenders on the west coast and also, in my opinion, one of the greatest cocktail writers in the world.

The Lazy Bear was originally crafted by Grier specifically to be served at his friend's wedding.  Lovely!

This drink uses one of my favorite combinations: whiskey and lime juice.  A more bird's eye glance at the recipe will quickly indicate, whether Grier intended or not, that this is a tiki drink.  And because it is Tiki Month, the yearly tiki celebration hosted by the legendary Doug Winship, my timing is perfect.

Below are the recipe and ingredients I used.

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Lazy Bear

3/4 oz Jamaican rum (George Bowman aged small batch rum)
3/4 oz rye whiskey (George Dickel Rye)
3/4 oz lime juice
3/4 oz honey syrup (1:1 clover honey)
3 dashes spiced bitters (equal parts Angostura Bitters and allspice dram[this recipe])

Shake with ice and strain into a rocks glass(tiki mug?) filled with ice. Add a straw.

I had a hard time articulating my thoughts on this drink, so instead of thick prose I'm going to give my impressions in bullet points:

-One of the few tiki drinks which is almost completely spicy and not fruity
-The two aged spirits combined with the bitters' tannins to provide a dry and woody backbone
-Lime juice here operates mostly to lend its sourness and not flavor, as its flavor is mostly dashed by all the other assertive ingredients
-Dry and sour overall, refreshing
-Earthiness provided by rye and pimento dram
-Herbal sweetness provided by dram and honey
-Sweet funkiness provided by honey and rum
-Dry spiciness provided by dram, rye, and bitters
-Bright lime juice cuts through all the funk, dryness, spice, sugar
-My theory still stands that most of the best tiki drinks use honey

This is one of the best tiki drinks I've ever had, and I don't consider myself a tiki novice.  Make this drink, and thank Jacob Grier.

Rating: 10/10

Original Remixes for Housewarming

We had a housewarming party a few weeks ago and I finally had the opportunity to mix drinks for my friends using my relatively lush home inventory. (If you weren't invited, I'm sorry. We had a guest list that already challenged the capacity of the apartment. We wanted to invite even more.) Incidentally, this experience confirmed that I don't have what it takes to be a good bartender, and I'm ok with that.

We had a small suggested drink list for the occasion which included the Saratoga(this version), the Cuba Libre(this version), the Monkey Gland(this version), and two originals which I've posted below.

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ORIGINAL REMIXES

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The Madras is one of those easy training-wheel drinks both in terms of taste and ease of construction. Seemingly everyone knows how to make one and yet no one knows where it comes from. I can't find any historical information on the damn thing, so if anyone knows of it, please enlighten me.

The drink is simply orange juice, cranberry juice, and vodka. Admittedly, it's a strange combination, but the drink really works, managing to invoke an overall "tropical" crowd-pleasing flavor. I urge you to stay away from the versions that call for several times more cranberry than orange.

It was a matter of time before I figured that replacing the vodka with rum would be a capital idea. I suggest an aged rum that's in the funky Jamaican style. I'd go with a Smith & Cross or Appleton Estate, and I sometimes get away with Cockspur 5-Star. I've been making this one for years. No fancy names here: just the facts.

Aged Rum Madras

.75 oz aged rum

1.5 oz orange juice

1.5 oz cranberry cocktail

1 dash simple syrup

 Shake all ingredients in a shaker with ice, and pour into an Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with lime wheel.

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This is one that we created specifically for the housewarming. It uses the aforementioned Cockspur aged rum along with Godiva Chocolate Vodka. The vodka is a curious ingredient... not really a replacement for creme de cacao, though it is slightly sweetened. The end result of our tinkering with it is a really classy drink that we call the Hwalisa.


Hwalisa

1 oz aged rum(Cockspur 5-Star or Appleton V/X)
.75 oz triple sec
.5 oz Godiva chocolate vodka
1 dash orange bitters




Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

Guilty Pleasure

Even your average fan of fine film or fine food might occasionally enjoy a Kevin Smith flick or a Twinkie, no? Even a student of fine cocktails might occasionally enjoy a less-than-fine drink, am I right?

There's nothing wrong with a guilty pleasure, so long as you consciously recognize why it's guilty.

To make you feel better, here are five guilty pleasures of the legendary Jeffrey Morgenthaler.

Mine? It changes occasionally, but my go-to is the Blue Hawaiian cocktail. My preferred recipe has varied over the years, but here's my current one. Don't judge me, just drink.

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Blue Hawaiian

1 oz cream of coconut
1 oz blue curacao
1.5 oz light rum
4 oz pineapple juice
1 dash lime juice

Shake everything in a shaker with ice cubes of any size, and strain into a tall glass with crushed or cubed ice. Garnish with anything as long as it's orange to contrast with the blue.

Egotistical cocktails, Part 1

If the Old Fashioned was the spark of life that would eventually become the modern cocktail, then the Improved Cocktail was the amoeba. Jerry Thomas himself first documented it as more exotic ingredients become more readily available for use in mixing drinks in the late 19th Century.

The Old Fashioned cocktail, as we've said, is a way to season your spirit and to make it a bit more palatable. The Improved Cocktail builds upon that recipe to enhance the complexity just a bit. This time around, all you need to add to your Old Fashioned to make it Improved is a bit of Absinthe and Maraschino liqueur.

Improved Cocktail

2 oz spirit
1 dash simple syrup
1 dash aromatic bitters
1 dash Maraschino
1 dash absinthe

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

It doesn't sound like much, but Thomas knew what he was doing when he codified this thing into the printing press. I'll reiterate that I'm not fanboy of Maraschino or absinthe either, for that matter, and yet the Improved Cocktail impresses me every time I make it.

Much like the Old Fashioned, you can swap the spirit for whatever you like (and the bitters and garnish, accordingly) and it will usually work. My favorite Improved Cocktail is made with my beloved Cruzan Black Strap rum. There's something about the pungency of the rum's molasses flavors that stand up to the strong absinthe and Maraschino like no other spirit I've had so far(except for maybe Scotch whisky). I also tend to like my Improved Cocktails on the rocks.

I wrote about humility a while back, and why I wasn't giving my own name to a cocktail that I thought didn't deserve one. Since then, I've gotten encouragement to shed humility by going ahead and naming cocktails that I've made, even if doing so seemed a bit exorbitant.

So technically you could call this an Improved Black Strap Cocktail on the rocks, but instead it will be...

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ORIGINAL REMIX

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Oklahoma

1.5-2 oz Cruzan Black Strap rum
heavy dash simple syrup
heavy dash aromatic bitters
heavy dash Maraschino
heavy dash absinthe

Build over ice in small tumbler. Garnish with orange twist.

A Malibu Old Fashioned, If I Must...

Just a little while ago I wrote about the not-so-prolific ways in which you could get creative with making your own custom Old Fashioned cockails. I had been preaching this strategy long before I wrote about it, and one of my more wiley past suggestions has unfortunately reared its ugly head.

Dagreb, a fellow blogger, dug up an old suggestion of mine and foolishly decided to bring it to life. He claims that I suggested the idea of making an Old Fashioned out of Malibu rum. As I defended myself in the comments of his post about it, I told him that I either was very drunk (up to you to decide how likely) or that I suggested only adding bitters to the rum, since the sweet liqueur-like Malibu needed no additional sugar. Intoxicated (literally?) by the idea of coconut and pineapple combined, Dagreb whipped up a Malibu Old Fashioned anyway with pineapple syrup and aromatic bitters. The results were, not surprisingly, too sweet and undrinkable.

Allow me to provide a solution!

Malibu has recently released a new product: Malibu Black. This is far from the first "Black" titled version of a spirit to be released, but it's approach is a bit different. While Malibu is an unaged rum at low proof that's sweet like a liqueur, Malibu Black is almost a full proof, less sweet rum which uses aged rum as a base. Malibu black still has the candy-like coconut flavor (love it or hate it), but is a lot more sophisticated, and versatile, might I add. I essentially see no reason to ever buy normal Malibu again. Black's lesser sweetness makes it finally possible to mix it with cola without overly saccharine results, as Malibu suggests. If you haven't had coconut cola yet, you're really missing out.

I thought this the golden opportunity to make a Malibu Old Fashioned that didn't suck. I still treated Malibu Black like Malibu, in terms of its sweetness and heft, but the end result is that it's not undrinkable.

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Malibu Black Old Fashioned

2oz Malibu Black
2-3 dashes lime bitters (substitute lemon or orange bitters)

Build on ice and garnish with a lime twist (substitute lemon or orange twist).

Old Fashioned: Your Syrup Need Not Be Simple

I talk a lot about Old Fashioned cocktails on this site. It's because I really enjoy spirit-forward stiff drinks, and the Old Fashioned is the grandfather of them all. I won't talk about how, though, because Robert Hess does it best below. (Skip to the 4-minute mark.) Long story short: the word "cocktail" originally meant "Old Fashioned" (or vice versa).

What used to be an old-timey way to make a spirit more drinkable is still a way to make a spirit more drinkable. To make an Old Fashioned cocktail (hereafter OF) is simple: you begin with about 2 ounces of your favorite spirit, you add a dash or two of cocktail bitters, and a heavy dash of sugar syrup. The peel of a citrus fruit is often added. You stir with ice, and you drink.

The OF is way to celebrate a spirit; its bitters and sugar (and sometimes citrus peel) are a way of seasoning a spirit without masking it, much like you'd do with food.

For example, roasted chicken may be delicious, but few would argue that roasted chicken can't be elevated with just a bit of garlic and herbs; steak benefits from a bit of salt and maybe even pepper; many types of fish benefit from a squeeze of lemon; cooked broccoli benefits from a bit of melted butter. Many spirits benefit from a simple seasoning as well.

Traditional OFs are made with brown spirits along with Angostura aromatic bitters. When it comes to lighter spirits, there are plenty of bitters options as well, like the next two most popular types, orange bitters and Peychaud's bitters(which is a deep red bitters and tastes of muted anise). Other types include lemon, grapefruit, cherry, peach, rhubarb, celery, chocolate... and then there are interesting blends such as whiskey barrel, tiki, creole, and the list goes on. Yours truly has created his own coffee bitters and floral bitters, even. Cocktail Kingdom remains one of the authorities on purchasing bitters on the web.

The Kaiser Penguin humorously held a small contest to see which booze bloggers had the most types of bitters in their possession... be sure to check the comments in the post to see the tally.

The fun part begins when you start creating combinations for your OF. Which bitters should or could go with which spirits? A few examples: chocolate bitters with brandy; grapefruit bitters with tequila; celery bitters with gin; tiki bitters with aged rum; orange bitters with white rum; lemon bitters with pisco.

BUT WAIT.

Your bitters is not the only dimension with which you can be creative for your OF. There are tons of different types of syrups that you can buy and even more that you can make on your own. Using a flavored syrup is a way to add another layer of complexity to your drink.

Below are examples of syrups which can be found in your local grocery store, in the coffee and pancake sections. While you may chuckle at the idea of using such syrups in a cocktail, realize that a syrup is a syrup, so long as it uses high quality and natural ingredients. A little research on the internet reveals great places to buy syrups with a wide selection of flavors.


But be warned: the more complex your spirit's flavor is, the fewer layers of flavor it needs on top of it. It may be a fine idea, for example, to make a Famous Grouse Scotch OF with Whiskey Barrel bitters and clove flavored syrup, but your glass of Balvenie 12 may not need such a distracting mask over its face.

Don't be hypocritical here. If you have no problem with the layering of flavors in your bitters (there are over 40 in Angostura alone), then how could you be against adding another flavor via syrup, if you knew it was of good quality? If it was perfectly acceptable to add a flavored bitters to your spirits, then why would a flavored syrup be too much?

Be open minded when thinking about syrups for possible OFs. On a whim one day I picked up a bottle of Margie's banana syrup from my local grocery store. It's opaque and pulpy... almost like a cross between banana syrup and banana purée. My new favorite way to drink rum is mixed with this stuff, and it makes a killer OF.

I also picked up some cola syrup from a local Williams Sonoma. Its intended use is to be mixed with seltzer to make your own cola, but I mix it with spirits with great results. Even a syrup as powerful as my passionfruit syrup can be mixed into an OF. You can also make a syrup out of a favorite spice or tea by boiling (or simply soaking) it in water and mixing it with sugar.

Dave of the Sugar House Blog gives us a fine example of a good combination: mezcal, Peychaud's bitters, and cucumber syrup. Dr. Bamboo tweets his surprise on how well his ginger-mint syrup works in a whiskey OF... well I'm certainly not surprised! The combinations are endless, and you have the ability build your favorite flavors all into one cocktail.

OFs usually have a peel of citrus fruit for a garnish. If you really start getting wild with your OF flavor combinations, you may find that citrus peel isn't always welcome. When you have an unorthodox OF, you can have an unorthodox garnish as well. Here, I made an apple brandy OF with a cinnamon stick garnish, because I felt that citrus wouldn't go well with it.. You can always forgo the garnish as well.

Here are some of the wilder OFs I've made recently. I hope these inspire you to deviate from normal simple syrup and aromatic bitters, and explore the blank canvass that is the OF.

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Rum & Cola Old Fashioned

aged rum
Sonoma Cola Syrup
Fee's Whiskey Barrel bitters
lime peel

(As I've said before, lime twists/peels are best acquired from a hard lime if you can manage to choose one along with the soft ones that you pick out at the store for juicing.)

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Gin Old Fashioned

gin
Red Zinger Syrup
lemon bitters
lemon peel

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Light Rum Old Fashioned

light rum
Margie's Banana Syrup
Angostura bitters
lime peel

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Jack Rose Old Fashioned

apple brandy
grenadine
lemon bitters
lemon peel

Easter Cocktails

Easter means brunch and brunch means drinking before noon. Count me in.

A friend of mine hosted a merry Easter Brunch and egg hunt (we're young at heart) for about a dozen people. I arrived with a load of ingredients and set up a makeshift bar, prepared to mix a small menu of drinks. Aside from the mandatory and exceptional Mimosa, I was offering a few additional stiffer options. Overall, it was a great success.


Chambord & Tonic

1.5 oz Chambord vodka
3 oz tonic water
3 dashes rhubarb bitters

Build in a tall glass on ice.

Chambord vodka is one of the classier flavored vodkas you'll find, and bearing the name Chambord certainly adds to its pedigree. The slightly sweet vodka went great with the bitterness of the tonic water and the added sourness from the bitters. This is a great refreshing drink for a hot day.


Rum Alexander

1.5 oz gold rum
.5 oz coffee syrup
1 oz cream

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I'm at it with the Alexander again, which is a great drink for parties due to its simplicity and crowd-pleasing character... a cream and coffee cocktail just seemed like it belonged at a brunch. The coffee wasn't as prominent in the cocktail as I'd have liked, but instead the light coffee flavor only slightly accented the great Flor de Caña Gold that we used.

MxMo LV

The DJ makes a last-minute slide toward home and issues one last tiki post before the end of Tiki Month!

Mixology Monday set this one up so I could spike it. (Two sports references in two sentences!) This month's theme is hot drinks, and our host is Nancy over at the Backyard Bartender.


Most hot drinks with alcohol just don't do it for me. I think it has to do with how alcohol's low boiling point makes it so much more noticeable in a drink that's warmed. For me, sips of such warm drinks have alcohol vapors that waft toward my nose and the roof of my mouth, and the result is that I'm forced to pay attention to the alcohol as much as the the flavor of the drink, which is far from ideal.

There are a few exceptions, though, and one of them is a tiki drink found in Beachbum Berry's Grog Log. Despite that tiki drinks are meant to "cool" you from imagination-produced tropical surroundings, there are quite a few hot tiki drinks, and they're worth exploring for the most part.

Flipping through the Grog Log, it's easy to do a double take when you pass the Flaming Coffee Grog. There are several things about the drink of note:

1) the drink uses hot coffee
2) the drink interestingly combines orange and lemon with said coffee
3) the drink has a unique method of preparation
4) you get to set it on fire

To make the Flaming Coffee Grog, one heats orange and lemon peels, cloves, Grand Marnier, and overproof rum in a small pan, and then one ignites it. Much like how the heated whiskey in a Hot Toddy would waft alcohol fumes vigorously and unpleasantly to the roof of my mouth, overproof rum wafts vapors into the air when heated in a pan. These free vapors easily ignite the rum when a flame is present, and the burning cuts down on the overall proof of the mixture, but also aromatizes the flavors in the peels and cloves. After ignition, one is supposed to spoon the mixture delicately onto the coffee, where presumably the flames will soon extinguish. Then, happily stir the drink and enjoy.

The overproof rum that this recipe essentially calls for is Lemon Hart 151. As of now(February 28, 2011), the stuff is discontinued (though there are rumblings that it will soon be produced again). Which sucks, because not only is it called for in countless tiki drinks, but worse, there is no other product like it. It is a dark demerara rum which is smokey, sweet, and damn powerful. Tiki Month matron Doug of the Pegu Blog just recently pondered about substitutes for Lemon Hart 151, as I've done as well. I'm lucky this day, because I still have a bottle of the stuff. But if you don't, you have several options. You can either choose to mimic the flavor by using another (lower proof) demerara rum, or you can choose to mimic the proof by using another 151 rum. One of my favorite solutions is to do both, by using a dark/black rum such as El Dorado Dark or Cruzan Black Strap, and then adding a few heavy dashes of grain alcohol to up the proof. Keep in mind that for tiki drinks that call for overproof rums, there's usually a culinary reason for it-- they're not just trying to get you drunk. Clearly, for the Flaming Coffee Grog, we need to imitate proof more than flavor.

I don't drink my coffee black. Usually because of coffee's acidity, I tend to need a bit of cream in my daily brew. This recipe has you mix coconut cream* with the coffee, which, in terms of fat content doesn't really approach the acid-cutting power that I usually need. But strangely, the Flaming Coffee Grog goes down smooth, even though its color is almost identical to black coffee. I guess the creators of this drink knew what they were doing.


I wouldn't feel too bad about substituting another orange liqueur for the Grand Marnier, if you felt like it; at .25 ounces, the difference will not be very noticeable. Today I'm using Patron's Citronge liqueur, and the result is delicious. In fact, I think a great variation of this drink would be to swap the rum with a good reposado or anejo tequila; you could call it the Grog Cafe Flameante.

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Flaming Coffee Grog

.25 oz Grand Marnier (or orange liqueur)
.75 oz Lemon Hart 151
1 lemon twist
1 orange twist
2 cloves

1 tbs cream of coconut
coffee

cinnamon stick


Fill mug 3/4 full with hot coffee. Stir in cream of coconut. Combine rum, liqueur, citrus peels, and cloves into a small pan or pot. Heat lightly, then ignite. Spoon the rum mixture onto the coffee and stir with cinnamon stick.



*Talking about canned coconut products is treacherous terrain. This recipe calls for Coco Lopez coconut cream, but what was probably intended, as with so many tiki drinks, was Coco Lopez cream of coconut. For an explanation on what the hell that means, I'll defer to Giuseppe and Richard of the tiki bar Painkiller in New York City:

"Coconut water, coconut milk, coconut cream, and cream of coconut are all vastly different from each other. Coconut water is obtained by boring a hole into a raw coconut and extracting the liquid therein. It is light, clear, and refreshing. It requires no labor aside from opening the coconut. Coconut milk and coconut cream require a more intensive method of preparation.

Coconut milk is made by simmering shredded coconut with water or milk until it develops a frothy texture. This liquid is then strained through a cheesecloth. When the milk is cooled off and allowed to set, coconut cream (a much richer and mildly sweeter product with a more syrup-like consistency) rises to the top and must be skimmed off in order to extract it. Cream of coconut is simply coconut cream that has been subsequently sweetened. The difference in these coconut products with respect to preparation, viscosity, sweetness, and flavor are quite apparent. A sampling of each will clearly illustrate their differences."

The Reverb Crash and Tiki

"Tiki" is an escapist sub-culture that came about in the western United States during the 20th Century, as early as the 1930s. It was largely a caricature of Polynesian culture of the South Pacific, which was an exotic and relaxing idea meant to be an escape from the average working stiff's day-to-day doldrums. This mostly manifested itself in restaurants, ones which were meant to resemble large thatched huts, with beautiful flowers adorning every room, torches on the walls, and masks and carvings everywhere you look. These restaurants served exotic takes on American and Asian cuisine, but what they eventually would be known for is their alcoholic beverages. Tiki drinks are often complicated concoctions of rum, fruit juices, and exotic syrups.

Keep in mind that this "tiki" culture is an American phenomenon. For example, while the flavors of a tiki drink seek to transport your mind to the South Pacific, the ingredients in the drinks are from this side of the planet: the Caribbean. Do you think native Samoans drink Mai Tais and Aku Aku Lapus? No, they are more often drunk by bewildered professionals with loosened collars (like myself). But don't let that take away from your enjoyment! You just need a little imagination and an escapist mindset, and you too can enjoy tiki just as it always has been.

Since the golden age of tiki, many restaurants and bartenders have bastardized the idea of the tiki drink by making cheap knock-offs with crappy and often overly-sweet ingredients. If you're interested in what a real tiki drink can be, I encourage you to explore the drink guides written by tiki historian Beachbum Berry. A good tiki drink can be as complex and interesting as any of the best cocktails you've ever had.

Doug over at the Pegu Blog has spearheaded a tradition to celebrate tiki each February and is calling it Tiki Month. What better time to celebrate tropical drinks than in the dead of winter (in the northern hemisphere)? While I don't want to spend a whole month talking about tiki or tikifying my site's banner (even more), I would like to join in the festivities this year. Last year I abstained and opted instead to showcase Doug's epic post about Hawaiian shirts.

As I've said before on this blog, tiki drinks were my gateway into mixology, and let me tell you: it was a baptism by fire. Tiki drinks are notorious for being inaccessible:

1) Their construction is labor intensive; most of them require you to freshly squeeze at least one kind of citrus

2) They often require more than one type of rum, and since rum characters vary widely by where they're produced, you need at least a dozen or two varieties in order to capably adhere to recipes; it gets expensive

3) They require specialized equipment if you want to be efficient and/or proper, such as juicers, ice crushers, (real) swizzle sticks, and blenders

4) They often require rare (or even extinct) ingredients, such as orgeat, falernum, passionfruit syrup, cinnamon syrup, allspice dram, Cuban rum, and dark 151-proof demerara rum

5) They're complicated; a five-ingredient tiki drink is considered simple, and they sometimes have over a dozen ingredients

6) Because of all of these above, their construction is time consuming; between juicing the fruit, gathering all the bottles, measuring each ingredient, and then using specialized equipment, plenty of drinks take between 5 and 10 minutes to make, and some of them take even longer

7) Most tiki fans from which you might get help or advice will insist on using only the proper techniques, and that even the obscurest ingredient cannot be substituted

An online haven for tiki drink fans and snobs is the Tiki Central Forums. There, you can read and participate in discussion of tiki drinks and ingredients with casual fans, bloggers, and bartenders.

Years ago, Tiki Central held an original tiki drink contest. The runners up are worth mentioning, but the winner was a drink called the Reverb Crash (one of the coolest drink names you'll ever find) submitted by a community member named "kick_the_reverb" (real name is Ran).

The first post ever made on Tiki Central's Tiki Drinks & Food sub-forum was by Martin Cate himself, who I talked about on my spiced rum post, and it was to remind everyone of the Reverb Crash. Check the thread out, as it provides some interesting discussion about the drink.

The Reverb Crash is just a young whippersnapper compared to some of the older tiki recipes, and is even on the simpler side, but the Crash is of the same caliber as the classics. It's been a go-to for years in my recipe collection, and once you try it, you might see why.

The recipe calls for grapefruit juice, and Ran suggests using the fresh stuff in the refrigerated juice section of your grocery store. I myself have made this drink with grapefruit juice from a can, from a refrigerated bottle, and fresh squeezed from the fruit. All of them are good, but provide a slightly different character each time.

This recipe also uses orgeat syrup(pronounced "oar-zha[t]"), which is essentially an almond syrup that is sometimes flavored with additional things like orange flower water. I have yet to make my own successfully (perhaps that will be a future post), but there are several online venues which will sell it to you, and even more online venues that will give you recipes to make your own, should you dare. Unlike some, I'm not afraid to give you substitutes for ingredients: in a pinch, you can use amaretto liqueur instead of orgeat, or even normal simple syrup with a dash or two of the almond extract used for baking. These aren't great (or even good) substitutes, but I'd rather you try to approximate the drink than not make it at all.

The recipe uses a sprig of mint as a garnish. Like many garnishes, this one is not only aesthetic. Before inserting the (clean) mint sprig into the final drink, lightly rap it against the counter/cutting board/etc. so that the mint's essential oils will be agitated and made volatile. When drinking, be sure to use a short straw (or no straw) so that your nose must approach the mint garnish to take a sip. The mint's aroma will act as an olfactory addition to the Reverb Crash's flavor. Seriously.

Finally, this recipe calls for passionfruit syrup. I've used the stuff before on the blog, but this time I'll provide a very simple recipe on how to make it. Passionfruit syrup is simply syrup that is flavored by passionfruit. It is a very common ingredient in vintage tiki drinks. Much like the orgeat, it can be found for purchase on the internet. The nature of the syrup's strength of flavor varies widely by recipe, and my recipe might be the strongest, but also the easiest to make. All you need is passionfruit juice and sugar. Passionfruit juice can probably be found at your local Whole Foods or gourmet supermarket. And, as I've advocated before, don't forget about your local ethnic stores. Today I will be using Goya brand passionfruit juice from individual drinking cans. Unfortunately, there's no substitute for passionfruit syrup in the Reverb Crash.


Passionfruit Syrup

passionfruit juice
white granulated sugar
vodka (optional)

Pour any amount of passionfruit juice into a saucepan or pot. On low heat, reduce the juice's volume by half. (Tip from Alton Brown: record the level of liquid using a rubber band wound tightly against a wooden spoon's handle at rest at the bottom of the pot. It is then easily discernible when the liquid's volume is reduced to a desired level.) Carefully measure your passionfruit reduction, and dissolve into it an equal amount of sugar by volume. Bottle and refrigerate the resulting syrup, with some vodka if you like, which tends to extend its shelf life.


Let's get on to the damn drink. Unfortunately, the sweetness in every one of this drink's ingredients can vary, so you may need to adjust the ingredient amounts to find what you think is your own perfect balance. As for rums, Ran calls for a Cuban or Virgin Island light rum (think dry and flavorful, like the Cruzan Estate Light that I love) and Myers dark rum (aside from Myers, Coruba will work, and maybe even Gosling's Black Seal, Smith & Cross, or Appleton Estate Extra). This drink has a lot of sugar in it... definitely try to make it a once-in-a-while indulgence. It's worth every bit of trouble to make it, I assure you.

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Reverb Crash

1 oz light rum
1 oz dark rum
4 oz grapefruit juice
1.5 oz passionfruit syrup
.75 oz lime juice
.75 tbs orgeat syrup

Shake with crushed ice* and pour into a large glass. Fill the rest of the glass with crushed ice. Garnish with a mint sprig.

*cubed ice can be used in a pinch.

Infusion #4: Why I'll Never Buy Spiced Rum Again*

*Unless I want to specifically try a new brand.

Spiced rum holds a pretty ambivalent position in the minds of most people who are truly interested in spirits and cocktails. While it is a mainstay in most "nightlife" venues and bars, it is a relatively new kind of spirit which has few salient uses aside from mixing it in your favorite soft drink.

Worst of all, many spiced rum products aren't very good, anyway. Quite a few of them ride the same wave as trendy vodka which is driven more by marketing than quality, and it shows. A fine blogger by the name of Dr. Bamboo has done a detailed rundown of many spiced rums here, here, and here... I admit that he's a bit more generous with his scores than I would be.

Captain Morgan is the "Bacardi" of spiced rums, and it dominates the market. Sailor Jerry is a better product which has been gaining steam over the past few years. Foursquare is a premium spiced rum from Barbados which many rum fans love, but for some reason I can't bring myself to agree. If I were pressed to tell you any spiced rum brands worth buying, they would be Cruzan's new 9 (which the Drinkhacker quite likes) and Captain Morgan 100, which is a 100 proof version of the original... but it actually has a different and improved flavor.

Much like I said in my post about falernum, it turns out that spiced rum one can make at home is much better than anything you can buy. For this reason, I will no longer regularly buy spiced rum.

The recipe I use for spiced rum is very simple, and mostly inexpensive. The recipe comes from, of all places, the Wall Street Journal, detailed in an article here.

Spiced rum is an infusion, as simple as any other that I've made on this site. My last infusion was a compound infusion done in multiple stages. This recipe is also a compound infusion, but it's done in one stage.

The overwhelming flavor in most spiced rums is vanilla, and we achieve that by using a whole vanilla bean, the rarest and most expensive ingredient in this recipe. However, vanilla beans are now becoming easier to acquire via supermarkets; check your store's spice aisle... you'll probably be able to find a small jar with a few vanilla beans for less than $10.

There are various other spices in the recipe, and even some fruit. What is most important in this recipe is that you use whole and fresh ingredients, not their ground counterparts. The reason for this is so that you not only ensure that you have the freshest and highest quality ingredients possible, but also so that you can remove ingredients at will, should a single flavor become overpowering as you periodically taste the infusion.

Infusing doesn't make crappy rum taste better, so pick a good rum. A gold rum is standard, and usually one without too much overpowering character. For example, Cruzan Estate Dark is a fine choice, while Appleton Estate V/X may not be. Today I'm using my favorite gold rum, Cockspur Five Star. Cockspur is on the fruitier side of gold rums, and so I will be tweaking the original recipe slightly to take advantage of that.


Pictured here are the ingredients for my spiced rum. I've changed the slice of ginger with a peel of lemon, and I've throttled down the number of black peppercorns. Also, I've been known to put a peel of grapefruit in my spiced rum infusions... it goes great with the allspice. Before starting the infusion, I sliced open the vanilla bean, and I sawed off a chunk of the nutmeg with a bread knife.


Here's why you should use as whole ingredients as possible: 1 day into my infusion, I realized that my rum was going to be overpowered by allspice. I strained out the mixture (pictured below... pictured above is the plastic container I used for the infusion) and removed 2 of the 3 allspice berries before putting everything else back in the rum. When it was done, I learned that I had saved the infusion.



Homemade Spiced Rum
(adapted for the rum used & the DJ's tastes... click the image to the right to get the original recipe)

1 bottle bottle gold rum (Cockspur Five Star)
1 vanilla bean, sliced length-wise
1 three inch piece orange peel
1 three inch piece lemon peel
1 cinnamon stick
3 whole allspice berries
3 whole cloves
3 whole black peppercorns
1 quarter inch piece nutmeg

Combine all in container and seal. Let sit for 2-3 days. When desired flavor is reached, strain and re-bottle.

In order to whet your appetite on what a spiced rum drink can be, let us examine the recipe in the picture to the right. It is called the Henry & John, after (Captain) Henry Morgan and John Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola. Call it a fancy "Cap'n & Coke", but it tastes nothing like it. This drink is created by Martin Cate, a modern day champion and authority on tiki drinks and bartending. Cate just opened up a new bar called Smuggler's Cove in San Francisco, a joint specifically designed to celebrate rum. And I must say, Henry & John is a drink on the order of some of the best rum drinks I've ever had.

Henry & John

2 oz (homemade) spiced rum
3/4 oz lime juice
1 oz brown sugar syrup*
2 dashes orange bitters
2 dashes aromatic bitters
2 oz seltzer water

Wrap a long piece of orange peel inside a tall glass, then fill the glass with ice. Shake all ingredients except the seltzer in a shaker with ice. Open the shaker, add the seltzer, then strain onto the ice in your glass with the orange peel.

*Recipe is in the image above.

Final note: be classy and save your prettiest booze bottles to house your finished infusion masterpieces.

Infusion #3: Winter Rum

I talk quite a bit about infusions on this blog. If you're tired of it, you're welcome to leave, but if you're not, then you're in for a treat, because I'm "turning it up a notch" today.

Over a year ago I decided to see what would happen when I infused fresh cranberries into white rum. The result, obviously, was cranberry rum, and while it achieved a beautiful red hue on the order of Campari, very little flavor was added to the final product except for a nice acidic tartness. I concluded that fresh cranberries would make a great infusion if used along with other ingredients. Today I'm finally running with that idea.

What I'm doing is what you could call a compound infusion, not simply because of how many ingredients I'll be using, but because of how I will be doing it. When I talked about making bitters a while back, I spoke of a conservative method of infusion whereby one infuses alcohols separately and then combines them into a perfect blend via trial and error. Today, I'm using a different technique with the same soul: instead of infusing all the ingredients at once, I will be doing it in stages. With this method, I can halt each infusion handily at the moment when its flavor is perfect, and then continue with the next so as to best balance the combination of tastes in the final product.

I'm going with three infusions this time: dried berries, fresh cranberries, and cinnamon, and I'll be doing it with rum. Why rum again? Because it's what I know best and because it's so versatile. I promise to do a non-rum infusion soon.

I've used Cruzan Estate Light in several infusions, and I'm using Cruzan again this time, but I will be using their Cruzan Estate Dark product. It's really more of a gold rum than a "dark" rum, but its flavor is dry and peppery as opposed to fruity and sweet, which makes it a perfect candidate for the base of a "winter rum".


The first infusion was with the dried berries. I used all natural berries from Stoneridge Orchards, which is a combination of cherries, blueberries, cranberries, and raspberries. Infusing dried fruit into your liquor yields a very different result than fresh; the flavors are dark, earthy, and oxidized as opposed to bright and fruity. It also imparts more sweetness than usual. I put about a dozen berries in the bottle of rum, and less than 24 hours later, I decided it was already done, and strained them out.

Next up is the fresh cranberries. Like last time, I'll point out that you really need to rupture each berry so that the hollow inner surface area of the berry can add to the infusion.


About 15 crushed cranberries went in, and it was done about 36 hours later. Also like last time, the color of the rum has turned a beautiful red (pictured left), and there is now a tartness that balances out the sweetness imparted by the dried berries.

Lastly is the cinnamon (pictured right). Using a whole stick of cinnamon (and not the ground stuff) guarantees the cinnamon's quality and ease of extraction, and trust me when I say that shortly after being put into the rum, the stick unfurls and allows the liquor access to its whole surface area. As you can see, the berries so far have soaked up quite a bit of the rum that we won't get back. So sad!

The cinnamon only needed about 24 hours to impart what I wanted. The Winter Rum is complete (pictured left). The final result is interesting in that all of the infused components can be tasted individually in the rum. It has a very warming characteristic to it, which I suppose was what I was going for. The dried berries give an underlying sweetness, the cranberries lend a tartness that keeps the rum from being too boring, and the cinnamon applies an overall earthiness that really gives the rum its warmth. I'm satisfied with this experiment, though I would have wanted to infuse the dried berries for less time. For any of you trying something similar: go easy on the dried fruit.

You could use something like this in almost any application of spiced rum, or even in the stead of any gold rum to add a decidedly wintry spin on any cocktail. My application will be simpler.


Winter Rum & Ginger

2 oz Winter Rum
2.5 oz ginger ale or ginger beer
1 dash aromatic bitters

Combine ingredients over ice in a tumbler.

Next time you're at a bar where you don't trust the bartender, order a spiced rum and ginger ale; although cola is more traditional, I find that ginger ale better complements spiced rum, whereas I feel cola simply trounces it. Ginger ale is also well mixed with any old decent gold rum. Try it next time when you're out of ideas on what to make to drink.

This rum combines very well with ginger ale. The dried fruit flavors and cinnamon go especially well with the aromatic bitters. The concoction is pictured above in a beautiful gold-rimmed glass (of 4) that I found at an antique shop. The outsides (and insides) of the glasses are curiously adorned with miniature reproductions of pages and ads from old Montgomery Ward magazines.