The theme is “Forgotten Cocktails”.? Given the resurgence in cocktail culture, and my relative lack of scholarship done “on my own”, I did what I figure most folks would – grabbed my copy of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails (2nd edition, natch) and started thumbing through it.

I didn’t have to thumb through it for long.

Bourbon has always been a passion of mine.? Lately – and I blame Harry Turtledove’s “American Empire” series of books for this – I’ve been on a Calvados kick.? I don’t make a lot of drinks using Calvados because I tend to drink it straight (and usually while smoking a cigar) that doesn’t mean I avoid Calvados cocktails.

Speaking of sexy, it's Trader Tiki stuff!

The Avenue is one of the first cocktails in the book.? Immediately I noticed the bourbon and the Calvados, but what really got me interested was the third ingredient listed: passion fruit juice (or nectar), which Dr. Cocktail suggests can be replaced with passion fruit syrup.

Why, I have passion fruit syrup – the ever-so-delicious Trader Tiki variety – and I even have Trader Tiki grenadine!? Let’s see here.

The Avenue
1 ounce bourbon
1 ounce Calvados
1 ounce passion fruit juice (or nectar)
1 dash real pomegranate grenadine
1 dash orange flower water
Shake in an iced cocktail shaker and strain into a cocktail glass.? Garnish with a carnation boutonniere.

Sorry.? I ain’t got no boutonniere, carnation or otherwise.

Oooo, golden! But no flowers.

The book suggests that you replace the grenadine with a dash of lemon juice if you use passion fruit syrup.? I really wanted to use the hibiscus grenadine, so I used a dash of it ANYWAYS and DAMN THE CONSEQUENCES.? Actually, I also added a dash or so of lemon juice, too.

The drink ended up still a bit sweet but tasty.? The texture is actually quite silky and I’m really digging it.

In fact, I’m very happy with how this drink came out!? It’s a departure from what I usually look for in a cocktail – it’s not bitter, for one – but on a cool fall evening, it works well.

I’m glad I went looking for a new forgotten cocktail, and I guess that means I have to thank Dennis for hosting this month’s MxMo!? I’d thank Paul, too, but don’t want it to go to his head too much.

What little-known or forgotten cocktails do y’all like?

Before I left town on Saturday I’d tried to come up with a drink for the esteemed Mr. Camper English of Alcademics.? I despaired of this task on Friday night as I had to deal with maintenance men cutting holes in my drywall and just a general inability to get the drink where I wanted it.? I went to the other dream which Marshall so generously published for me yesterday and decided to leave it for after the Pink Ribbon Polo match down at King Family on Saturday and hanging out with my parents.

After a long drive home Sunday from Amelia – there was an accident on I-95, it seems, so we got to route over to 301 – I got home and went into a serious vegetative state, getting nothing done at all, for a while.? I eventually went out and got some food – and there’s a chance I did that with my fly down, which means now I get to shoot myself – and definitely stuck one of my fingers deep into a surprisingly decayed citrus fruit of some now untellable type.? Ewwww.

My initial thought? had been to work on a ginger-based drink for tomorrow’s Mixology Monday but I was too distracted.? However, I’d had a mini-epiphany about the drink I wanted to make for Camper, which I knew had to a) include tequila and b) be pink.? This was after watching dad make mom a Cosmo on Saturday night.

I grabbed a non-decayed lemon and my housemade (cold method) grenadine.? Soon I had a drink that was better than I could’ve expected and the only regret I had was not having the perfect garnish for it!? I’ll describe what I wanted to garnish it with and we’ll see.

The garnish would've been PERFECT.

The Camper
2 ounces blanco tequila (Tequila Ocho)
1 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce grenadine
1-2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
pink Ting
Shake the first four ingredients together in a cocktail shaker with ice.? Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and top with pink Ting.? Garnish with a piece of pink grapefruit on a skewer.? Your choice the shape it is in; I would’ve done a heart, myself.

I’m really happy with how this drink came out.? If you can’t find pink Ting, you can try regular, or another grapefruit soda.

[Seventh in a series of drinks named after bloggers, mixologists, and random others who'll hopefully be at Tales.? The first post in the series is here.]

Why, Trader Tiki, that’s why.

I asked a couple of people what makes a drink tiki and no one really had a good answer.? If you have one, leave it in the comments.? But what I think of is rum and fruit juices, really.

However, there’s something else with tiki – I think of the British.? That might sound weird, but I think about the British influence especially on the high seas.? I really wonder if we’d truly have “tiki” these days without the influence of the British.

Not to mention the East Indian Trading Company even – and we’re talking about someone named TRADER TIKI.

So I did some thinking, some experimenting, and here’s what I ended up with.

The Trader Tiki
1 ounce Lemon Hart 151
1 ounce Plymouth Gin
1 1/2 ounces pineapple juice
1 1/2 ounces passionfruit juice
1 ounce tamarind juice
1/2 ounce allspice dram
2 dashes Trader Tiki’s Aged Falernum Bitters
1/4 (or so) ounces grenadine
club soda
Pour the first eight ingredients over ice into a mixing tin.? Shake, and pour – unstrained – into a tiki mug.? Top with club soda.? Garnish with a long swizzle with a piece of pineapple, a lime wedge, and a mint leaf on it.

No, I don’t have a picture for it tonight.? Sorry guys.? But I’m sipping on one and it’s actually pretty tasty – kind of smokey, but Blair’s a bartender so I’m going to assume he’s usually pretty smokey, too.

And with that unfortunate verbiage behind me, I’m going to go back to watching TV.? Until tomorrow night, suckas!

[Second in a series of drinks named after bloggers, mixologists, and random others who'll hopefully be at Tales.? The first post in the series is here.]

It’s not that I haven’t had tiki drinks before.? At Trader Vic’s in Atlanta I’d had plenty of them, and occasionally at other random places or made by other people.? I never quite understood the tiki obsession that some bloggers have, but mostly, that was an excuse to make fun of them.

The big thing was, really, my perpetual lack of ice.? I lived in a house with a single ice cube tray – it was hard enough to have to make a few cocktails, much less drinks requiring lots of shaved ice or the such.

Also, while I have a variety of rums, I’m nowhere near as knowledgable about rums as I am about other spirits.? Couple that with a lack of tiki-focused recipe books (all of which I’d bought have gone to friends as presents) and, well, there we are.

So I was sitting at home in my new place and I realized something – I have plenty of ice now!? I have juices!? I have lots of rum!? I can make a tiki drink or two!

But…what to make?

There be the question.

I thumbed through a couple of books and saw one I wanted to try – but then I realized I didn’t have any passionfruit syrup.? Sigh.? I continued to look and saw one I hadn’t seen mentioned before but it sounded tasty so I pulled out the ingredients for the Doctor Funk #2, as listed in the Mr. Boston Official Bartender’s Guide.

Doctor Funk #2
1 1/2 ounce dark rum (La Favorite Vieux rhum agricole)
1/2 ounce falernum (Velvet Falernum)
1/2 ounce grenadine (homemade)
3/4 ounce lime juice
1 dash absinthe (Lucid)
1 dash Angostura bitters
Club soda (Fever Tree)
Shake first six ingredients with ice and strain into a hurricane glass.? Top with club soda and garnish with a lime wedge.

As you can see, I used a rhum agricole for the dark rum.? As I sipped on this drink I found that I absolutely loved it, for one thing, and for the other that I, well, I understood. There’s something about sipping a nice, tall tiki drink that was relaxing.

Also, for any type of fluids, I tend to drink a lot and want something around.? The Doctor Funk #2 gave me a nice tall drink that I could sip on and maybe it didn’t last as long as a beer (because it was goshdarn delicious, that’s why!) but it definitely lasted longer than a lot of cocktails do for me.

I wanted to try something else and since Marshall had made a mai tai the past weekend I decided I’d give that a shot.? I’m still a bit fuzzy about the differences between gold and dark and aged rums, so I just kind of guessed.

Yes, I stuck with the rhum agricoles.

Mai Tai
1 ounce light rum (I used Neisson Rhum Agricole Blanc)
1 ounce gold rum (Scarlet Ibis)
1/2 ounce orange curacao (Creole Shrubb)
1/2 ounce orgeat (Fee’s)
1/2 ounce lime juice
1 ounce dark rum (La Favorite Vieux rhum agricole)
Shake all but the dark rum and strain into a chilled old-fashioned glass.? Top with the dark rum.? Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

I’ve been lazy and haven’t gotten around to making a new batch of maraschino cherries, natch.

This one wasn’t as good as the one Marshall made but it wasn’t bad, especially as the ice melted a bit (I added ice to both drinks) and the flavors integrated a bit more – i.e. I swizzled the dark rum into the drink with a swizzle stick.

Still, what I need to get is more rhum agricole so I can make the “Ed Hamilton” version that uses all three types of rhum agricole.? And also maybe better orgeat.? I’m quite lazy about making that though.

Thus, my first foray into tiki drinks.? They were quite good.? In fact, I’m getting thirsty just thinking about them – I might have to make another Dr. Funk, but before I do I should go out and get some passionfruit syrup…

The theme is “Superior Twists” – as you may have guessed by the title of my post.? What this means is not the usual garnish of an orange or lemon twist but rather a variation of a classic drink and one, that in the opinion of the blogger, works out better than normal.? He was also curious what our favorite song to do the twist to was, and upon thinking about it I have to say GWAR’s “Sex Cow”.? Now you know.? (And knowing is half the battle!)

I’m getting ready to move so I’ve started packing.? I started with a lot of my books and thus, all my cocktail related books – I thought – were in a sealed box.? Then I remembered my Museum of the American Cocktail pocket bar guide!? I thumbed through it for a few minutes while thinking of things I liked to make.? The first thing I noticed that really spoke to me is the Old-Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail.

The recipe in the book is listed like this:

Old-Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail
1 sugar cube (1 tsp)
1 tsp water
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 oz (60 ml) rye (or bourbon) whiskey
Muddle sugar, water, and bitters together until the sugar is mostly dissolved.? Fill glass with ice, then add the whiskey.? Garnish with a twist of lemon peel, or orange slice and cherry.? Serve with a swizzle stick or straw.

It’s then noted that it’s better to muddle a slice of orange peel so that you get the essential oils from the peel without getting the pulp.? I trimmed off some of the inner bitter pith before putting in a slice, did the muddling, then left in the orange while adding the whiskey and such.

It’d been a while since I had one and OOF!? I’d forgotten the hit that a drink like this will give you on first sip.? I let it sit for a while while I got out the ingredients for my superior twist (heh) on this drink while trying to remember who, exactly, inspired the variation I typically drink.

It’s really between two different sources.? One of them is our friend Jake, who I believe was the first person to initially suggest using the different spirit in an old fashioned.? The second is The Gibson, the popular bar down at 14th and U that had a drink I absolutely loved – the Malt & Hops.

Yes, I’m talking about making an Old Fashioned with Bols Genever.? Ever since I started making those I’d have to estimate that of previous bottles of Bols Genever, probably 90%+ was used in gin-based Old Fashioneds.? Here’s how I make them.

Bols Genever Old Fashioned
2-4 ounces Bols Genever
1 solid squeeze of demerara simple syrup
1-2 dashes Bitter Truth Repeal Day Bitters (or Marshall’s Moonshine Bitters)
Pour into a small glass.? Add several cubes of ice.? Stir in the glass for a few minutes, and if desired, add a twist of lemon or orange.

Maybe it’s just me, but this version is just so damn good it’s not even funny.? It’s smooth, it’s strong, it’s a bit sweet – I like a decent size squeeze of simple syrup in mine, and you don’t risk the granularity you might end up by using straight sugar cubes.? The flavorful and complex bitters adds another level to the rich, malty gin making this the kind of drink you can just sip on for hours – but have to be careful about, because it is damn easy to drink way too many of them!

So that’s all well and good but if you know us here in the Den you know that we don’t like to let a Mixology Monday slide by without a chance to throw in a bonus drink.? Therefore and thusly I flipped a page or two more in the book and saw the Picon Punch.

Just recently I’d finished making up a triple batch (oops!) of Jamie Boudreau‘s amer picon replica.? One batch went to the before-mentioned Jake; the other two batches I bottled up, with the majority of them going to other bloggers and people I know about town.

The night it was done I was looking for a drink to make with it and over in the Mixoloseum chat room Greg Boehm suggested that I make a picon punch.? The recipe he gave me was very similar to the one in the guide:

Picon Punch
2 oz (60 ml) Amer Picon
0.5 oz (15 ml) lemon juice
0.5 oz (15 ml) grenadine
4 oz (120 ml) soda water
Shake the Amer Picon, lemon juice, and grenadine with ice, and strain into an ice filled highball glass.? Top with soda.? Garnish with seasonal fruits.

Now, I’ll admit, I’m lazy, and didn’t garnish.? But I made it, and it’s not a bad drink, though sometimes drinks like this (and the Suffering Bastard variation that uses bourbon and gin) make me feel really lazy – I don’t want to shake, then strain, then top, etc. etc. etc.!

But I have other lemon-based beverages, and better yet, I debated how to use them to make the drink easier and faster to make – and perhaps tastier.

On the left is Simply Lemonade; for orange juice, I almost always buy the orange juice that they make and I’ll often have a bottle of the lemonade sitting around in case I have a hankering for it.? On the right is Fentiman’s Victorian Lemonade, a tasty dry lemonade that I picked up last weekend over at Ace and will post more about it later.

But there’s the thing – the former is sweetened while the latter is more complex and less sweet.? On the other hand, the Fentiman’s is also carbonated while the Simply Lemonade is not.

The answer, for me?? I used the grenadine with the Fentiman’s, but instead of using it also for the Simply Lemonade and risk it being too sweet, I used 100% pomegranate juice (here, POM).? Since the lemonades were replacing both the lemon juice and the soda, and I wouldn’t be shaking these, I altered the recipe a bit.

Amer Boudreau Scofflaw Punch
2 ounces amer picon (amer boudreau recipe)
0.5 ounce grenadine or pomegranate juice
6 ounces lemonade
Build over ice in a Collins glass, stir.

From left to right we have the Simply Lemonade/POM variation, the Fentiman’s & grenadine, and then the traditional (in the highball glass).? Notice I used Collins glass for the others.? I prefer that for this kind of drink, as a) they seem more like summer drinks to me and b) I think it makes it easier to enjoy the drink.

But that’s just me.

In tasting them, I used the traditional Picon Punch as the “standard”.? Personally, I like it, but not hugely so; I think it’s the soda water.? I’m using Stirrings Club Soda and it just doesn’t seem quite right to me.

The Simply Lemonade variation is still very lemonade-y (in the American style of lemonade sense) though with a backend of the pomegranate juice and not a lot of room for the amer picon to shine through (note that my amer picon is a bit light, it seems).? As a summer time drink it wouldn’t be bad at all though I might consider using something instead of amer picon in it – perhaps even a triple sec plus bitters or amaro.? It might be worth experimenting to see what’s good.

The Fentiman’s combination, on the other hand, really works for me.? I think it helps that the Victorian Lemonade is just a darn tasty beverage without being as cloyingly sweet as even the Simply Lemonade can be; and perhaps the Stirrings grenadine doesn’t hit as hard as the POM pomegranate juice.? (My next grenadine will be made from POM, after I move; that might give a better comparison.)

Give these drinks a shot and let us know what you think – and don’t forget to enter Marshall’s Templeton Rye contest!? Damn him, I’d enter it if I could!? GRRRR!

And thanks again to Tristan for hosting this month!? Can’t wait to see the round-up!

I could write about brands of spirits and liqueurs which offer the best quality and variety of purpose for your dollar.? Or, I could write about what I drink when the financial belt tightens.? Or I could just make something up as I go along.? Yeah, I’m pretty much doing that last one if you haven’t guessed.

Now don’t get me wrong.? Articles about the best bang for your buck on the spirit shelf are great and generally contain lots of useful information.? I just feel I’ve read this same story a hundred times since the word “recession” became ensconced in everyday vernacular.? With that said, I can certainly see me writing the same kind of story for Scofflaw’s Den because I feel like it.? Oh well . . .?? As far as what I drink when the financial belt tightens, well that’s easy.? I drink the same things I do when I’m not concerned so much about my finances.? Rather, I cut back on purchasing booze and limit my trips to bars/cocktail joints.? I love buying random ingredients and spending an hour or two bellied up at one of my favorite bars having great conversations with the bartenders and friends, new and old alike.? But both of these activities tends to eat into my bank account and by curtailing both, I feel much on much more stable financial footing.

So for this Mixology Monday, I decided to page through some cocktail books and give you two drinks on different ends of the “hard times” continum.? First, we have a cocktail that would perfect for those times when you’re very concerned about your next paycheck.? When your job may fall victim to a lay-off or go to the ATM to check your accounts and the machine laughs at you, I give you;

Gloom Chaser Cocktail
1/4 lemon Juice (.5 oz)
1/4 grenadine (.5 oz homemade grenadine)
1/4 Grand Marnier (.5 oz homemade tangerine ratafia)
1/4 Curacao (.5 oz Cointreau)

-Shake everything until well chilled and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
(The Savoy Cocktail Book, p. 76)

The Gloom Chaser is one sweet cocktail.? Literally.? I was a little surprised at how sweet this came out considering it only has half an ounce of grenadine.? The Cointreau also adds some sweetness but I’ve never considered Cointreau to be a “sweet” liqueur.? The homemade tangerine ratafia is brandy based, like the called for Grand Marnier.? I’ve found the ratafia works admirably well as a replacement liqueur. ? Regardless, the drink isn’t bad, just a little sweet.? Then again, I think that is precisely the point for a cocktail called the Gloom Chaser.? The orange reminds you of brighter sunnier days and the sweetness is like a reminder of childhood sweets.? Certainly a drink that would provide an uplifting step during a hard time.

Of course, the old saying goes “it’s always darkest before the dawn.”? Or “every dark cloud has a silver lining.”? The point is even though many of us are weathering this troubling financial storm, eventually things will look up.? When they do, our worry and dread will seem like a distant memory.? Who knows, maybe it will lead you to greener pastures and brighter skies.? Maybe, you’ll even find yourself as . . .

The CEO Cocktail
2oz Brandy
.5oz Chambord or creme de cassis (.5oz Massenez Creme de Cassis)
1oz Lillet Blanc
2 dashes orange bitters (Angostura Orange)
a lemon twist for garnish

-Shake (stir please) with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass
The Joy of Mixology, p. 237

A nice brandy cocktail that isn’t too sweet.? The cassis adds just a touch of sweetness and really mellows out the brandy.? I was afraid the brandy and cassis would fight in the glass but the Lillet plays mediator really brings the two together.? I wonder how Chambord would change the outcome of the drink.? Seeing as I don’t have chambord, nor am I inclined to go buy a bottle, I’ll just have to wait until these economic waters even out a bit.

Thanks again for Matthew Rowley for hosting MxMo this month.

Cheers!

I looked around the kitchen at my sundry bottles and decided I wanted to use two homemade ingredients – one that everyone should have in their repetois and one that is more esoteric.? The two chosen made from scratch ingredients?? Grenadine and Swedish Punsch!

Let’s begin with the grenadine.? If you are used to Rose’s Grenadine, then you aren’t using grenadine.? What you have there is red-dye-number-5-colored-high-fructose-corn-syrup, most likely with some sort of artificial cherry flavoring.? Real, honest to goodness grenadine is pomegranate syrup.? Further, homemade grenadine is one of the easiest bar staples anyone can make.? There are tons of recipes for making homemade grenadine.? Don’t believe me?? Go ahead, google it.? I’ll wait.

See?!?!? A vertiable cornocopia of recipes.? To me though, everything can be distilled down to two basic methods – cold and hot.? The cold method is straight forward.? Equal parts pomegranate juice and sugar; shaken until the sugar dissolves.? That’s it.? Simple.? You get the fresh tart flavor of the pomegranate and the sweetening power of the sugar.

The second method, the hot method, is a little more complicated.? At its most basic level, you heat the pomegranate juice and sugar and stir to dissolve.? Some recipes tell you to reduce this down by a certain amount to make it thick and even more syrupy.? Some have you add orange flower water after everything is reduced and cooled.? The only thing I can tell you is to try out different recipes and find one you like.? The last recipe I used came from Food & Wine’s 2008 Cocktail Book.

This particular recipe says to simmer two cups of pomegranate juice with one cup plus two tablespoons of sugar until thick enough to coat a spoon.? Then add 1/8 teaspoon of orange flower water.? Bottle and refrigerate for up to two weeks.? I also add about an ounce of 100 proof vodka to the final, cooled, syrup to help with shelf life.? And I’ll tell you, this is some tasty grenadine.? Damn tasty!

The second “made from scratch” ingredient I wanted to highlight was swedish punsch.? If you aren’t familiar with this ingredient, don’t be surprised.? It comes up most often in old cocktail books and recipes usually dating prior to Prohibition.? After reading through several old cocktail books and online discussions (especially on eGullet) I turned to the recipe used by Erik over at Underhill-Lounge.? I won’t recreate Erik’s recipe here, but here is a link to his site.

The swedish punsch is some tasty stuff and personally, I hope I find more things to use it in.? Everytime I see a recipe, I copy it down, but unfortunately, tend to forget about it until I find my bottle of punsch in the cabinet.? Shame on me!? The mixture of tea, arrack, rum and lemon is fragrant, pungent and completely enrapturing.

Now to find a cocktail that uses both of these ingredients.? Whipping out my trusty Iphone, I started searching the Cocktails app for drinks contains swedish punsch.? As an aside, if you have an Iphone and are a cocktail geek, you really should have this on your phone.? It is by far one of the top three apps I have and worth way more than it cost.? Seriously, buy it.? DO IT!!!

Anyway, I found a drink that I had never tried before that used both grenadine and swedish punsch – C.F.H. Cocktail.? The app tells me it is from page 43 of Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book, circa 1930.? So that is where I turned.

C.F.H. Cocktail
1/6 grenadine
1/6 Swedish Punch
1/6 Calvados
1/6 lemon juice
1/3 Burrough’s Beefeater Gin

That is the recipe – no instructions given in the Savoy.? Luckily the Cocktails app instructs to shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.? The other problem is the ratios – why can’t these guys use a standard measure?!?!? Sheesh!? Well, looking at the recipe we can see that each ingredient, except the gin, is exactly one-half of the measure of the gin (1/6 v. 1/3).? Knowing this, and not wanting to drink a humongous cocktail (at least not yet), I used one ounce of gin.? This provided the following drink:

.5oz grenadine (homemade)
.5oz Swedish Punsch (homemade)
.5oz Calvados (Clear Creek Distillery’s Eau-de-vie-de-Pomme)
.5oz fresh lemon juice
1oz gin

This is one tasty beverage.? Seriously, I was kind of surprised, but WOW!? It is just sweet enough and everything plays so nicely in the glass.? For the first one I made (and yes I made more than one!), I used Plymouth gin.? The second one I made, I used Aviation gin.? I was a little worried that the extra oomph of the Aviation would throw the drink out of whack.? I was wrong.? It adds an extra layer of flavor and really highlights the calvados and the punsch.? This is certainly a cocktail that requires a little bit of experimenting with using various gins.? Something I plan to do in spades!

I want to thank Doug at The Pegu Blog again for hosting this month.? This should be a great theme that will keep plenty of people in the kitchen for a bit.

Cheers!

But AYE!  It be yet another Mixology Monday hosted by the esteemed Trader Tiki.  The poison this Cap’n of the High Seas has chosen is that nectar of Aphrodite, that elixir that keeps a Scofflaw’s tongue whetted . . . RUM.

Alright, so a full post in pirate talk would be a bit much and I’m about ready to kick my own ass if I keep this up much longer. 

I love rum.  There isn’t any other way to say it as clearly as that.  I love it.  This has also been a pretty hectic weekend for me and unfortunately I’m afraid it is going to have to infringe on my MxMo day.  But I don’t want to make a bunch of excuse, lest you make me walk the plank.

When I started thinking of what to write, I decided to first take stock of what rum I had in this Scofflaw’s Bar.

From left to right I have:

Ron Zacapa 15yr
Depaz Blue Cane Rhum Agricole
Dogfish Head Honey Brown Rum
El Dorado 12 yr Demerara Rum
Mt. Gay Rum
Cruzan Black Strap Rum
The Scarlet Ibis Rum
Dogfish Head Wit Spiced Rum
Neisson Rhum Agricole Blanc

After I took stock, I felt completely overwhelmed.  I guess I should take a perverted sense of pride in this feeling.  Most folks probably has a bottle of rum . . . maybe two.   I also wasn’t sure of what to do for a cocktail for you good folks.  Should I go tried and true tiki?  I love me some tiki (as I have said over and over), but think a lot of folks will do traditional tiki drinks.  One I idea I had, and will do eventually, is a tasting of Rum Collins – try each of my rums with a squeeze of lime and some tonic water.  Sounds like a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon if you ask me.

So I turned to the books.  Again, tons of rum drinks and none that really grabbed my attention.  Maybe it was the feeling of rushing around and I was trying to force something . . . not allowing the spirits (heh!) of those by-gone Pirates flow through me and give me inspiration when I needed.  I needed the spirit of William Dampier to infuse my soul with a yearning to find something new. 

So when all else fails, pick something at random!!!

I chose the Tahiti Club from Gary Regan’s Bartender’s Bible.  It goes something like this:

Tahiti Club
1 oz light rum
1 oz dark rum
1 oz pineapple juice
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz lemon juice
1 tsp maraschino liqueur

Shake, strain over fresh ice cubes in a rocks glass.

As you can see from the picture, I used the Depaz and the El Dorado.  Just a quick note to say that I really love the Depaz Blue Cane Rhum Agricole.  It smells of sweet grass, fresh sugarcane and has almost a whiskey/bourbon undertone as well.   It is also one of the few (maybe the only one?) rums to receive the Appellation d’Origine Controlee from the French Government. 

The cocktail was good – but very tart!  For my tastes, I think the tartness hid some of the nuances of the Depaz and the El Dorado.  I think a dash of rich simple syrup would really bring the inherent flavors of the rums from behind the juices.  The maraschino liqueur lent an interesting funkiness to the nose of the drink, but worked very well with the fruit juice flavors.

Hmmm . . . now that my whistle was whetted, I wanted to do a little concoctioneering.  Actually, I was going to use this space for a drink I came up with while over at Sean’s Friday night, but he beat me to it and posted it here.  That scurvy bastard . . .     So check out his post for an extra-special-hey-look-there-is-an-extra-chest-of-booty-type rum drink from your’s truly.

So yeah, concoctioneering.  I had some coconut milk left over from some coconut sticky rice I made a few days ago.  I decided to try and use that in a drink.  This isn’t the pre-sweetned Coco Lopez stuff, rather it is what you find in the Asian section of your market.  For help using it, I turned to some notes I had written one afternoon playing with some coconut water.  The water is the clear juice that is inside the coconut right when you open one up.  One of the recipes I had tinkered with was the following:

2 oz rum
2 oz coconut water
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz falernum
.25 oz grapefruit juice
.25 oz raspberry syrup
1 dash maraschino
1 dash absinthe

I really liked this mix.  It was boozy, sweet and had flavors and aromas coming out of the waa-zoo.  For me, definitely a keeper.  But at some point I’ll need to name it . . . .  But this was the launching pad to use the coconut milk.  What I came up with was this:

2 oz rum
1.5 oz coconut milk
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz falernum
.25 oz Aperol –> I ran out of grapefruit juice and wanted a substitute for the bitterness in grapefruit.
.25 oz raspberry syrup
.25 oz grenadine
1 dash maraschino
1 dash absinthe

Now to be honest, the drink came out looking kind of funky.  It was a creamy dark pink color.  Not unappetizing by any stretch, but just not a color that I normally associate with drinks.  It kind of looked like the pinkish hue you find on seashells.  Hmmm . . .

The taste was also something I wasn’t expecting.  It was much more tart than anticipated.  It was creamy, sweet and tart.  The rum gave it a good backbone (I used the Mt. Gay) and the Aperol tamed the sweetness of the syrups.  (If anyone out there tries their hand an making this, please, please let me know what you think . . . any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated!)

Alright, I think it’s time for me to bring my MxMo post to an end.  Again, I want to thank Mr. Blair Reynold’s, aka Trader Tiki for allowing us on deck for this rum soaked episode of Mixology Monday!

Cheers!  

Anyways…at Clare and Don’s Beach Shack last weekend I had this drink.  It was – as they made it there – black cherry Smirnoff vodka, Nellie & Joe’s Famous Key Lime Juice, sours, Sprite, and grenadine.

Well, you know here in the Den we don’t do “sours mix”, and our grenadine tends to be the real stuff.  Still, I wanted to give this drink a shot – it was quite refreshing.

Here’s what I have right now, and I can tell you – it needs a bit more Sprite to be as light as the one at Clare and Don’s (I just added some Sprite, and yes, I was right) and it won’t be as lively color of pink because I’m using rich simple syrup and not throwing in an artificial maraschino cherry, but it’s still pretty darn good.

In a collins glass, over ice, build:
2 ounces Smirnoff Black Cherry vodka [1]
1 ounce lemon juice
1 ounce simple syrup
1 1/2 ounces key lime juice
1/2 ounce grenadine

Stir briskly for a minute or two.  (This could probably be shaken – they shook it, but the bartender used the glass she was pouring into to strain it out, and I’m feeling rather lazy – and low on ice.)

Top with Sprite.

Give it another stir or two.

Garnish, if you’d like, and drink.

If you have enough Sprite in there, it’s a very light, beguiling drink.  IF you don’t, it can get a bit sticky thick, but is still good.  I’d recommend, actually, probably halving the ingredient sizes I have here.  That might work well.

If you make it, or make a variant of it, let me know!

[1] – This is what they used at the bar, and in a moment of laziness (detect a trend?) I just went ahead and bought a bottle, especially as I could find nothing particularly “black cherry” to flavor vodka with at the store.  However, I would love to try this with black cherry infused light rum, homemade black cherry infused vodka, or maybe something else I haven’t thought of yet…