Barreling Forward

I am now part of a group that is doing small barrel batches of cocktails and alcohol. Our previous two (the 12 Year Itch, which is Fernet, Antica Formula and Zaya 12-year rum; and a Perfect Manhattan) were both very good, but largely followed existing recipes. For our next, we've decided to break ground and try a rum blend, and we're doing it with precious little to go on in the way of precedence. So...where to begin?

My initial thoughts were to start with something very neutral, but softer than the typical Bacardi white. Fortunately, that was easy: I'm currently grooving on the Plantation 3 Star rum, which was introduced to me by Nicholas Feris of The Rum Collective during a Plantation tasting last year. Outside of a Cuba Libra, this inexpensive white has quickly replaced most other white rums for general use. It has a clean, clear, slightly sweet rum note that begs for complementary flavors.

Next, I wanted a little bite for the oak to mellow. Previous posts have sung the praises of Smith and Cross rum. Sharp, spicy and bitey, like an alley cat that will let you rub her belly until...NOW, it should introduce some interesting notes at the high end of the flavor profile.

We need the alcohol levels to be high going in, and if you want to boost the proof, I can't think of a better add than Wray and Nephew Overproof Rum. It's a staple around the house for falernum, but despite the 126-proof burn, it's not an unpleasant flavor and should help draw some of the flavors out of the barrel (which we're going to do a madeira soak on before we cask this concoction).

Finally, I wanted something to give us some elusive notes in small quantities. Our ratios for the above are 8:2:2, so with the majority of the blend so far focused on the 3 Star, a few flourishes shouldn't hurt. We're adding a bottle of King's Ginger, for a touch of a Scotch edge and of course the bold, bright ginger flavor of the liqueur (which is nestled quietly into the profile of the final mix, so we're not worried about overwhelming things). Finally, like those few drops of Pernod in a tiki drink, we'll top off the barrel with Cruzan Blackstrap rum, for a bit of color and and hint of dark (the barrel usually holds around 13-14 bottles, so if there's a bit of Cruzan left at the end of the day, we'll just have a Corn 'n' Oil or two and call it a day).

What will we have in a couple of months? I honestly don't have a clue. I'd lik
e to think we'll have a rum that started with some great high notes, and a midrange palate that will get filled in with the char and oak, making the final blend a candidate for Rum Old Fashioneds or a particularly complex base for simple tiki drinks. Part of what makes this so interesting is that we'll be making something that will be, in the truest sense of the word, unique. No other barrel, or environment, or preparation, or anything within this process–even if done to exacting standards by ourselves–will have the same result, for better or worse. If this works, we'll each have about a gallon of rum to savor and parse out for special occasions; if it's less than successful, well, one imagines I will still be able to choke it down with enough Coke and lime.

It's the quest of bartenders, mixologists and alcohol enthusiasts alike: to create something for a moment in time, for a specific audience, for a desired result. It's exciting to use our collected knowledge (and the shared knowledge of our local bartending community) to push the edges of alcohol knowledge a bit, and to share in the results of the labor at the appointed time. Whether I'll be gushing about the results, or finding ways to burn it off without anyone calling me on it, remains to be seen. For now, I've got a small vial of control sample, and a dream.

The French Jewel

Everybody, meet Tamara.

She's a bartender on the Carnival Liberty, six weeks into a six-month stint onboard (many of the workers do six months on, two months off). This is her first bartending gig for the Carnival line, and she's still learning her way around her job. Her bartending requirements are no different than many others who work the job in a high-traffic situation–she's responsible for much of the bar service during the dinner seating, and interacts with waitstaff who employ a variety of ways to get her to work on their drinks first. Otherwise, she's assigned as needed to bar locations: I got my first drink of the cruise from here in one of the center interior bars (a great place to work: high traffic, people wants their first drink as quickly as possible, and everyone's in a good mood). Later in the week, she worked one of the back bars: busy during the dinner hours, and then very quiet thereafter. As there's a guaranteed tip assigned to each drink served, there is a definite advantage to having people ordering drinks from you.

I was on board for my job, if you can believe that. I was part of a team from our company running a Settlers of Catan tournament on the ship. Every night, we also participated in an open gaming session, where we could play whatever we felt like, and feel better about having a drink during working hours. (Justifying a drink is a very slippery slope on board a cruise vessel.) So, on this particular night, I'm playing a game, drink in hand, when Kim, our travel agent, bursts into the room. She grabs my hand.


"Come. With. Me."

Okay, another brief aside. Think about the limitations of tending bar on board a ship at sea. Space is precious, and the alcohols that you have on board are selected for maximum familiarity, variety of uses and ease of replacement. The craft cocktail craze has largely bypassed Carnival (they had one bar, The Alchemy Bar, that was exploring some less-traveled ingredients), but they sure do know their way around a fruity rum drink. As a vacation thing, it's easy enough to simply rationalize in your head that for the next seven days, your lot in life will be a parade of tropical flavors and a lot of hurricane glasses.

Okay, back to the distraught travel agent. I have no idea what she wants, but I gather there's some expediency in the matter, so I follow her out of the room and down the hallway to the bar. Tamara is behind the counter, and she has seven or eight patrons merrily keeping her company. Kim sits at the bar, and points to a pink drink in a martini glass on the counter. "Drink. That."

I'm beginning to suspect that the issue at hand is not so much a matter of urgency, but more a matter of "I've just had some drinks, and you need to do so as well." Tamara sees me smell the drink first, and smiles. "Are you a bartender?" I laugh a bit. The more I'm around working bartenders, the less I'm willing to claim the title.

The drink is comfortably in the wheelhouse of the tropical drinks on the boat, but not as sweet, and certainly a bit more subtle than most of what I've consumed on the trip so far. Another of the patrons wanders up to me. "I told her to make me a drink, and that's the best drink I've had onboard. I went to the Alchemy Bar, told them to make me a drink, and then I told them that there was a Czech bartender downstairs who was kicking their ass!"

"Would you be willing to tell me what's in the drink?" I ask Tamara.

She smiled. "Last day of the cruise."

For each of the next three nights, I came back to the bar and had a drink. One of the barstaff managers took an interest in her drink. Each night, a group of people joined me in searching her out and getting her to make us her drink. She was clumsily hit on, the target of the occasional sexist comment, constantly having to shift gears between her customers and the demands of the dining room waitstaff. And each night, her group of fans grew. As bartenders go, she did her job, and did it well, and my cruise was better for it.

Courtesy of Tamara, enjoy her drink and know that somewhere out in the Caribbean, there's a Czech bartender, new at her job but getting better at it every day, who has knowledge, a personality, a smile and a drink that's all worth spending some time with.

French Jewel (courtesy of Tamara, Carnival Liberty)

2 oz. vodka (Tamara uses Grey Goose)
1 oz. Malibu rum
.5 oz. pineapple juice
.5 oz. mango puree

Shake together with ice; serve in a martini glass with a sugar rim.

Oh Bother

The bartender gave me a half-smile, and shrugged. "Of course, you can't tell the customer no."

*****

Julie and I are in Chicago, and I'm vibrating with glee, as we're about to enter a tiki bar I've been waiting to enter for over a year–Three Dots and a Dash. It's off an alley behind another bar on North Clark (the also-tasty Bub City), and a short skull-themed stairway later, we're third in line to get in at opening time.

The Jet Pilot, it just wants you to be happy.
If by "happy," you mean "rollicking drunk."

We take a seat at the bar, and pick our drinks–she goes with their riff on the Painkiller, and I go with one of my evaluation drinks, the Jet Pilot. The Zombie is my first-choice go-to drink to compare a tiki bar to its compatriots, but at Three Dots the Zombie, although it looks pretty authentic from the menu, is also a $65 drink for 3-4 people. Another time, perhaps. We also tried several of the small plates offered (the tuna crisps, served with a quartet of sauces, was a nice, light counterpoint to the drinks ordered). The drinks arrived in their resplendent ceramic, and we were happy, happy patrons.

The bar filled up fairly quickly (it's a segmented single room, so it's not hard to do). Our first drinks went down at an efficient pace. so a second seemed a reasonable plan of action. The menu proudly touted its "Selection of Fine Rums," and perusing the shelves, it's hard to argue. Sitting on the second shelf, my current darling of the rum world proudly held court with its blue and silver label: Smith & Cross rum, which features prominently in earlier entries on this blog. I call the bartender over.

"So what are you using the Smith and Cross for?"

She looked at the bottle a bit quizzically. "I'm not sure. We use Appleton as our Jamaican rum for most of our drinks. I can ask someone, if you want."

"No no, that's fine. Would you be interested in making me something with it?"

She paused for a moment. We've talked a couple of times up to this point, the usual light chatter and customer check-ins that barstaff should do. "To be honest, I really don't know the rum. We're trained on the menu drinks, and the managers don't really like us to improvise a lot." She half-smiled, and shrugged. "Of course, you can't tell the customer no..."

I can't complain about the bar, the drinks, or the service at Three Dots–quite the opposite. I'm eager to go back and explore more of the drink menu as soon as possible. And, our visit was within the first six months of opening, which means that, although they've had a proper shakedown by the public (the first crop of staff who won't work out have left, and the ones that will work out have some experience with the menu), they're still new enough to be adjusting to what is a non-standard bar menu (the tiki drink set is going to be a departure from the bartenders who may be accustomed to expertly mixing a never-ending parade of rum and Cokes or Old Fashioneds).

But, truth be told, I've been a bit spoiled. I have bartenders locally (hi Ravens Club, hi Alley Bar, hi Last Word) who are endlessly inventive, mixing drinks based on experience, mood and the occasional challenge from me. At places like Frankie's Tiki Room or the Zig Zag Café, I've shown up on their doorstep on a mission, and they've waxed poetic about both drink and spirits recommendations. I am so very curious about this amazing hobby of mine, and I've been fortunate to run across a bunch of bartenders, mixologists and drinking companions that support me in the quest part of the experience (and the drinking part, too).

I am VERY mindful of when it is appropriate to be all "make me something bartender's choice blah blah demerara rum" up in here. If the place is rockin', with drinks flying across the bar, I know not to interrupt or even get too chatty; I always figure that if I try a "make me something" move when a place is busy, Ray Foley is going to magically appear and Gibbs-slap me. "Get there early, hang out a bit, then back off as the place fills up" works pretty well as an MO for me.

Still, if there's a rum sitting on a shelf at a bar, and that bar is a tiki bar proclaiming its specialization in rums, it's a bit of a disappointment that I can't play a little bit. For all of the Bud Lights and rum and Cokes that crossed the bar in front of me (and going to an amazing bar like Three Dots to order Bud Light ought to earn SOMEBODY a Gibbs-slap or two), you've got a rum on your shelf that I like, and I want to see what you can do with it. So, I loved the experience, I'm ready to go back–but if that bottle of Smith & Cross is still sitting there, someone's going to make me a drink using it. You Have Been Warned.

The Steampunk Drink (Part 2)

So – we have Byrrh. Now what?

On the back of the Byrrh bottle, I found what turned out to be 95% of the drink I wanted to make. The Le Negociant is a 4-ingredient French lovefest:
- 1 ounce Byrrh
- 1 ounce rhum agricole (which means "rum made straight from sugarcane, skipping the molasses step)
- .5 ounce elderflower liqueur
- .5 ounce lemon juice

Rhum agricole is by default French, since Clément or Rhum JM are the usual go-tos, and both hail from Martinique in the French West Indies. "Elderflower liqueur" is St. Germain, and do not waste time with anything else. And with Byrrh's pedigree, we're not only solid French, but we're golden on the age of all of the above – 1866 for Byrrh, 1887 for rhum, and 1884 for the process used to make St. Germain. ("Le Negociant", by the way, refers to a French wine producer who buys grapes from a mix of smaller vineyards and combines them to create their own label's release.)

The drink is terrific - the Byrrh's red wine (and, to be clear, this is mistelle – fortified red wine that's sweeter than a traditional red) gives it a front sweetness, the St. Germain gives it floral and citrus notes and a gentle sweetness, the rhum adds a light rum flavor that contributes another sweet note, the herbals and undernotes of the Byrrh and the St. Germain dancing just out of reach. It's a great drink...

Von's 1000Spirits. I took their word for it.

...but I did say the word "sweet" four times in the above paragraph. One of my mandates, as you'll recall, was that the current drink being served was "too sweet." Now, this is not pina colada sweet, but it's definitely going to register as sweet on the palate. This is not necessarily going to be a problem, but the closer I can walk to the border of sweet and tart, the wider the audience I can reach with this drink.

So, we flash forward to September, on a beautiful night in Seattle where my friend Ron and I are walking the streets of Seattle looking for Byrrh. (In reality, we're just looking for drinks, but if you've got a goal, it's purposeful drinking, right?) Surprisingly, there was no Byrrh at Von's 1000Spirits (though I did pick up another nifty trick for the steampunk bartender), and I had a great throwback drink with a nifty local story. At The Diller Room, I got a pity-carding at the door (at my age, always appreciated), and a great side-by-side comparison of a variety of quinquinas. No Byrrh, but I did get to try Cocchi Americano straight for the first time (think Byrrh, but with a moscato base) and the local entry into the category, Chinato D'Erbetti. Both were interesting, but not what I was after...

Finally, we ended up at the Zig Zag Café, tucked away as you head down towards the shoreline from Pike Place Market. Ron had been there the night before, and had sung the praises of the place effusively. Ricardo was our bartender for the evening, and upon asking about Byrrh, immediately produced a bottle of the stuff for our amusement. So, we had him mix up a Le Negociant, parse it out into a couple of glasses for control sample purposes, and resolved to come up with the perfect variant of the drink for our purposes.

After a couple of abortive attempts to add additional ingredients, Ricardo made an observation. The sweet is coming from three sources in the drink; what if we can modify one of the existing spirits in the drink to take the sweet edge off? The Byrrh was off-limits, and the St. Germain is a beloved favorite, so the rhum became the sacrificial victim. I really wanted to keep rum, but didn't want to add a rum that would overwhelm the drink (Bacardi would add a sharp undertone, anything dark would drown out the herbals, and so on).

Suddenly, Ricardo reached over to the rack and pulled down a semi-familiar bottle – Smith & Cross Jamaican rum. This was one of the stars of our rum dinner from a few months ago, providing a knife-like palate-cleansing alongside foie gras. The rum is navy-strength (meaning that it would not prevent gunpowder from igniting), and is a blend of two traditional Jamaican run processes (part aged less than a year, part aged 18-36 months). Adding it to the drink not only took a bit of sweet out (both in its own flavor and in the extra proof knocking a bit out of the front of the drink), it added some additional spice notes that worked beautifully with the drink. And, as required for steampunk purposes, the Smith & Cross mark dates to 1788. We had our cocktail recipe.

The drink is pictured in the
Etched Bullseye Martini Glass
and is available for purchase
on the Contemporary Complements website.

Finally, we needed a name. Adding the Smith & Cross gets us a British/French blend that doesn't have a lot of commonality–Jamaica was a British colony, and I couldn't find anything evocative of a connection between the spirits or the countries of origin. So, I fell back on the original creators of my primary ingredient. We're only swapping one ingredient from the Le Negociant, but both to separate it from that drink, and to not force inebriated passengers to butcher French in front of our poor bartender, a simple nod to The Violet Brothers seems in order.

The Violet Brothers
1 ounce Byrrh
1 ounce Smith & Cross Jamaican rum
.5 ounce St. Germain
.5 ounce fresh lemon juice

Shake with ice in a cocktail strainer. Serve in a martini glass.

It's been a fun ride, and to all of my companions along the way, (especially Ricardo at the Zig Zag), I'm delighted to have a drink that I'm confident to pass along to our steampunk partygoers. Thanks to Kim Maita for the challenge, and if you try it, let me know what you think!

To Tell a Story

So, I had dinner with F. Paul Pacult a couple of months ago.

F. Paul Pacult runs the Spirit Journal newsletter, on top of an impressive body of writing, books and efforts to improve the exposure and quality of spirits (and their coverage). Rum is a particular passion of his (as is evidenced by his Rum For All initiative). This is a man who is passionate and knowledgeable about spirits. So, yeah, a person you would like to have dinner with.

And, when I say "with F. Paul Pacult" I really mean "with Steve, in a room with F. Paul Pacult." Steve's a friend of mine who I get together with every so often to drink and chat. It's something I look forward to every time, because he is funny and engaging and smart and picks up the tab half the time. He arranged for us to attend the event at The Ravens Club in Ann Arbor, and was my compatriot in crime for the evening.

And, when I say "dinner," I mean a five course extravaganza, paired with eight samplings of rum (plus a drink upon arrival). You can see the menu and drink list here. This was an amazing evening, with great food, wonderful company, and a funny and knowledgeable host. I want you to repeat that last sentence over and over again as we continue with our little story.

Before. (After is left to the imagination.)

So, when we sat down to dinner, we were already one drink into our evening, and had a row of eight shotglasses lined up for our pairings. All of the rums were great (half of them were already part of my bar, and a fifth has been since added–more on that next week). I immediately managed to knock over one (the Ron Zacapa 23 Year, which is as heinous an act of alcohol abuse as I've managed in a while), which was graciously replaced. We were a happy band of adventurers, ready for our rum exploration.

Thing is, that Paul is an enthusiastic presenter, and both he and us were eagerly anticipating each new rum we approached. So much so, that we got a bit ahead of the kitchen, as in we were on rum five about the time course two arrived from the kitchen. We were all desperately trying to hold a little back from each glass for the appropriate food, but rum is SOOOOOOOO good.

At this point, let us state a truism. We were a room of intelligent, sophisticated adults, there to learn about rum and to appreciate the nuances of the spirits presented. We were a warm and appreciative audience. But, good intentions aside, we were on our sixth drink when our second small plate was served. Whoever you may be, six drinks and you're going to be a bit on the toasty side.

And this is, of course, also the moment that our urbane New York City host realized that he was trapped in a room full of drunk Midwesterners. He'd already had to shush us more than a room of third graders, and by the time we took a break to let the kitchen catch up, one imagines he was already inwardly terrified that we'd all break out the Schlitz beer and start a spontaneous fish fry or something.

I took advantage of the break to approach him, finding him at the bar positioned as to protect his body from the increasing levels of inebriated provincialism in the room. I'd like to think I was coherent and concise, thanking him for the event and gushing for a moment over Ron Zacapa Etiqueta Negra (a 23-year dark rum with a Germany- and Italy-only release). He was gracious, also a fan of the Etiqueta Negra, and appreciative of my enthusiasm for his presentation.

You see, despite the amount of knowledge we were given, and the new rums explored (the Clement 6-Year Rhum Agricole was a revelation, and the Smith and Cross pairing with the foie torchon was amazing), one of his points–a side point, perhaps, for him, but my biggest takeaway from the evening–is that our preferences and favorites, and indeed the spirits themselves, are as much about the mythology, the history, the research–the storytelling–as the flavors themselves.

This blog is devoted to alcohol, but it's the story of myself and alcohol. I rely on experiences and repetition more than my unremarkable palate, and lean on the knowledge and bars of professionals as much as possible. If there's any particular skill that I bring to the table, it's telling the story of why a drink or an alcohol should be worthy of your attention–but not until I have a good story to tell.

And I've been remiss in my storytelling. I hope to get back on track in the next couple of weeks, and I have stories to tell–scotch in Boston, my steampunk drink journey, and more. So, welcome back, and I'll try and do a better and more timely job with entries.

Also, yay rum.

Rumtopf and Kaiserschmarrn

I had to think a bit to come up with my first exposure to the concept of rumtopf, but I found it: a New Your Times article in 2010 describing the general concept and singing its praises. Anything with rum gets my attention, and I made a mental note to investigate this concept before the next growing season came along.

In general, the directions are simple (rum + fruit + sugar), but of course we immediately started to improvise when we started the process in the spring of 2011. Rather than the large ceramic jar that seems to be the favorite of traditionalists, we went with a series of mason jars, so that we could control the batches as well as have portions suitable for gift-giving. You're going to go through a LOT of rum no matter how you do this, though; I'd guess we used between 6 and 8 bottles of rum before we were done. I used a 50/50 mix of Bacardi white and Myers's rum; I wanted the neutral rum bite of the Bacardi, but also the dark-sweet taste of the Myers's.

The general rule of thumb is to put in a layer of fruit, pour a coating of sugar over it, and then fill the container so that the rum is a half-inch above the fruit. There's no stirring or mixing, no special preservatives, refrigeration or treatments necessary; as long as the rum is above the fruit, everything's good. If you begin to see any fermentation (the usual bubbles forming), the suggestion is to spike it with a bit of 151 rum, but we never saw any evidence of anything untoward in any of our jars.

Our goal was to use all local fruits, continuing to layer fruit and sugar throughout the span of the growing season. Here's what made it into our 2011 rumtopf:

• Strawberries
• Cherries (sweet black)
• Raspberries
• Gooseberries
• Plums
• Peaches
• Apricots

Here's a handy guide to some suggested (and discouraged) fruits to put into your rumtopf.

After the last fruit made it in at the end of August, we sealed the jars, and let them sit until December. About two-thirds of them went out the door as Christmas gifts, and we're looking to use the last of the jars we have this winter, doing a new batch in 2013. Some uses that we've had for it, or that giftees have reported back:

• Deglazing lamb/fowl/pork
• Spooning over ice cream
• Blenderizing fruit and rum, stewing down to syrup and using over pancakes/waffles/crepes
• A fruity spike in drinks (champagne, sangria)
• Straining out the fruit and drinking the liquid as a cordial

...and this is where the article lay, ready to publish, until last week. I'm with my wife at IKEA, admiring the many uses for lingonberries, when Julie ooh'ed at a bag of frozen Swedish pancakes. "You know what we could make with that/" she asked, and it only took a moment to catch up to her thought.

When we're in Essen Germany for the Essen Spiel Fest, one of our dinners is at an Austrian sports bar a couple of blocks south of the hotel. Sylter Kliff features a variety of tasty foods, but the first time that we ate there, the hostess served us an off-menu treat called "Kaiserschmarr'n"("Kaiser" means "king", and "Schmarrn" has become the English word "smear"). Basically, this is caramelized thin German-style pancakes, traditionally with rum-soaked raisins and plum sauce. When it's served to us, it's one giant platter of fruity, pancakey heaven for dessert.

Kaiserschmarrn, on a squiggle serving dish, available by
special order from Contemporary Complements

So, instead of just the obligatory picture of a canning jar full of fruit floating in rum, we've got this little bit of food porn to show you. My prep was very easy (here's a recipe you can use for details): place some rumtopf liquid into a pan over low heat until syrupy. Place a handful of raisins into a small bowl and cover with rum for 30 minutes. Either cook up the pancakes, or use a few from your frozen bag from IKEA (one note: I'd sear the IKEA pancakes over a bit of heat and butter, maybe 30 seconds a side, before the next step to get them up to temperature and to put a bit of crisp into the outside of the pancakes). Honestly, a basic batter here is so simple - 1 egg, a half-cup of flour and 3/4 cup milk, adjusting the flour up slightly to thicken the pancakes - that I'd usually just make them myself (and my batter leaves out the sugar from the Allrecipes version - you won't miss it).

Tear the pancakes into large bits (inch-by-inch or a bit larger) and toss them in a pan over medium-high heat with some butter; add in the rum raisins. Once tossed a bit, add a tablespoon or so of melted butter, and then introduce powdered sugar to the pan (again, Allrecipes has specific quantities, but just imagine you're making roux, and add sugar until the butter has been absorbed). Give the pancakes a minute or two to really sear and caramelize; a few crispy bit are good for this. Transfer the pancakes to a plate, add some additional berries if desired, and then drizzle the rumtopf glaze over the top. It should look something like this:

Rum and fruit and pancakes and yum.

So: Kaiserschmarrn is a showy, fancy Austrian dessert that's really easy to make and looks impressive, and it's a great use for rumtopf. And rumtopf is as easy as anything you can make, and it really is drinking or eating a bit of summer. If you have access to fresh fruit, and you're a fan of rum, I can't recommend this enough!

Back in the Day

This drink is pictured in the 13.5 oz
Polka Dot Zombie Glass, available on the
Contemporary Complements website.

So, I'm wandering the streets of Bisbee, Arizona. (Don't worry, I'm home now, you're all safe.) Myself and a few friends duck into an antique shop, and start rummaging around the well-kept piles of aged folderol. I have two targets in the typical antique store: board games and books. (Barware is coming on strong as a third category, but unless I have a good way of getting it home, I mostly just look at it and whimper.)

My find for the evening is a well-kept 1956 copy of the Esquire Drink Book. This is, to my knowledge, not a particularly valuable or important tome, but it does fit nicely into my enjoyment of watching recipes change over time. This applies equally to food and drink - my go-to cookbook is the mid-1960's Culinary Arts Institute cookbook with the orange cover that my parents had, and that I now have a new copy of thanks to my local used bookstore. Sometimes, you do need to know how to use animal fats and cook game in the way that was ubiquitous back in the day, and you fancy-schmancy lowfat modern cookbook is not gonna have a clue.

In reading through my little window on 1957, I'm struck by the things that are to be casual knowledge to reader. There's delightful anecdotes about the various alcohols common to the Mad Men bar era, but you're also expected to be able to casually divide by 17 in your head (the "basic 17" being the number of jiggers - 1.5 ounce pours - in a standard fifth of alcohol). So if you're mixing for 20 people, you're to use 3 drinks a person, for 60 drinks, meaning four bottles of any alcohol being used in your drinks at a 1-part ratio. Fortunately for you, there should be 9 or so drinks left over at the end of it after having done all that math.

There's a much stronger focus on certain alcohols of the time: rye whiskey definitely gets its due, and applejack and gin, though certainly not uncommon today, rate page after page of recipes, with tequila ranking a miserable three recipes total. And, of course, there are several pages of celebrity-endorsed cocktail recipes. Many are notable for their lack of effort (Bob Hope's Rye Lemonade has two ingredients, left as an exercise to the reader), some are more hyperbole than substance (the Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon is absinthe and champagne - replacing the tradition water drop with the bubbly - and the admonition to "drink 3 to 5 of these slowly") and some are, well, impractical (the Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road Cocktail starts with step one: "Select in May six of your finest McIntosh trees and place a hive of bees under each tree in ensure the setting of the blossoms."). However, some recipes were perky enough to take notice of, and so we have arrived at Bing Crosby's Kailua Cocktail.

There's no story or information given as to the endorsement; there's a line in a Bing Crosby song named "You Took Advantage of Me" that goes:

But horses are frequently silly-
Mine ran from the beach of Kailua And left me alone for a filly,So I-a picked you-a.

Hey, they can't all be winners.

The obvious "Blue Hawaii" and "Mele Kalikimaka" aside, this may have simply been Esquire looking around and saying "hey, this Polynesian thing has some legs, let's The Bing in for a spread and ply him with drinks," which, truth be told, would actually be a pretty cool way to get an endorsement of your drink. In any event, his cocktail is a nice little tiki-ish drink that's a bit on the sweet side (thank you pineapple), and if it doesn't in any particularly new directions, it at least gives me an another reason to admire my book purchase. Certainly more than the "365 Excuses for a Party" (November 28: Anniversary of peace between U.S. and Tunis)...

Bing Crosby's Kailua Cocktail (from the Esquire Drink Book, 1957 printing)

2.25 oz. Puerto Rican dark rum (I used Bacardi Gold, spiked with a bit of Myer's*)
.75 oz. pineapple juice
.5 oz fresh lemon juice
.5 oz pomegranate syrup

Add to a shaker with ice; shake to blend. Pour into punch or tall glass with ice.

*Interestingly, when working on this, it appears that the dark rum I drank for years, Bacardi Black, is no longer available in the US (or at least in Michigan). I know that Select is also a 4-year age, the same as Black, but it's definitely not the same visual as the dark rum of my misspent youth. I obviously haven't missed it, what with my Myer's and my Cruzan Blackstrap and my Kraken and so on, but it does give me a bit of pause (and perhaps incentive to pick up a bottle at the Schipol duty-free on my way through Amsterdam next month, for nostalgia's sake...)

The Doctor is Funk

We're going into the realm of Beachbum Berry, and his excellent book Beachbum Berry Remixed. The book abounds with stories and recipes from the original king of tiki, Donn Beach. One of the most important things to remember when reading page after page of his creations is that, by and large, Donn was making this stuff up from whole cloth - certainly he knew the ingredients and flavor set of the Polynesian paradise his establishments evoked, but this was far more about his vision and his bartending skills than any wholesale lifting of native drinks.

One notable exception that proves the point, perhaps, is the Doctor Funk. This was a very real drink from Samoa, from a very real person named Dr. Bernhard Funk. A native of Germany, born in 1844, he migrated to Samoa around 1881 as reputedly the first medical practitioner in Apia (the capital city of Samoa). He was friends with Robert Louis Stevenson, and was his bedside doctor when the author died in 1894 in Samoa.

There are several references to his medical skills in works (including Fanny Stevenson's collection of letters from his husband), but he seems to also have had some impressive cocktail skills. The Doctor Funk was a notorious drink spreading out across the region, and his signature recipe had people waxing prosaic about the drink. My favorite was the quote attributed to Paul Gauguin by a skipper: "'E said Dr. Funk was a bloomin' ass for inventin' a drink that spoiled good Pernod with water." Other contemporaries were far more complimentary of the concoction.

Dr. Funk had a rich life, and even went native enough to marry the daughter of a Samoan chief. He was interested in meteorology, wrote a Samoan-English-German dictionary and medical handbooks, and constructed a recreation center at Lake Lanoto'o. Unfortunately, his deteriorating health drove him back to Germany, where he died in 1911. Friends carried out his last wish: he had a granite stone transported back to Samoa and placed on the shore of Lake Lanoto'o with a memorial service on his behalf. I recommend this thread at Tiki Central for much more (and there is much more) about the good Doctor.

All of this brings us back to the drink that is credited to him (and Donn Beach, in its modern version). The recipes can vary greatly (absinthe vs. pernod, different rums, and so on), but we'll take the advice and recipe as set out by the good Beachbum in the aforementioned book. It's a drink that comes to a remarkably happy balance based on the ingredients; the Pernod offers a distraction from the lime, the pomegranate syrup adds just enough sweet to balance the forward flavors, and the rum...well, you'd never know it was in there. A delightful riff on the usual lime-and-rum tiki flavor set that is a worthy tribute to a very interesting man.

Doctor Funk (from Beachbum Berry Remixed, 2010)

.75 oz. fresh lime juice
.5 oz. pomegranate syrup
1 tsp. Pernod
1.5 oz. light Puerto Rican rum (I use Bacardi white)
1 oz. club soda

Add the first four ingredients to a shaker with plenty of ice. Shake vigorously (a bit of water does this drink no harm). Add the club soda directly to the shaker and then pour the shaker unstrained into a glass.

Blackbeard's Revenge

This drink has not only a location and a story, but even has a date: March 31, 2010. On this day we're in the middle of our Caribbean cruise, stopping off at St. Thomas for the day. We've chosen a walking tour for our activity, starting at Blackbeard's Castle and wandering down the hill. The end point of the trip is the Amber Museum (meh) and Hotel 1829.

The view from the bar. Hotel 1829, St. Thomas

We've been walking a chunk of the day, it's warm but not unpleasant, and all of the house tours along the way take advantage of the temperate breezes for cooling (read: no air conditioning). We're warm but not uncomfortable, but ready for a break from walking downhill for a couple of hours. The hotel has a small bar attached that looks out over the bay (the bar is the former kitchen of the house, from when it was built in 1829), and we pull up a couple of chairs in the small, empty bar and survey the scene.

There's a sign attached to the woodwork touting the bar's signature drink: the Blackbeard's Revenge. We are not predisposed to turn down something new, so Julie and I each order one.

The bartender ignores the variety of glasses surrounding him and drops two translucent plastic beer glasses filled with ice on the counter. I was in college for 7 1/2 years, so this is not unfamiliar territory, even if a seems a bit odd to skip straight to the plasticware.

Next, he grabs four different bottles of Cruzan flavored rum. There's a little part of me that sighs; Cruzan's the $10 rum back home, so I'm apparently getting the cheap stuff in this drink. He gives each glass a shot from each bottle, and returns the bottles to the bar.

A dose of orange juice is next, followed by a grenadine sink to the bottom of the glass. My pancreas is now setting up protest signs for what, to my mind, has to be a syrupy-sweet tourist trap of a drink.

Then, he grabs one more bottle: Cruzan Blackstrap rum. Now THIS gets my attention. I've not had the blackstrap rum before, and I'm now much more interested in seeing what the drink will shake out like. The bartender floats a scant shot over the top.

The final drink has a pretty red base, the light orange torso, and a roiling black top, all masked and softened by the translucence of the cup. We're handed the drinks, we hand over some cash (less than I expected, as I recall), and took a sip. Fruity, clean, certainly sweet but with the blackstrap rum holding it just in check, cold, full of alcohol but not strong to the taste. The glass is even a welcome touch, giving the layers of the drink soft edges without hiding the dramatic shifts in color. At the moment we had our first sip, it was the perfect drink for the place and time: a cold, fruity rum drink in a old, wooden shady bar on a warm day overlooking paradise.

I've come to appreciate the Cruzan rums as light additions to drinks; not something I would often go to, but they have the ability to unobtrusively add delicate rum flavor to drinks that concentrate their flavors on the surface. I'm a biiiig fan of the Cruzan Blackstrap, and have found several common uses for it. In replicating this drink, the only deliberate change I've made is to reduce slightly the amount of coconut rum in the mix; it seems to take over the drink if you're not careful, and I prefer it to be more balanced in the drink. And, I totally recommend a glass with a bit of frost to it; it really does make the effect of the drink more dramatic.

The drink is pictured in the
Etched Squiggle 16 oz pint glass
and is available for purchase
on the Contemporary Complements website.

Blackbeard's Revenge (from Hotel 1829, St. Thomas USVI)

1 oz. Cruzan Pineapple Rum

.75 oz. Cruzan Coconut Rum

1 oz. Cruzan Mango Rum

1 oz. Cruzan Citrus Rum

1.5 oz. orange juice

.5 oz. grenadine (pomegranate syrup; I use Monin)

.75 oz. Cruzan Blackstrap Rum

Add the four flavored rums and the orange to a glass filled with ice; stir. Sink the grenadine to the bottom by tilting the glass slightly, then pouring the grenadine slowly so that it runs down the side of the glass to the bottom without mixing. Float the blackstrap rum on top (pour the rum over a spoon, bottom side up, positioned close to the top of the drink so that the blackstrap floats on top of the drink).
Stir before drinking.

Tiki Love

Let us talk of the tiki.

I've already documented my tiki-flavored introduction to my fascination with alcohol in an earlier blog entry, but the fantasy-Polynesian world perpetuated by those who adhere to the theme remains a delight of mine. I will once again push off the story of the Zombie, but I will hint at one theme that story will expound upon: the origin of these drinks, the early 1930's post-Prohibition versions of the classic tiki drinks, were designed to be beverages for adults, not candy liquid.

This drink is pictured in the

Black & Silver Polka Dot 

Cosmo Pilsner (16.5oz), 

available on the 

Contemporary Complements website. 

The black tiki mug is from 

Frankie's Tiki Room 

in Las Vegas.

That said whenever I try a new recipe, I must always bear in mind that my wife likes drinks to be a bit on the sweet side. Where many of the classics of the genre are tart combination of lime or grapefruit juice, I always need to have a bit of pineapple juice handy to bring the sweetness up to my wife's preferences. It's not a big deal to spike her drink after decanting my own, but it does illustrate a guiding principle in my mixology missions: it don't matter what you did to it, if they ain't gonna drink it. If I can bring up the sweetness a bit (using appropriate and moderated means, of course) in order to make my primary audience more enthusiastic about the drink, then bring on the grenadine and pineapple.

Today's drink does not suffer from said lack of sweet. The Blue Hawaii has a creator (Harry K. Yee of the Hawaiian Village Hotel, circa 1957), a mission (help Bols sell blue curacao), and a profile that definitely settles it on the sweet end of the spectrum. It has a seafoam green-blue color that's almost a shame to hide in a tiki glass, but it's very much the kind of drink that won't surprise you coming out of said glass. As always, make your own sour mix (see the Long Island Iced Tea recipe for my sour mix notes) to take out might be a bit too much sweet, but otherwise this is a drink that's very easy, uses basic alcohols, and is as tiki as a Hawaiian lei.

Blue Hawaii

3 oz. fresh pineapple juice
.5 oz. blue curacao (I use Bols)
.75 oz. rum (I use Bacardi white)
.75 oz. vodka (any midrange will do, such as Absolut)
1 oz. sour mix

Shake vigorously with ice, pour into tiki mug or tall glass.

This recipe appears in Beachbum Berry's Sippin' Safari, and is also available on his app, Beachbum Berry's Tiki +, for the iPhone or iPad.

Old Faithful

This drink is pictured in the

Wave Polka Dot  11.5  oz. Pub Glass, 

available on the 

Contemporary Complements website.

Aaaah, the rum and Coke. Steady, omnipresent, always available, and still manages a variety of flavors (and quality) based on the rum used. This and the Long Island Iced Tea are the two drinks I have probably consumed the most over the years, and it's almost a default drink when I'm out and don't know whether to trust the bar service yet.

Let's start by defining some parameters. I set the Cuba Libre aside as separate for the moment. This drink is a very specific thing: Bacardi Gold, Coca-Cola, and fresh lime juice (supplied by the obligatory wedge). It's a wonderful drink, and each ingredient serves the drink well: the Coke adds the cola flavor and the sweetness; the Bacardi modifies the sweet into richness by adding the familiar Bacardi bite with the molasses undertones that the gold rum provides; the lime adds a splash of citrusy freshness, masks a bit of the carbonic acid, and blends the two strong flavors together. This, however, is not about the Cuba Libre, as most places are going to use either fountain Coke, crap rum, dried-up old lime wedges, or some combination of the three.

No, we are going to focus on the two-ingredient version of this drink: Coca-Cola and rum. There's no point arguing the first ingredient–no Coca-Cola, no drink. Pepsi fouls up the drink into a syrupy mess, and although other colas bring interesting flavors to the story, when an ingredient is as readily available as Coke is, and produces such marvelous results as it does, that we shouldn't just accept it and move on. (Note that I'm not going down the road of so-called "Mexican Coke", Kosher-for-Passover Coke or the Coke I get in Europe, but suffice it to say that if I can get the nonstandard stuff, I get it.)

So, we are left with the rum to discuss. I defaulted to Bacardi Gold for years, and won't argue with it today. I went through several other phases (Gosling's, Navy and Myer's rums notably), and while I'm overseas I'm a Havana Club maniac, but I've recently settled on a relative newcomer to the game: The Kraken Rum. It's a 94 proof black rum, with a bit of spice thrown into the mix. It has a bit sweeter of a taste profile than I might usually consider, but the extra proof offsets it in a rum and Coke. The spice set complements the cola profile nicely; basically, it's everything I want in a rum and Coke.

What ratio to use? Well, if you're making it easy on yourself and simply emptying a 12 ounce can into a glass, there's a pretty tight borderline I'd suggest. You might not think a half-ounce of alcohol would make a difference in 14 or 15 ounces of drink, but there's a really bright line change in the taste of the drink between 2.5 and 3 ounces of Kraken in your can of Coke. At 2.5 oz. of rum, the Coke continues to maintain its last shred of sweetness, pleading that it's still a soda with stuff in it; at 3 ounces of rum, it's all collapsed into itself and you're left with the cola and the rum coexisting on equal terms. If you want that little bit of sweetness to remain, simply cut it back to 2.5 oz. of rum.

If you're using one of those cute 7.5 oz. serving cans that Coke makes, you'll cheat the rum down a touch from two ounces; if you're splitting a 16.9 ounce glass bottle into two drinks, use two ounces per half and you're golden. Otherwise, to use the basic can of Coke and the bottle of Kraken rum you'll be obtaining in the future, I give you my recipe for rum and Coke goodness.

Rum and Coke

12 oz. Coca-Cola
3 oz. Kraken rum

Add a third of the Coke to a tall glass with ice, then add rum. Pour remaining Coke into glass.

The Long Island Iced Tea (v. 2012a)

The drink is pictured in the
Etched Squiggle 16 oz pint glass
and is available for purchase
on the Contemporary Complements website.

We’re starting with the drink that I’ve spent the most time playing with – the Long Island Iced Tea. I’ve had more than my share of these, across a couple of continents and about any bar I’ve spent any amount of time in. Why the fascination? Well, it’s a drink with simple components – four (yes, I said four) basic alcohols, sour mix and Coca-Cola, and it’s amazing the variety of outcomes that these ingredients can yield, for good or ill.

This is the first iteration of the recipe for 2012, hence the version number above. I expect to revisit this at least annually, if not any time I make a change for the better. At the end of the article, I’ll let you know what’s next on the testing list for improvement, if you’d like to play along. You’ll note I haven’t strayed too far from the basic formula you’ll find elsewhere; I’m not out to reinvent the drink, but simply to get it as close to ideal as I can for my palate (and my wife’s palate, more importantly).

I’m going to use a musical metaphor for this drink – it’s the device I use for this drink to think about how each component works to make the drink work, and it’s a way of thinking about how I would change aspects of the drink. Whether it comes off as pretentious is your call, but it’s my way, and I’m sticking to it.

Gin: The percussive notes of the drink, adding the counterpoint to the sweet and sparking notes the other alcohols bring to the party. My wife does not like gin as a rule, but I’ve gradually demonstrated to her that the drink suffers without gin contributing its fair share to the mix.

Vodka: The bass line, all thrummy and low. As is the case with all of the specific alcohols here, I believe that a good brand will provide excellent results, results not significantly improved by doubling or tripling the price or the alcohol used. But, vodka is the one I’d be willing to stretch the rule a bit on, since if you experience headaches after a night of Long Islands, you were probably drinking crap vodka.

Triple Sec: My rhythm guitar, always grinding away underneath the flavors from beginning to end. You’ll find I cheat this up a bit, both because my wife prefers it that way, and once you start playing with the sour mix, this is a way to add not only sweet but citrus to the flavor profile. This has been my most recent significant change to the recipe (changing over to Bols 42-proof), but it’s probably the most heretical part of my recipe. That said, it works for me.

Rum: my lead guitar, my soloist, my melody that I hum along with. Rum adds sweet, it adds a touch of bite, and some low feedback notes that poke out every so often. I’m a rum guy by nature, and so I’m always looking for the rum in anything I drink, and this drink in particular.

Sour mix: I consider this the producer of the piece, providing the blending package to smooth out the rough bits, fill in the gaps, and help to keep the drink stable over time. I say “sour mix”, but you’ll be making it yourself – the only premixed sour mix allowed is premixing simple syrup with the insides of a couple dozen lemons before the party.

Coke: The packaging, art for the single, and the marketing needed to get a little attention and love for the drink. That splash of Coke is what’s needed to give it the visual appeal that the name invokes.

There’s no tequila in my Long Island, because I am not a college student looking to puke on my roommate’s bed. Tequila is an instant DNQ for me if it’s offered in a Long Island.

So, here we are, at the recipe itself:

1 oz. rum (I use Bacardi Gold) – literally dozens of rums that I have to choose from at home, and this is still my go-to for this recipe.

1.25 oz. triple sec (I use Bols 42-proof) – I prefer it to others in the price range, and haven’t found jumping up to Cointreau or Grand Marnier to give me enough results to justify it)

1 oz. gin (I use Tanquery, but have no problem with Beefeater) – Dutch-style gins are disqualified here

1 oz. vodka (I use Absolut by default, but have been known to slip Ketel One in at home for myself) – any reasonably neutral mid-value vodka should do, and I’ve used half a dozen or so successfully

2 oz. sour mix – I use an equal mix of freshly squeezed lemon juice and 1:1 cold simple syrup. Take a jar, add a half-cup of sugar and a half-cup of water; shake. That’s 7-8 oz. of simple syrup; your average good lemon should give you 1.5-2 oz. of juice, so 5-6 or so lemons should do. Don’t short the lemon juice!

.5 oz. Coke – I use...uuh, yeah.

Combine; pour over ice with a lemon wedge garnish.

Current paths of investigation:

Sour mix: I’ve rejected 2:1 simple syrup for my sour mix, demarara/turbinado sugar (I use basic organic white sugar), and most other citruses beyond lemon for this drink. That said, I want to explore some of the side ingredients that are designed to thicken or froth homemade sour mix. If it affects the mouth feel of the drink positively, I’m in.

Rum: There’s always another rum, and always another excuse to find another. Demararas and darks overpower the drink for me, but white rums cause the drink to lose a touch of dimensionality. So, a gold rum, with a bit of Puerto Rico bitter, but with that hint of molasses sugar, would be the flavor profile I’m looking to meet or beat.