Father's Advice

In honor of the bottle of Punt e Mes I opened to make a batch of Manhattans for barrel-aging (more about that at some later time), I decided to mix up a Father's Advice, a cocktail I'd seen on the Cocktail Virgin blog. I'm on a mission to make sure I properly dispose of the Punt e Mes before it expires in a couple of months and this drink was one that used it and that I hadn't tried before.

Really quite complex and lovely. The Punt e Mes and Cardamaro come through on the sip, with the rum and a hint of banana really shining on the swallow. The sweetness of the sherry helps ties the whole thing together. It's a nice, bitter and light cocktail that's perfect for this San Francisco summer weather we're having right now.

Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 oz Amber Rum (Bacardi Gold)
  • 1/2 oz Punt e Mes
  • 1/2 oz. Cardamaro
  • 1/2 oz. Amontillado Sherry (feel free to try other types of dry sherry if you don't have Amontillado on hand)
  • 1/4 oz. Gillard Banane du Brésil

Directions

  1. Combine everything in a mixing glass, add ice, and stir to chill.
  2. Strain into a cocktail coupe 
  3. Garnish with an orange twist and cherry on a toothpick 

Man About Town

I love the way the logo comes out on the glass with this one.

It's September in San Francisco, which means we're finally moving into the "warm" summer weather around here. It must have hit a high of just over 80 degrees today so this called for a drink built around a large ice cube. Plus, I had a new ice sphere press to play with (more on that in some later post), so I wanted something I could serve over the rocks -- a big, round, clear rock. In this case, the loveliness that is the Man About Town.

Called the Rum Negroni by some, the Man is a great bitter-sweet drink featuring the sweetness of rum pitted against the bitterness of the Campari. In this contest, the winner is your tastebuds. Not a drink for those who aren't a fan of the bitter-bomb that is Campari, this one is well-balanced with the vermouth adding a more subtle note of sweetness to the mix. I normally drink my Negroni and Negroni variations up (and garnish them with a cherry) but when they're on the rocks, they work well with an orange twist.

All and all, a worthy cause for the last of my Campari. I shan't see its like again until I finish my bottle of Gran Classico Bitter. 

Recipe

Negroni variations are so easy to do. For this one, I pumped up the rum to 1.5 oz to feature it a bit more. There are a number of different variations on the Negroni called the Man About Town, but that's what I first hear this rum variation called, so I'm sticking with it.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 oz. Gold Rum (Your choice; the rum selection will, of course, influence the taste of the final cocktail)
  • 1 oz Campari
  • 1 oz. Sweet Vermouth

Directions

  1. Combine everything in a mixing glass, add ice, and stir to chill.
  2. Strain into a cocktail coupe or a rocks glass with ice (or one, clear ice sphere)
  3. Garnish with a cherry or an orange twist (or both, if you're feeling special.)

Jamaican Bobsled

I was still looking for one last cocktail for my Tiki Thursday menu when I cam across the Jamaican Bobsled on the excellent Cocktail Virgin Slut blog. This looked like the type of drink I was looking for to fill my last slot on the menu (actually, to take slot #1 on the thing); a rum drink with a spice or bitter note to move it away from the sweetness of the other choices. The only thing to do was to whip one up when I got home.

Even though I had an ice crisis on my hands when I got back to the flat (and boo to me for being lazy about refilling trays), I managed to put this together as specified, using a nice, clear cylinder of ice as the bases for my crushed ice. This one is really good, with pineapple and cinnamon notes, tempted by the funky Smith & Cross Navy strength rum and the Allspice dram. I went a little heavier than I probably should on the dram and I'm getting a real allspice kick on the finish. I didn't have any edible orchids on hand (and I need to find a source for those in San Francisco; if anyone has any leads on them, please let me a comment) so I did have some hibiscus flowers in rose syrup so I made a switch there. 

This one is interesting and complex enough to make it onto the menu and put an end to my research for this Thursday's event. I think I'm looking forward to a break from Tiki drinks and rum for a few days.

Recipe

Frederic Yarm, one of the authors of the Cocktail Virgin Slut blog, wrote Drink & Tell: A Boston Cocktail Book and if you've enjoy his blog (or the recipes from it I've posted), you should check it out.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine ingredients in a shaker, add some ice, and shake for about 15 seconds
  2. Strain into a rocks glass
  3. Fill glass with crushed ice
  4. Garnish with an edible orchid (or, if you don't have any on hand, a hibiscus flower in syrup, like I did.)
  5. Throw in a paper umbrella and a couple of straw and you're ready to sip

 

Daisy de Santiago

Tonight I decided to give the Daisy de Santiago a spin, to see if it would do for my next Tiki Thursday, which is rapidly approaching. I was hoping that the Yellow Chartreuse would give this rum-based drink a nice herbaceous tang that would be a good contrast to the sweeter Twelve Mile Limit I'm planning on serving. Alas, that was not the case. This one really didn't do it to me; my first sip tasted a bit watery and flat and while it developed a bit more over the course of my drinking it, it never wowed me.

There might be a number of reasons for this; I poured in a bit too much rum (about 1/4 oz more than the recipe called for) but, if anything, that should have made this drink taste stronger. It could be that my SodaStream carbonated water is no substitute for a good store-bought seltzer. It could be that I had no mint for the garnish. It could be that I decided to be lazy and use cubed ice instead of crushed ice. (It could be that my palate was a little fatigued from this afternoon's Martini drinking.) I used the recipe from Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki, which calls for the mixing of all of the ingredients together. Checking Baker's The Gentleman's Companion, I see that he called for the Yellow Chartreuse to be floated on the top of the drink; maybe I'll try that next time.

In any case, I'm not going to serve this one at August's Tiki Thursday and the search for that elusive third drink continues. I'll continue my search (or maybe just default to the Jungle Bird if I don't find anything by the end of Sunday.)

Recipe

As mentioned, this one comes from Martin Cate's excellent Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki. If you don't have a copy of this book, you should get one. And if I haven't mentioned it, my product links are Amazon Affiliate links so if you click through here and buy the book (or anything) from Amazon, it will help me out. On the the recipe!

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 oz. rum (Appleton Estate Signature Blend)
  • 1/2 oz Yellow Chartreuse 
  • 1 oz. soda water
  • 1 oz fresh lime juice
  • 1 1/2 tsp. Demerara Syrup

Directions

 

  1. Combine ingredients in a shaker, add some ice, and shake for about 15 seconds
  2. Strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice
  3. Garnish with a sprig of mint

As mentioned above, you might try floating the Chartreuse on the top and see if that floats your boat. Enjoy!

 

Twelve Mile Limit

I started a little early today, with the thought I might have more than one cocktail as I drink my way through some potential tiki drinks for my upcoming Tiki Thursday. I'm finding it amusing that I haven't yet selected a cocktail that would be served in a Tiki mug, but I've been avoiding having to use crushed ice and that's likely a big reason everything so far has been strained into a coupe.

I went again to Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki for the recipe for tonight's Twelve Mile Limit. This delicious mixture of rum, rye, brandy, grenadine, and lemon juice lets a bit of that rum flavor through while augmenting the sweetness with the grenadine and leveling it out a bit with the lemon juice. The rye and brandy are definitely playing supporting roles in this one. Technically, this is a Prohibition-era drink and not a Tiki drink but it's got rum in it, so who cares? This one will likely be the "sweet" rum drink on the menu; now I have to find something that tends towards the bitter end to balance it out. More research!

Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 oz. rum (something lightly aged, like the Appleton Estate Signature Blend is perfect here)
  • 1/2 oz Rye (I used my standby, Old Overhold)
  • 1/2 oz. Brandy
  • 1/2 oz Grenadine (Small Hand Foods grenadine is both excellent and local (if you're in the Bay Area)
  • 1/2 oz Fresh Lemon Juice

Directions

  1. Combine ingredients in a shaker, add some ice, and shake for about 15 seconds
  2. Double-Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe.
  3. Express the oils from a lemon peel over the drink and then use the peel as a garnish.
  4. Enjoy! This one gets better as it warms up a bit.

Pooh Bah

...or the mystery of the missing Cognac. Tonight's cocktail was going to be a Shylock, a tasty-looking combination of brandy, vermouth, Crème de Caco, Torani Amer, and Swedish Punsch. I was especially looking forward to messing about the the Swedish Punsch in a cocktail. However, as I assembled the bottles for the cocktail, I could not find my bottle of Cognac! I remember buying it but could not find it. Strange.

So tonight's drink became the Pooh Bah. This one still used the Swedish Punsch I wanted to play with, but change out the brandy for gin and rum. Always a great combo! Rich and a little orange on the taste, you get a hit of the rum and gin as it develop in your mouth. NIce, but maybe it could use a splash of orange juice to bring out a bit more citrus.

Pretty nice for a cocktail call-up.

Pretty nice for a cocktail call-up.

It's definitely an tasty drink and one that's a bit on the sweet side (but not overwhelmingly so.)  This one is worth revisiting at some point. However, so many recipes and so little time... we'll see when I get back to it.

Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 oz. Jamaican Rum
  • 1 oz Dry London Gin
  • 3/4 oz Swedish Punsch
  • 1/4 oz Apricot Brandy

Directions

  1. Combine ingredients in a mixing glass.
  2. Add ice and stir to chill
  3. Strain into a cocktail coupe
  4. Express an orange peel over it. Use it as a garnish if you'd like.
  5. Sip while researching the history of Swedish Punsch -- it's fun stuff!