mbanu

The Ministry of Rum forum seems to have disappeared. Any ideas where it's gone off to? Moved? Deleted? Computer error?

Well, it depends. "Tiki drink" is really a blanket term for several styles of drink, usually revolving around a core location (Hawaii, Jamaica), or an influential bartender (Trader Vic, Don the Beachcomber, Harry Yee, etc). Usually the only common denominator is striking glassware/garnishes and an emphasis on tropical ingredients.

A mix of 50/50 Pusser's Blue Label and Appleton V/X works well for me.

It depends on how educated the consumer is on the subject. If they're on one end of the spectrum and know nothing about spirits, then advertising, word of mouth, and the look of the bottle play a big role. On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who look not just at age, but age in combination with distillation proof, barreling proof, and bottling proof, as well as any other information that might suggest the overall style of the spirit. In the middle you have people who rely mostly on rules of thumb, which may or may not be relevant, such as "the older it is, the better it is".

I suspect that at one time the difference between making liqueurs and making short drinks wasn't so big, and that's why you can still see the effect one had on the other in a bunch of drinks. One subset of short drinks seems to be based on making "liqueurs" fresh because one of the ingredients isn't shelf-stable, like in cocktails using cream (which comes out of emulsion) or eggs. Another subset of cocktails seem to be based on creating liqueurs and aromatic concoctions at the bar that due to competing companies, customs laws, different locations, etc. would have been a pain in the neck to simply bottle at the source and market back when the world was less globalized. It was only at the bar that you could easily take an aged rye whiskey from Pennsylvania, an aromatized wine from Italy, and a patent medicine, from three protective independent producers in three different areas, and combine them together into a drink.

I usually use Grand Marnier or one of its higher quality knockoffs.

Well yes, France and Italy have cocktails, same as the US has jai alai teams. That doesn't necessarily mean that they play more than the role of exotic curiosity in the daily habits of their respective cultures. I suppose the big difference between a cocktail culture and a non cocktail culture is in the mindset when it comes to viewing types of alcohol. For non-cocktail cultures, these liqueurs and liquors and aromatic wines are primarily finished products, not stepping stones on the way towards finished recipes. If you present your average Italian with a bottle of sweet vermouth or Campari, I doubt the first impulse will be to hunt down a bottle of gin so they can make a Negroni, any more than the first impulse of the average American presented with a cheeseburger is to start making plans for cheeseburger soup. However, this "ingredient-centric" viewpoint among cocktail cultures leads to the same sort of temptations that inspire people to use partially hydrogenated soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup, and powdered eggs while baking, instead of butter, sugar and fresh eggs, even if the idea of making a breakfast of scrambled rehydrated eggs and pancakes drizzled in corn syrup with a pat of Crisco would be entirely out of the question.

I used dry ginger because most of the old USP references I could find used that form. I've had a couple drinks from the cocktailDB that use the stuff, (the Hot Deck and the Here's How are interesting) but really I made the stuff because I was having trouble picturing what it did for the drinks it was in. For instance, until I'd made it, it hadn't occured to me that Jamaica Ginger was spicy. It's obvious in hindsight, I suppose, but my typical ginger-flavor references are things like ginger ale and gingerbread, so it took me by surprise. As to what I'll do with it now, I'm up for ideas. I'm thinking of trying it in a few frozen drinks, and seeing if I can't hunt down a couple more old Jamaica Ginger recipes. I think Bullock used it a bit in the Ideal Bartender, so I suppose that's my next stop after cocktailDB.

So has anyone been fooling around with Jamaica Ginger? They didn't happen to sell any where I am, so I made some of my own by infusing a large amount of dried ginger in a small amount of 100 proof alcohol. It's an interesting ingredient. It's spicy like Tabasco, but lends itself to more concoctions because it doesn't taste like salt and vinegar.

Has anyone ever noticed that the finest cocktail ingredients all seem to come from "non-cocktail" cultures (France, Italy, etc.), or from non-cocktail minorities subsidized by fans from elsewhere? (Bourbon in the US and the Japanese that love it spring to mind.) Or how once an ingredient starts drawing more revenue from its place in the cocktail scene than from its neat drinkers, it starts to suffer a drop in quality? (Distillation proofs go higher to make heavy spirits more "mixable", liqueurs start sneaking in more artificial flavoring, aromatic wines start using cheaper wine bases, etc.) Is this sort of evolution inevitable? Are cocktails doomed to be the "bad influence" on upstanding alcoholic beverages, luring them down the path of easy money but ultimately leaving them disgraced and dishonored? I look forward to your opinions.

Shake and strain, garnish with a lime wedge, name after a cruise line (the Royal Caribbean, maybe?) and we're done. Another! 1/2 oz white creme de menthe

If you're using the 40% abv blended applejack, I'd start with: 2 oz applejack 1/2 oz grenadine (high quality, of coures) 1/2 oz lemon juice Shake and strain. Bitters won't hurt if you find it less than inspiring. Then, adjust the recipe based on your personal preferences, using more grenadine and less lemon juice if you like it sweeter and vice versa if you like it more tart (keeping the ratio of alcohol to non at 2:1). Using the bonded applejack creates a better cocktail, but you'll have to add an extra half ounce of nonalcoholic ingredients (lemon juice, grenadine, water, egg white, etc.) to keep the strength right. If you prefer your cocktails slightly stronger, you can omit the extra half ounce. Good luck!

"Cricket's Well" 1 oz gin 1 oz blue Cointreau 1 tsp Swedish bitters 6 oz ginger beer Build in a glass over ice. Garnish with a mint sprig. For the ginger beer, I used Reed's, which is sweetened with honey and pineapple juice (adds some interesting backnotes). If for some strange reason you're not using it pre-chilled, use a higher-proof gin or cut the amount of ginger beer back a couple ounces to balance out the additional dilution when it hits the ice. Blue Cointreau is just regular Cointreau that's been dolled up with a healthy amount of blue food coloring. If you don't feel comfortable harassing your Cointreau this way, all you lose by omitting the dye is the color effect. The brand of Swedish bitters I used was Nature Works.

According to the Internet, Swedish bitters are also good for sobering up drunks and curing cancer, hemorrhoids, and the plague. Here's my attempt at that profile. (My apologize in advance, flavor profiling isn't my strong point) Very resinous nose, less spicy than Angostura. Camphor, menthol, and something that was kinda like pine (maybe the Manna ash?), as well as some other stuff I couldn't identify. Taste was bitter and spicy, the sort of herbal tea meets high-proof spirits flavor that you get with most bitters. Slightly drier than Angostura, if you can call Angostura sweet. Slightly lighter color (although not as light as orange bitters), might be a bit less concentrated than Angostura. Long, lingering resinous aftertaste.

Is the Optimum Health Swedish bitters ingredient list ordered by amount used? In the stuff I've got Manna ash stems (twigs? bark?) is the dominant ingredient, with aloe coming in 4th... might be one of those things where the flavor profile varies depending on who's making it, like with orange bitters. I've found it to be about as foul as drinking any of the other "non-potable bitters" straight, but I'd probably have to do a side by side taste test to be sure. I'll see what I can do about those tasting notes.

Picked up a bottle of this stuff at my local hippie grocery store. It was produced by a company called Nature Works, but as far as I can gather, the formula for Swedish bitters is public knowledge, and several companies produce the stuff. It makes an interesting Old-Fashioned or wet Martini, and I would recommend keeping an eye out for it if you're itching for a new type of bitters to play around with.

I whipped this up after a trip to the local Chinese grocery produced this interesting stuff: "Gaoshou Sour" 2 ounce cognac 1/2 ounce Pan Goushou syrup 1/2 ounce lemon juice Shake and strain.

Your local mexican grocery store will probably have cheap limes. The one near me sells them 5 for a dollar. I feel you about the lemons, though. If anyone else has any tips on finding cheap lemons, I hope they share.

The only orange flower water available around here is the Middle Eastern sort that you find at ethnic grocery stores. For those of you who have tried the French stuff, are the Middle Eastern brands of the same quality and flavor?

Two reasons. The first is because I've never tasted unaged rum, and I hope it will give me a better understanding of how aging changes flavor. Secondly, I'm trying to replicate a trick that Don the Beachcomber used to do in his drinks. He'd take unaged and extra-aged rums from the same distillery and then he'd combined the two in different ratios to get just the right amount of "aged" flavor for his drinks, sort of a quick and dirty susbstitute to having multiple bottlings of the same rum at different ages.

Are there any brands of white rum on the US market that haven't been aged at all? Not rhum agricole, industrial rum. Most of the bottles I've looked at either don't provide any info, or seem to have done the Puerto Rican thing and just carbon filtered an aged rum to make the white. Any ideas?

So what's the deal with Castillo rum? If I understand correctly, it's distilled by Bacardi. Is it the same rum at a younger age than the Bacardi flagship brands, or are there other differences?

$20.00?? Um, excuse me, NOT in my house. This is the second time I've seen this misinformation printed. Would someone kindly show me where there is a $20.00 cocktail on our menu?? Not in my lifetime. So uttlerly absurd; like offering an XO & coke. Yea, of course if someone orders a "Hedonisim" Manhattan, but that's solely an upcharge for an already expensive spirit, and the guest's perrogative. Regular drinks for $12, Champagne cocktails for $16.00. ← No worries. They were probably including the tip.

You might be a cocktail snob if... ...you're disappointed when you walk into the local sports bar and the bartender isn't wearing a bow tie or arm garters. ...no bar in a 50 mile radius has all the ingredients to make your favorite drink. ...you buy 100-year-old bottles of bitters off the internet because you can't stand the taste of Angostura in your Old-Fashioneds.

That one's interesting too. I can't seem to get a straight answer on the ratios, so I've never been sure if the Royal Hawaiian is a long drink or a cocktail. A lot of the recipes I've seen on the net make it as a "highball in disguise", where you shake it and strain it into a cocktail glass, but the amount of pineapple juice to gin combined with the dilution from the ice makes it far too weak for a cocktail. When I make it as a short drink, I usually cut the other mixers with the pineapple juice to avoid the problem. Like using 1/2 oz pineapple juice to 1/4 oz each of orgeat and lemon. Or 1/2 oz orgeat to 1/4 oz each of pineapple and lemon, or 1/2 oz lemon to 1/4 oz each orgeat and pineapple.