mbanu

Most 151 proof rum that I know of on the market today is used simply as a floater garnish on tropical drinks. But how was 151 proof rum originally marketed? I'm guessing the floater idea came around after 151 proof rum became available, not the other way around... and at 75.5% alcohol by volume, it's a bit too harsh to drink straight like its lower proof cousins... I can see white 151 proof rum being used as an antiseptic and preservative, but how does the aged stuff come into play?? How did that come to market? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Well the distillers do make better products when they're not cooped up in those cages all day... :)

I bought a bottle of Bacardi 151 recently, and in the aroma I could swear I smelled cedar. Even rubbed a bit between my palms to reduce the alcohol interference. Still cedar. Smelled almost like those cedar wood shavings you use for hamster cages... Is this smell what happens when you mix oak and caramel?? Or is this simply what used oak smells like? Or am I simply smelling things that aren't there??? If they are using cedar, where in the world are they getting used cedar barrels from??? Granted, I'm not so familar with the scents of various woods, but it doesn't smell like the oak I'm used to...

Rum & Sherry Serves 1. Not an original of mine, but really a match made in heaven worth posting. Also makes a good base for more elaborate cocktails. 1 fl oz gold rum 1 fl oz oloroso sherry Shake with a little ice and strain. Keywords: Cocktail, Easy ( RG1346 )

Rum & Sherry Serves 1. Not an original of mine, but really a match made in heaven worth posting. Also makes a good base for more elaborate cocktails. 1 fl oz gold rum 1 fl oz oloroso sherry Shake with a little ice and strain. Keywords: Cocktail, Easy ( RG1346 )

Do they mean the average cost of an *actual* Martini, or are they using martini as another word for cocktail?? Judging by the other prices, my guess is they meant to put $11.53 :)

Briar Patch Serves 1. If bourbon and blackberry brandy in the noted proofs are unavailable, good results can also be achieved using 80 proof bourbon with 80 proof blackberry brandy, and 100 proof bourbon with 60 proof blackberry brandy. fl oz Bourbon (90 proof) fl oz Blackberry-flavored brandy (70 proof) fl oz Lemon juice Shake with a little ice and strain. Garnish as desired. Keywords: Cocktail, Easy ( RG1345 )

Briar Patch Serves 1. If bourbon and blackberry brandy in the noted proofs are unavailable, good results can also be achieved using 80 proof bourbon with 80 proof blackberry brandy, and 100 proof bourbon with 60 proof blackberry brandy. fl oz Bourbon (90 proof) fl oz Blackberry-flavored brandy (70 proof) fl oz Lemon juice Shake with a little ice and strain. Garnish as desired. Keywords: Cocktail, Easy ( RG1345 )

That's when you break out the light rum, and see if you can save it through blending, i suppose. :)

I got my Bacardi age information from Rums of Puerto Rico, which seems to be a site produced by the Puerto Rican tourism department. I would assume it is accurate, but I didn't contact Bacardi directly, so it could be a misleading figure.

I stumbled across the interesting fact today that Bacardi 151 is 2 years old, the same as Bacardi Gold, and it occured to me that Bacardi 151 might be the "barrel proof" version of Bacardi Gold. This got the wheels turning, and so I thought I would ask you knowlegable folks. Are aged overproof rums usually barrel proof? Or is it customary for rums to go into the barrel at even higher proofs than the 151 standard?

When an unidentified rum says that it's a product of the Virgin Islands, does this always mean it comes from the Cruzan distillery? Isn't there also a distillery in the Virgin Islands owned by Great Britain?? If they also sell bulk rum, is there a good way of telling which distillery it came from? On an unrelated note, does Cruzan do anything to the bulk white rums coming out of their distillery (aging and filtering, straight filtering, micro-oxygenation, etc.) or is it straight from the still and into the shipping tank?

Trying to find out about the approximate age of Brugal Gold Label. The defunct brugal.be website claims that Brugal Carta Dorada is 3 years old, Brugal Anejo is 5 years old and Brugal Extra Viejo is 8 years old. From tasting these, I'd guess the year is a statement of the oldest rum in the blend, but I could be wrong.... (any ideas?) My main question is, is there any difference between Brugal Carta Dorada and Brugal Gold besides the proof?

The tequila forums on that site are a really helpful source of information as well.

Oops. :) In the case of Chartreuse, they offered two pronounciations. "shar-trœz" was #2. :) I've edited my post accordingly.

Noticed this nifty feature of the online Merriam Webster, thought I'd post some links for words whose pronounciation isn't immediately obvious from their spelling. :) (Or at least, not to people like me, anyways. :P) chartreuse (edited for the right pronounciation) cognac curaçao (yeah, not French, but it's been bugging me) eau de vie orgeat Pernod

The liqueurs and fortified wines in the 15-20% range usually can make it a couple years if you keep them closed, possibly longer. Really at that alcohol strength you're more at risk of having fruit flies die in your bottle than any sort of contamination. They may oxidize a bit if you store them in mostly empty bottles, but depending on what the spirit originally tasted like, this might not be a big deal. Some things take oxidation better than others. If you're concerned about that, just transfer your liqueur or fortified wine to a smaller bottle if you're sticking it in storage for a long time. Once you hit 40% alcohol or above, really they don't have a practical expiration date. Plus the rate of oxidation slows dramatically. You could store a mostly empty bottle of whiskey in the basement for decades and only slightly risk the chance that it will have developed any weird flavors. I mean if you leave an open bottle hanging around on a shelf it will pick up smells from the air and bugs will die in it, but that's what caps are for. :) Cream-based liqueurs are a bit sketchier, not because of alcohol content (bailey's should be stiff enough) so much as because the cream may seperate out of the emulsion it's kept in after a few years (not sure because I've never kept bailey's around that long :P)

I'm trying to determine when wine got it's "luxury" status. I know that that premium wines have been around as long as there have been people willing to pay top dollar for them, but somewhere along the wine timeline people started viewing all wine, wine as a category, as being a luxury item, not just good wines. I was trying to figure out why this was so, and thought perhaps it might have been the fault of the one-two punch from the oidium parasites and then the phylloxera blight back in the 1800s. My reasoning is that the supply problems started in the 1840s when oidium started killing off the vinyards, and then the phylloxera hit and it didn't really end until at least 1880s when they finally brought back phylloxera-resistant rootstock from Texas. So the supply of wine dries up, prices soar, only the well off can still afford to purchase it, this situation remains the same for 40 years, and then by the time the crisis has passed and the prices can go back down, they don't, because all wine has come to be viewed as a luxury item. A nice theory and all, but I'm really not knowlegable enough to know if it's even remotely true. Any help??

Well, in case anyone wondered, I found the answer out to my question. Tequila is so expensive mostly because of two things. :) The first is that the Spanish settlers who popularized tequila made it the same way they made rum, by crushing the plants and extracting the juice, instead of simply tapping them. Unfortunately, unlike sugarcane, it takes new agave plants 8 to 10 years to mature. The traditional distillation proof of tequila is significantly lower than in most other industries (110 proof ie 55% abv).

The perfect counter example is tequila. :) Traditionally made tequilas have a distillation proof of 55% abv, one of the lowest in the industry. Because of this, tequila is very polarized, based on how the wash it was made from was created. This is why cheap tequila tastes AWFUL and good tequila tastes FANTASTIC; since the distillation proof is so low, more flavors end up shining through one way or the other.

That's entirely a matter of opinion--for me, this tastes just right. But then again, I'm notorious for liking drinks--Martinis, Manhattans, Old-Fashioneds, etc., etc.--with a high booze-to-filler ratio. ← Well, part of the uncertainty with chilled drinks in general and shaken drinks in particular is that it can be very tricky to calculate the meltage on a consistent basis. There's so many variables involved. (original starting temperature of the ingredients, amount of ice they're being shook with, size of the cubes, number of cocktails being shaken at once, length & strength of shaking, size of the shaker, whether you said a prayer to the cocktail gods before hand, etc. etc. etc.) This can really screw with the proof of the finished cocktail one way or the other, so I agree it's hard to go with a "one true ratio" format. :) Plus like you said, some people prefer their drinks a bit stiffer than others. And some drinks (the old-fashioned comes to mind) are designed to be stiff. They're more what I'd call "shot drinks" than cocktails, though. I usually just try to fudge it. Given the way I typically shake my drinks, usually if the cocktail starts out somewhere between 25 and 30% abv it usually turns out fine when it leaves the shaker, so that's the target I shoot for when calculating ratios. :)

Cointreau is 40%, and Marie Brizard (IMO the only triple sec worth buying other than Cointreau) is 30%. See I asked, cuz that would change the ratios. A 2 to 1 to 1/2 ratio is great for a shaken margarita made with the 15% stuff, but tastes too strong with any of the stiffer triple secs. If you were using the 40% Cointreau, 1 to 1 to 1 would be a good ratio. However with the Brizard, 1 to 1 to 1 would probably end up being too weak. With the Brizard, a 2 to 1 to 1 ratio would probably work better. Or you could try cutting the recipe with orange juice: 2 parts tequila 1/2 part brizard 1/2 part orange juice 1/2 part lime juice Shake and strain. (I asked about the shaking because if it tasted too strong using good ratios, it might just be a case of not shaking it long and hard enough. :P)

Two questions: How strong is your triple sec? Is it the standard cheapie 15% or is it the higher alcohol by volume stuff? Do you shake your margaritas?

A friend of mine told me that black rum was originally discovered when rum was aged in used molasses barrels, which gave them a sweeter taste and a much darker color than normal aged rums. The story sounds reasonable, but my friend couldn't substantiate it. Anyone know if it's true? I doubt that black rum is still made this way, considering that molasses for the most part isn't shipped in wooden barrels anymore... How exactly do they make it today?

In the whiskey world, there's a (debated) theory that the amount of age a spirit can handle (evaporation issues aside) decreases as the distillation proof increases, because the lighter flavors from the spirit have more trouble competing with the stronger flavors from the barrel. For instance, some styles of Scotch appear to reach their peak around the same time as a brandy, between 20 and 40 years, while some people think that Bourbons (whose distillation proofs have crept up quite a bit since Prohibition, although not in the same area as rum) peak between 10 and 20 years. Does this seem to apply to rum? Can rum be overaged? *Edit: After thinking about it a bit, I remembered that rum is generally sent into the barrel at a much higher proof than whiskey. Would that cancel out any risks of over-aging because of the extra dilution involved to get it to bottle strength, or am I making things needlessly complicated? :)