Sunny&Rummy

My incessant pestering has paid off, and the local grog shop is now stocking Batavia Arak! Fresh bottle in hand, I know I can make up a batch of Swedish Punsch, and I know I will now be able to take a stab at some of those great looking Dave Wondrich Punch recipes that I have been dying to try. There is also an interesting CocktailDB recipe for Arrack Cooler with Arak, PR rum, sugar, lemon juice and soda or champagne. So. . . Any other must-try favorite Arrack recipes I need to know about?

Could't wait for A print copy so I went with a Kindle version. I am armed and ready to mix, and there are a couple of cocktails that have already caught my eye. Better stop off after work for a couple of new bottles!

That is really interesting. How was it?? My nightcap yesterday was a Basil Smash with Martin Miller's gin. A Celery Julep may be a perfect followup to that.

Awesome!! How did I have no idea this book was even coming out?? I will be ordering my copy today, and be ready to play along very soon.

I do feel your pain. Alas, we're ofter not that much better stocked here in Florida. Definitely run with the J Wray and just keep in mind that the resulting drink (which I'm sure will be excellent) will not have much taste resemblance to the drink as originally formulated.

The original recipe calls for gold PR and not white, so If you don't have a gold PR (Ron del Barralito or Bacardi 8 would be my first choices. Yes, Bacardi does still make at least 1 decent rum.), I would sub with another smooth aged gold rum. as for the eternal question on how to sub for LH 151, my first (far from perfect) choice would be to sub with Goslings 151 which is far more agreeable than Bacardi. IF you like the high hogo funk of J Wray (I certainly do), I would absolutely say go for the J Wray substitution you suggested. But if you are just looking to approach the original proof of the drink and don't really dig J Wray I think you would be happier subbing based on rum styles and not proof.

Dan, the Grumpy Brit #2 with fresh ruby red grapefruit juice is excellent! I think I will enjoy several of these during the string of 94 degrees we have coming up here in Florida.

It is the internalization of Jeff Berry's warnings that white grapefruit is what you nearly always want to use for rum drinks if you don't want them to turn out too sweet that likely has Rumdood and me both leaning that way. That said, pink grapefruit on it's own with Campari is certainly very good, so I bet your drink will be as well. Pink grapefruit is now on the grocery list.

That sounds really good. Have to wait several months for fresh white grapefruits here though.

No, the Jasmine was seriously orange-inflected. I am not sure how it can't be if an orange liqueur accounts for more than 25% of the cocktail's total volume. Interestingly, and speaking of grapefruit. . . it was all the talk about the Bitter Elder earlier in this thread that led me to the Jasmine after first first trying and loving the Bitter Elder. Made according to the Kindred Cocktail specs, that one had a crazy good grapefruit flavor that somehow came out of the Campari and St. Germaine combination. I might dial back the Campari to 0.5 ounces as one of the other recipes here suggested to see where that takes the flavor combination, but dang that is a good cocktail.

That's a good question, Sam. The Drink I made was at least what Robert Hess considers a Jasmine, and I made it to his recipe specifications. The orange overload comes not from Aperol (which didn't not use), but from the ounce of Cointreau that version calls for. You must be using a very different recipe for your version to have no orange taste in it, and if so please share that with me so I can play around with the drink a little. For the record, I do like orange flavor elements in cocktails, but for me it is a flavor that can easily overpower the other ingredients if not used sparingly. 1/2 ounce of curacao or Clement Creole Shrubb makes that Mai Tai sing, but more than that and even a high hogo agricole or Jamaican pot still rum has trouble peaking through all that orange.

The Jasmine is a cocktail I had run across a few times but had never made before tonight. It's just a little too orange-ey for me to be something that would go into the regular home bar rotation. But it is certainly something to keep in mind when looking for an approachable cocktail for people who don't think they like gin and/or Campari.

Looking forward to a good old Mai Tai is a couple of hours when my new batch of fresh orgeat is bottled up and ready to go. Time to hit the store for some fresh mint!

The Martinez is probably my favorite non-rum cocktail. It was one of those revelatory moments for me when I had one done right. I think KP Rick had a Martinez roundup a year or two ago in which he and several others settled on a tweak of Jamie Boudreau's formulation as being the perfect ratios of ingredients. The final iteration from that discussion is basically what I have settled on as the perfect Martinez. 1.75 oz Old Tom gin (Hasyman's) 1.25 oz sweet vermouth (Noily Pratt) 2 tsp. maraschino liqueur (prefer Luxardo, settle for Maraska) 2 dashes Ango Stir/Ice/strain/up/no garnish If I use Put e Mes instead of Noily Pratt I dial it back to 0.75 oz and up the gin accordingly.

Cutting the Campari to 1 ounce and upping the rum to a full 2 ounces makes the Bitter Mai Tai a much more palatable drink. Not an every day drink by any means but not bad for a change of pace.

The El Diablo is a winner, especially once I located a bottle of Marie Brizzard creme de cassis and could retire the Hiram Walker. I prefer ginger beer (Barritt's) to ginger ale in mine though, even if it goes against the standard recipe. The Teresa (Campari, lime and cassis) and the Mississippi Mule (Gin, lemon and cassis) are also a good creme de cassis cocktails to try. A version of the Teresa halving the Campari and adding gin that frederic posted on his blog a couple of months ago is quite good.

I am a scientist, but alas, I am late to the conversation. I think KD1191 has hit this one right on the head. Provided that the green color in your cocktail is from a plant and not an artificial coloring in an ingredient, I think the solubility of chlorophyll in alcohol explains the visual difference between the two drinks. Chlorophyll is highly nonpolar, and as such it is soluble in nonpolar solvents like ethanol. Laboratories take advantage of the solubility of chlorophyll in solvents like ethanol, hexane, acetone, etc., when they have to perform chlorophyll extractions.

That is a totally respectable rum chest. Add a couple of rhum agricoles and figure out how to get your hands on a good dark overproof rum and I'd say you are ready to mix up just about anything you'd care to.

As good as Doorly's XO is, it's just not going to bring the same thing to the cocktail as Zaya. For that rich vanilla-nutty sweetness, you could quite readily sub Zacapa or Ron Atlantico. Lacking these, I would actually reach for Kraken before grabbing a Barbados rum. It obviously doesn't have the complexity that Zaya has but it certainly hits some of the same flavor notes. It's darker than the other choices but if a darker cocktail doesn't bother you I bet it would be very good.

It is a bit odd, isn't it? This version is the results of a lot of iterative tweaking. It starts as an amalgam of Jerry Thomas original and Harry Johnson's modification (the maraschino addition), with the lime juice addition being something that has crept up in a few iterations such as here and here. I agree with those that think that the lime and orgeat combo that works so well in the mai tai also adds depth here, but more than a tsp. annd I think it gets unbalanced. Ango is a fallback here for lack of a more historically appropriate product, so I keep it at a single dash.

Japanese Cocktail: 2 oz. Brandy, 2 tsp. Orgeat (homemade), 1 tsp. Lime Juice, 1 tsp. Maraschino, 1 dash Angostura Bitters. Shake well on ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

I was just going to post Darcy's cautionary post as well. It sure scared me out of wanting to ever try it,

Let me suggest two things to try with the smoked bourbon before you give up on it. They both use maple syrup which should help tam the smoke a bit. You might also cut the smoked bourbon with straight bourbon as you did before if the flavor is still too much. • Maple Leaf • PDT Bacon-Infused Old Fashioned For the latter cocktail, you should be able to sub your smoked bourbon for the bacon-infused bourbon to nice effect.

IF(!!) you decide you can squeeze a bottle of flavored vodka in there somewhere, this is a cocktail I created last year for a party I bartended when I was in a similar situation as you — what to serve the person who doesn't want any of the craft cocktails you'd rather serve them? The Perfect Pear • 1.5 oz. pear vodka • 1 oz. Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur • 0.5 oz. lemon juice • 2 tsp. raspberry syrup Shake well on ice, double strain and serve up in a chilled martini glass. The pear vodka flavor is a bit artificial, but I'm sure it's not as bad as a lot of the flavored vodka drek out there. The Canton gives it a bit of depth and the citrus and syrup balance each other well.

I think Black Velvets are a great idea for the black drink. Or a Cruzan Blackstrap Corn 'n Oil made with a dark homemade demerara alernum. For the white drink, I'm a huge fan of nigori (unfiltered cloudy) sake. I bet you could do something interesting with nigori and orgeat. maybe sub shochu for the brandy and add a bit of maraschino for a riff on the Japanese Cocktail?