MxMo CII Spooky Sips

This Month's Mixology Monday is being hosted by friend and fellow tiki-phile JFL over at Rated R Cocktails. Halloween is my favorite holiday, so I couldn't in good conscience pass it up. Even though participating did mean having to take a break from carving pumpkins and making tombstones for the yard. Almost instantly I had a name for a drink pop into my head, the Karloff Colada. In case your knowledge of horror movies stretches only as far back as Paranormal Activity 4, Boris Karloff was one of the classic horror great actors. He played the Monster in Frankenstein, the Mummy in the Mummy, and numerous other horror roles, (also he voiced the Grinch in how the Grinch stole Christmas).

For the drink itself I decided to riff on the Pina Colada, and specifically riffing off another riff the Angostura Colada.
2 oz Pineapple juice
1.5 oz Coco Lopez
1 oz lime juice
1 oz Amber Martinique rhum (Neisson Eleve Sous Bois)
.5 oz Navy Style Rum (Lost Spirits Navy Style)
.25 oz Pernod
 6 oz crushed ice
blend the above ingredients and float .25 oz black rum on top, (I used Goslings, but dark Jamaican would work as well)
top with grated nutmeg
There are a few things that change this up from a regular Pina Colada or Painkiller. The lime juice helps to make the drink more tart and less sweet. The anise flavor of the pernod sits there at the finish to again offset the sweetness of the Coco Lopez. What I feel like you end up with is a very well balanced drink that still has the Pina Colada characteristics.

Be sure to check out the other drinks for this months MxMo

Por Cuba Libre!

Ok folks, hold on for the ride for this post, mainly because I don't really know where I'm going with it and I definitely don't know how it ends.

This month's Mixology Monday is all about highballs. (Given the polar vortex earlier in the month, I'm sure that lots of us had high balls, but that's probably different.) Since a highball is a pretty basic drink, generally just spirit plus fizzy stuff, I didn't bother trying to come up with a new recipe, but rather take a look at Cuba and one of their more famous drinks, the Cuba Libre.

Rum and coke is probably one of the first and most common drinks for teens and college students, there's no mixing required, the coke brings plenty of flavor to the party, and it works with just about any quality and style of rum. However, that doesn't mean that it's not good. I still drink these on occasion and every time that I do it reminds me of my trip to Cuba.

In late December 2000, as part of a college class, we flew to Havana out of Toronto and spent 2 weeks taking classes in the morning and touring the country the rest of the day. I wish now that I was old enough to truly experience it properly,though from a cocktail nerd perspective it certainly seems like I checked all the boxes. I toured a cigar factory, visited a rum distillery, went to the Hotel Americano, drank a Daiquiri at El Floridita, and had a Mojito at La Bodeguita del Medio. Despite all of that the drink that I most associate with Cuba is still the Cuba Libre.

Whether it's because they used Havana Club rum, Mexican Coke, or local limes; they were some of the best Cuba Libres I've ever had. I suspect that the most likely reason is the proportions. In Cuba, the Havana Club was cheap, my bottle of silver was $3, but the Coke imported from Mexico was expensive, ($5 a liter).  So when mixing the drink it was a whole lot of Cuba, and just a little bit of Libre. I remember specifically the drinks that we had at the resort at the Bay of Pigs, (yes that Bay of Pigs) the Cuba Libre was mostly rum with just enough Coke to color them.

If you insist on a recipe try this:
Bahia de Cochinas Cuba Libre
4 oz Havana Club silver
1 oz Mexican Coke
1 lime wedge.

Stir with mixing straw in a disposable plastic cup and serve to German tourists and stupid college kids.
Thanks to Joel over at Southern Ash for hosting this month.

Rum in the Strip

It's no surprise that I am a rum guy, whether that rum is in a Tiki drink, a classic cocktail, or even straight; I always enjoy rum. Which is why I am so happy that Pittsburgh has a new distillery in the strip that makes rum. Tim Russell made the news locally, nationally, and even internationally after his label approval was delayed by the government shutdown. After being brought up in Congress as part of the efforts to refund the government Maggie's Farm Rum received label approval and is ready to be sold. The first batches will be appearing behind local bars first but Tim hopes to have the rum available for sales to the public at the distillery by Black Friday.

I've also had a chance to sample this rum, and it's a very nice white rum. There aren't many white rums that i would sip straight but this might be one of them. It's made from turbinado sugar and distilled to a lower proof leaving it a lot of body and a little residual sweetness. I haven't had a chance to mix with it yet, but it should do very nicely with recipes where a white rum really shines, such as a daiquiri.

Benefits of Aging

Let me set you at ease, this post has nothing to do with my own impending fatherhood or indeed about me growing older. I am still going to celebrate my 25th birthday next July, (for the ninth year in a row). Instead this post is about small barrel aging at home. Going back to my last 25th birthday in 2012 one of my presents was a 1 liter oak barrel for at home aging. I started almost right way in aging rum. I selected a pretty innocuous rum, DonQ Cristal, with the intent of aging it for almost a year with the idea being of turning it into a roughly 12 year old rum. Alas, I underestimated just how greedy the angels are, particularly in a small barrel, so when I opened it up at 9 months I had less than a 750ml bottle left. It was also over-oaked, it tasted far too much like licking the barrel. Not to say that it doesn't work in certain tiki applications. What I haven't already drunk is visible on the far left in the photo.

Next I noticed that the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had Neisson Agricole Blanc on clearance, so I went and picked up two 1 liter bottles. This was an easy decision to add the liter bottle of rum to the liter oak barrel. This time I was more judicious and removed it from the barrel after 6 weeks. This had a most interesting effect as now there is a distinct banana flavor in the nose and it is deliciously smooth. You can see the unaged Neisson on the left of the barrel and the now golden Rhum on the right of the barrel.

Once again though the barrel was empty. Time to try something else. It was also at around this time that the El Presidente really came back onto my radar. This Manhattan-like rum drink makes a delightful after dinner drink and as a bonus I can make it without having to squeeze a lime. I pulled up Jeffrey Morgenthaler's recipe and went with it. I used a bottle of Bacardi 8 that I had sitting around and Noilly Prat dry vermouth. It sat in the barrel for about a month and I just drained it into the bottle seen on the right. The oakiness is noticeable, but not overwhelming. The convenience is amazing though, I can have a really nice cocktail by doing nothing more than pouring 3 ounces over some ice to chill it and then strain it into a serving glass. This will be most useful during my impending fatherhood.

Once again though the barrel is empty and I need to find something else to put in it. I'm leaning towards another rum cocktail or a batch of bitters. Feel free to add suggestions below.

MxMo Fire

It's time for Mixology Monday once again and this time we're en fuego. The theme for this month is fire, thought up and hosted by the Muse of Doom herself.

There is a story involved with my drink this month, more so than normal. In addition to boozy subjects I also have been known to photograph sailboats of various sizes. It is for that reason that I found myself getting up at 6 AM to drive to Cleveland on a Saturday in July. I had secured myself a place on a yacht for the Leukemia Cup races (you can see those photos here). However I am an efficient man with a nose for rum. Rumors of a Cleveland distillery making rum on the shores of Lake Erie had reached me and I wanted to look into it for myself. I found Portside Distillery and looked through their porfolio of spirits. Rums like Maple Vanilla and Hop infused rums served to inspire my creative drink juices, but I also wanted to be sure that the drinks had a definite Cleveland theme to them as well. 

One of the Portside Rums is a spiced rum, and I have been playing around with spiced rums a bit myself by substituting it for gin in classic drinks. My thinking there is that the basic idea behind spiced rum and gin is reasonably similar. With that in mind I came up with a Cuyahoga Fizz inspired by the Cuyahoga River that runs through Cleveland into Lake Erie. 

Cuyahoga Fizz

1.5 oz spiced rum

1 oz lime juice

1 egg white

.5 oz demerara syrup

1 oz cream

2 oz soda

Combine all ingredients save the soda in a shaker with ice and shake until you can't feel your hand anymore. strain into a tall glass and then top with soda water. The claim to fame of the Cuyahoga river is that it has a tendency to catch on fire. Yes, the river has caught on fire no less than 13 times. With that history of inflammation it hardly seems right to leave the top of the drink a pristine white meringue. instead sprinkle on a little brown sugar and 2 dashes of Angostura bitters, then get out your torch and brule that sucker. Not only does the brown sugar caramelize and form a crispy crust (like on a creme brule) but the generous application of heat to the bitters brings out a fruity quality that I had never noticed before. 

Hey! Still reading? Good. There's a reason why the old blog has been a little slow this year. I've been part of the committee putting together Pittsburgh Cocktail Week (and on Facebook). If you are available to to check it out it looks to be a good time.

MxMo: Bein' Green

This month's Mixology Monday had a theme of Bein' Green and given the month I decided to break out a new recipe that I had created for the Cthulhu Tiki mug Kickstarter of which I am a backer. I wanted to create a green cocktail as part of my Lovecraft inspired tiki drinks.My starting point was the Fu Manchu listed in Beachbum Berry Remixed. I started off trying to make the creme de menthe play nice with the other tiki ingredients and while I did get them to mix ok, I don't particularly like mint. Sure it's fine as a garnish, but overall, I'm not a fan.

In the meantime due to the alcohol vagaries of Pennsylvania I couldn't find any curacao in the state stores other than blue curacao, (freakin' Quakers.) The result being that up until I finally ordered a bottle, all of my mai tais had blue curacao in them largely by default. Adding a blue curacao to the otherwise standard mai tai produces a rather sickly green color that isn't typically appealing. So while bashing my head and taste buds against creme de menthe I was also disappointed by having a sickly green mai tai. I think that you can see where this is going. I ditched the creme de menthe and started over with a more traditional style tiki drink that ended up being the sickly green I was looking for.

The Cocktail of Cthulhu
1.5 oz gold Puerto Rican Rum
1 oz silver Puerto Rican Rum
.5 oz blue curacao
1 oz coco lopez
1 oz orange juice
1 oz pineapple juice
3d 'Elemakule Tiki Bitters (sub Angostura)
6 oz ice
blend for 5 seconds
garnish with pineapple mint (I was out due to a cold snap at the time of photography)

Be sure to check out the behind the scenes of this shoot over on Drinktography.

Guest Blog: Baking with Booze

My birthday came and went recently, as my wife loves to bake I asked her to attempt a rum cake (what else for a tiki-phile?) and write up a post about it. You will see her post below and feel free to check out her blog Pgh Ink

Rum Cake

            Rum Cake, perhaps the most well known of our modern booze deserts, rum cake is one of those delightful concoctions that can be as strong as the baker dare make it.  Traditionally Rum Cake is thought to have descended from Holiday Pudding made by English settlers in the Caribbean in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  Much like English Pudding, Rum Cake takes well to having all sorts of things added to it including dried fruits, soaked in rum of course, and nuts.  In the US Rum Cake is usually served as a sponge cake designed to soak up as much rum as possible.  This was my first, though I am sure not my last, attempt at a Rum Cake and it turned out quite well.  Next time I will try adding spiced rum to give it a more holiday feel.  I strongly suggest putting the baked cake in a shallow pie pan prior to pouring on the glaze.  The sides of the pan help hold the excess glaze close to the cake which allows for more of it to be soaked up by the cake over time.  It also prevents the sticky glaze from running all over your counter and creating an even greater mess for you to clean up later.  I also suggest making this at least a day before serving to give the flavors time to fully develop and of course more of the rum glaze to be absorbed.  Here is the recipe I used adapted from several sources in books and online.  You can also use muffin cups or mini bundt pans if you wish to make individual servings for your guests.  Keep an eye on these smaller cakes however because the increased service area may cause the cakes to over brown if baked for the full hour.

Cake:

1C butter

2C sugar

4 eggs

3C all purpose flour

1 tsp baking power

½ tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

1C milk

1 tsp vanilla

¾ dark rum (I used Myers dark rum)

Glaze:

4 tlbs butter

1C Sugar

½ C dark rum (again I used Myers)

Powered sugar for topping.

Preheat oven to 350˚ and spray a bundt pan and set aside.

Cream butter and sugar together then add the eggs one at a time mixing them in before adding the next one.

Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in one bowl. Using a fork will help break up the lumps in the flour and help prevent clumping when you add the dry and wet ingredients.

In another bowl mix milk, vanilla and rum.

Add dry mixture and wet mixture to batter and mix until everything is thoroughly incorporated.

Poor batter into prepared bundt pan and bake for 1 hour.  If using several small bundt pans or a muffin pan check after 45 min and pull if necessary.  Once golden brown and a tooth pick comes out clean pull cake and turn onto a cooling rack.  Allow cake to cool completely before putting on glaze.

Glaze:

Melt butter then add in sugar and ¼ C water.  Bring to a boil for 5 minutes string continuously to avoid scorching the bottom and making sure mixture will not boil over.  The bubbles will build up quickly so you need to keep a constant eye on it.  After 5 minutes remove from heat and very slowly add in rum.  The first addition of the rum will cause the glaze to boil up very quickly so continue string as you add rum.

Put cake into shallow pie pan and slowly drizzle glace over top and sides of cake.  Don’t worry if all the glaze is not immediately soaked up by the cake.  As the cake sits it will continue to absorb the glaze.  Cover and allow to sit over night.  Before serving sprinkle with powered sugar. 

Grog Talk

I'm off in Virginia for a photo assignment shooting OpSail for Spinsheet magazine. That means that I'm going to be on one of these bad boys.

Naturally this has me thinking about what is probably the mother of all Tiki drinks: Grog. I'm not thinking of the classic Tiki drink Navy Grog. I'm talking the real thing, daily rum ration, lime juice to prevent scurvy grog.

No one know the exact recipe for grog, likely I suspect it's because there wasn't one recipe for grog. I've seen and heard many different versions of "original" grog recipes. Everything from "1 of sweet, 2 of sour, 3 of strong, 4 of weak," (which is patently wrong as this is a punch recipe) to 1:1 of rum and water.

Now a little history:

Up until 1972 the British Navy regulations specified 1 pint of ale per day per sailor. This was fine while they were sailing the cold and gloomy North Atlantic close to home. As they began expanding their travels the ale soon became impractical. It would often go bad before the men could drink it. So the Admiralty responded in perhaps a strikingly practical way. They allowed the ale to be replaced with whatever the local drink that they could procure. In the Caribbean that meant rum. That's the first ingredient for grog.

The second important ingredient was citrus juice. Scurvy was a huge issue for sailors going back at least to the Romans, probably earlier. As early as 1497 citrus was known to have a curative effect on scurvy, though vitamin C wasn't isolated and identified until 1937.  Thanks to Admiral Edward Vernon of the British Navy, (known to his sailors as Old Grog for the grogram cloak that he wore) in 1740 citrus juice was added to the daily ration of rum. At this point we can say that we have grog consisting of water, rum, and citrus juice. Sailors likely would have added whatever they had handy to make this drink more palatable.

Me being me I decided that it would be interesting to play with a drink based on the idea of grog that would have been Piratically inspired. So I decided to create the drink below with the idea of an English Privateer using what they had available from successfully taking ships in their own version of a trading triangle.

Pirate Triangle
1 oz lime juice
1 oz white grapefruit juice
.5 oz lemon juice
.5 oz pimento dram
1 oz vanilla simple syrup
1 oz brandy
1 oz dark Jamaican rum
.5 oz Lemon Hart 151
Shake with  crushed ice.
Garnish with fresh grated nutmeg

DrinksBurgh Field Trip: Orange County, CA

While the stated goal here is to focus on Pittsburgh's craft brewers and cocktail impresarios (cocktailiers?) There are some folks, thanks to the internet, who are able to influence the craft drink world from wherever they may be. In that vein, we present the DrinksBurgh Field Trip.

The first field trip was out to Orange County, CA and a visit to 320 Main in Seal Beach with Matt Robold. In addition to slinging booze at 320, Matt runs the Rumdood blog and is a founding member of the International Rum Expert Panel.

Paging Dr. Bamboo...

Dr. Bamboo, (Craig Mrusek), runs the blog of the same name from his home in tropical Pittsburgh, PA.   After being inspired by a Mr. Boston Cocktail guide and Kaiser Penguin the good doctor has established himself as a force in the online cocktail scene. He was named one of “The 25 Most influential Online Cocktail Pioneers,” in Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails.