Celebz are dum

Happy Hour: Royal Bermuda Yachtclub Cocktail

• 2 oz Mount Gay Eclipse amber rum
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1/2 oz Cointreau
• 1/2 oz John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum

Shake over ice, strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a lime wheel. 

I made this for friends at last week’s “Experimental Happy Hour”, and let me be the first to dissuade you from making this for a crowd. At 1 oz of fresh lime juice per cocktail, your hands will dissolve into pieces (along with your sanity) from the lime’s acid long before you can squeeze enough for 20 drinks. Unless of course, you’re smarter than me and own an electric juicer…

At any rate, this is a very fresh and delicious drink that is probably more enjoyable when made in smaller batches. The lime will have you puckering up at first, but the rum and Falernum will quickly ease any tensions you may have.

This is my first bottle of Falernum, which plays a role in several tiki-style drinks. For the uninitiated, it’s a syrupy liqueur with a heavy backbone of clove and a dash of lime and other spices in the mix. 

I’m looking forward to playing around with it in other cocktail recipes, so if you have any suggestions…lemme know!

Happy Hour: Tanglefoot Cocktail

• 1/2 oz lemon juice
• 1/2 oz orange juice
• 3/4 oz silver rum (I suggest something a lil nicer than the Bacardi I used)
• 3/4 oz Swedish Punsch

Shake, strain and serve up. I added an orange peel for more orange-y goodness.

So here’s the thing: I’ve had my bottle of Swedish Punsch for months now. I tried it once in a Doctor Cocktail, and I hated it so much that it turned me off the whole thing. But, the bottle has just been staring at me and I finally decided to go on a quest for a recipe that I could love it in. 

If you’re not familiar, Swedish Punsch is one of those long-forgotten ingredients used in old-timey drinks that has been brought back to the market thanks to the cocktail resurgence. It’s rum-based with flavors of molasses, vanilla, smoke, leather and other notes. It’s most often featured in other rum-based cocktails and I’d sort of compare it to how Drambuie is mostly paired with scotch-based drinks to add depth (although Swedish Punsch definitely has more applications in the cocktail arena).

Back to the Tanglefoot. So I have my bottle of Swedish Punsch and I also have an orange and lemon in my possession, so I knew I wanted to use one or the other. As I often do when I have a couple ingredients I know I want to use, I did some googling around until I found the right fit.

This cocktail is very, very tasty! It is one of those drinks that’s really too easy to drink (I finished my glass in about 10 minutes), so I wouldn’t want to pay $10 for it at the bar. But, it’s well worth it to make it at home. It strikes a nice balance of sweet and sour, with a smokey undertone thanks to the Punsch. It’s sort of like an elevated screwdriver, or a deviation on a Margarita with Mezcal, and I could definitely see serving it with brunch.

One word of warning: Please don’t use crap Bacardi like I did (it was a leftover supplement to a punch a made a while back). As soon as my buzz started to wear off from the drink, a headache began to surface and I am convinced it was all Bacardi’s fault. Save your head and buy a silver rum that’s at least $5 more expensive. 

Otherwise, I can see this being my first go-to cocktail for Swedish Punsch! Got any other recipes that you like to use it in? Let me know!

Happy Hour: de la Louisiane

• 2 oz rye whiskey 
• 3/4 oz sweet vermouth
• 3/4 oz Benedictine
• 3 dashes absinthe
• 3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a cherry (the recipe specifies a brandied cherry, but I am fresh outta those).

I like this cocktail because I can say it’s name with a French accent! Plus, it’s all booze - no filler! This is the first thing I’ve made with my new bottle of Benedictine. If you’re not familiar with this liqueur, it tastes a lot like a Ricola, but with even more sweet honey flavor. 

The deep amber color of this drink is gorgeous! It reminds me of topaz. I am a little sick right now, so I had trouble tasting all the flavors when the cocktail was first poured and icy cold. But, as it warmed up, it took on new dimensions. I found it had a pleasant herbal quality, and the absinthe was perfectly balanced (I usually find that absinthe overpowers most cocktails it’s featured in). 

I say, if you like Manhattans and Sazeracs, you should give the de la Louisiane a try. 

Happy Hour: Ginger Gold Rush

• 1 1/2 oz Ginger Liqueur (I used Domaine de Canton)
• 1 oz bourbon
• 1/2 oz lemon juice

Shake well with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

This is the first thing I’ve made with my new bottle of ginger liqueur, and it was pretty good! This is a play on a Gold Rush cocktail, which is normally whiskey, honey and lemon. Here, the ginger liqueur is taking the place of the sweetner.

I used bourbon to build the cocktail, which made it sweeter than I thought it needed to be. Next time, I’ll try rye whiskey or Jameson. That should play nice with the spice of the ginger.

I’d love to have some more recipes to try with that bottle of Domaine de Canton. Have any of y’all made cocktails with ginger liqueur before?

Happy Hour: Martinez Cocktail

• 1 1/2 oz gin
• 1 1/2 oz sweet vermouth
• 1 dash orange bitters
• 2 dashes Maraschino liqueur

Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon twist. I am out of lemons, so nixed the garnish, but I think it would definitely be a nice addition to this cocktail.

So, the Martinez…I found this on the back of the Hayman’s Old Tom Gin (recipes on liquor bottles are always a crapshoot). Initially, I guessed the name was a play on the martini, seeing as both are gin-based - but a quick search tells me that this is actually a predecessor to the martini.

Now that the history lesson is out of the way, let’s get to the flavors. While I was tossing all the ingredients into my shaker, I thought to myself, “This is going to be a mess.” I am a bit skeptical whenever sweet vermouth is added to any clear spirit. I don’t know why, but it weirds me out.

At first sip, the Martinez tastes very sweet. Then the orange arrives, sweet as candy and backed by the piney flavor of the gin. It develops to a bitter finish. To me, it tastes an awful lot like a negroni, but somehow I find the Martinez slightly more palatable.

Overall, not a bad little aperitivo before dinner!