Rum Summer Cocktails: Sun, Sea, Sand & Lots of Rum…

Now anyone who has read my Cuba Libre post (or seen any of the status updates on my Facebook page) will verify this: I LOVE RUM! My 2 favourite rum cocktails of all time (ever) are; 1) The Cuba Libre, 2) Dark N’ Stormy… I’ve placed the DNS as the number 1 (without a doubt) but the Cuba Libre only made it to number 3… Scroll down to find out why…

10. Twisted Lemon Mojito

60ml White Rum

15ml sugar syrup

1 lime (chunked/quartered)

8 mint leaves

20ml Lemon Juice

Top up Lemonade

Place the mint leaves in the bottom of the serving glass and place the lime pieces on top of the lime (skin-side up). Pour in the sugar syrup and gently muddle the ingredients (be careful not to tear the mint leaves as the drink will become bitter, you just want to loosen the oils from the leaves). Pour in the rum and stir very gently. Fill the glass with crushed ice and top up with the lemon juice and lemonade. Stir to mix up the drink one last time. Garnish with a lime wedge and mint sprig. Serve with 2 straws.

9. Perfect Storm

1 Vanilla Bean

½ cup Caster Sugar

30ml Ginger Ale

45ml Apple Cider

60ml Dark Rum

Mix together the rum, cider and ginger ale and pour into a vanilla sugar rimmed glass (filled with ice). Garnish with half the vanilla bean.

No.8: The Mai Tai…

8. (Classic) Mai Tai

30ml Golden (light) Rum

30ml Dark Rum

15ml Orange Curacao (although a clear triple sec will suffice)

10ml sugar syrup

15ml almond (orgeat) syrup

Juice of one medium sized lime

Combine and shake all the above ingredients over ice. Shake until the metal of the shaker is well iced. Strain into a rocks glass (over crushed ice if you prefer) and garnish with a combination of the following: Lime wedges, pineapple wedges, maraschino cherries & Orange twirls.

7. Classic Daiquiri

60ml White Rum

20ml fresh lime juice

2 teaspoons sugar syrup

1 teaspoon maraschino liqueur (optional)

Shake all the ingredients over ice and strain into a cocktail glass (martini). Garnish with a thin slice of lime/lime twirl.

No.6: Mango & Pineapple Rum Cocktails….

6. Pineapple & Mango Rum Cocktails

Serves 6

2 ½ small ripe mangoes, peeled & cubed (1/2 mango sliced length-ways and with the skin left on),

120ml Appleton estate golden rum

120ml cup fresh mineral water

1L Fresh Pineapple Juice

Fresh tropical/exotic fruit for garnish (Dragon Fruit, Star Fruit, Papaya, Physalis etc)

Puree the mangoes, rum and mineral water and pour 120ml of puree into each glass. Top up the glasses with ice and pour over the pineapple juice (fill the glass). Garnish with the mango slices and tropical/exotic fruit (add some flowers to make the drinks look a bit more tropical).

No.5: the Mojito… There’s nothing standard about a classic mojito, but a little bit of fruit can really brighten up your glass (not to mention add a great flavour to your drink)…

5. Classic Caribbean Mojito

60ml White rum

15ml sugar syrup

1 Lime (chunked/quartered)

8 Mint leaves

Top up Soda Water

Same preparation as no.10; Use as little or as much mint/lime as you prefer but no less than 1 lime worth of chunks/quarters. Top up with soda water instead of lemonade.

Top tip: for a hit of flavour, add 1-2 pieces (more for small berries) of your chosen fruit into the shaker and shake with the rest of the ingredients (various amounts of fresh juice will also work – although slightly dilute the overall strength of the drink).

No. 4: The Pina Colada…

4. Classic Pina Colada

500ml Fresh Pineapple Juice

180ml creamed coconut (tinned is ok)

250ml Golden (light) Rum

750ml crushed ice

Garnish: 4 lime twirls & 4 pineapple spears

Blend all of the ingredients (except the garnishes) and blend for about 1 minute. Pour into hurricane glasses and drop in the pineapple spears. Wipe a lime twirl around the rim of each glass and drop it into the drink to finish. Serve immediately with straws.

Top tip: Choose nicely flavoured golden rums; Brugal Anejo or Bacardi Gold are great choices. For an added touch of class use Angostura 1919 rum. Also if you fancy a splash of heat, use a spiced rum and drop in 2 teaspoons of fresh ginger juice just before you blend., It’ll be subtle but worth the underlying heat.

No.3: The Havana Club Cuba Libre…

3. A Very Cuban, Cuba Libre (aka the Cuban)

50ml Havana Club 3yo Rum

Top up Coca Cola

Fill a highball glass with ice. Pour in the rum and squeeze in half a limes worth of juice (less if you prefer), and top up with coca cola (original – all the others distort the classic taste).

2. Jamaican Mule

50ml Jamaican Rum

Top up Ginger Beer

Lime Wedge

Over crushed ice, pour in the rum and top up with the ginger beer. Garnish with the lime wedge (giving the drinker the choice of adding it to the drink – personally I add 25ml lime juice in, but that’s just me!).

No.1: The Dark N’ Stormy

1. Bermudan Dark N’ Stormy

50ml Black Rum

12.5ml Fresh Lime Juice

25ml Falernum (Bermudan alcoholic sugar syrup)

Top up with Ginger Ale

‘Goslings Black Seal’ is the rum normally used in this cocktail, but it is hard to find here in the UK. For an easy to find alternative try my personal favourite: ‘The Kraken Black Spiced Rum’ it’s gentle heat and subtle caramel/molasses flavours work very well with the ginger ale.

To make this delicious cocktail the traditional way, build in an ice filled glass the ginger ale, then add a shaken mix of the falernum syrup, lime juice and rum. Stir if you want but the drink should look like the picture above if you do it right…

Top Tip: For an added hit of fresh heat try adding a couple of teaspoons of fresh pressed ginger juice.

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The Songwriters Shindig south of the border

‘Tequila and lime… may or may not be involved…’

So for the second instalment I thought I feed back to you the Mexican themed party I attended for my friend Jack. He asked me to help him create some special themed cocktails for a party he had arranged for some of his university buddies. Now I am not a stranger to parties, nor to catering cocktails for them (I refer you to my first post). But this one is different. It’s the first one I had to cater for that was not directly for my group of friends. I knew of a couple of the attendees but only through passive meetings.

Now the cocktails for this party were all Mexican in theme (sticking with the theme for the party overall), using the various flavours and alcohols Mexico is famous for (I.e. Coffee, tequila, chilli & lime to name a few). From the fruity ‘Twisted Lemon Mojito’ to the quite painful ‘El Agua del Diablo’, the drinks for this event were perfectly themed.

List of cocktails on the menu: (a * denotes those taken from cocktail books – the others are my own recipe)

–          Twisted Lemon Mojito

–          Classic Tequila Slammer

–          Monterrey Martini

–          El Agua del Diablo

–          Good Morning Paloma

–          Tijuana Slinger*

–          Mexican Mule

–          Navajo Trail*

–          El Dorado Fountain

–          Mariachi Music Maker

–          Mexican Fizz*

–          Yellow Bird*

Whilst not all of these were served (Its hard to serve a set menu at a student party it seems– who’d have thought it?), some other ‘off menu’ recipes were made as well as a few improvised creations, for example a lot of people wanted standard mojitos (Which is fine with me as I love making them, and feel I can make a far superior version than most bars will serve you)..

A refreshing take on an iced tea, but jazzed up with a bit of classic Mexicana…

The choices leading towards the recipes chosen for the menu were made to represent the spicier more raw side of Mexico’s culture (tequila and chilli etc…), but as the party continued, it was obvious that a disdain for anything pure Mexican was in the air (a disdain for the stronger, shorter tequila based drinks) and centred more on ‘longer’ cocktails, making use of the vast amounts of mixers available. This was not really a bad thing, as it allowed for more experimentation and for the attendees to get involved with the making process much easier.

Here, give it a try, and remember, take your time!

Thanks to this experimentation, and the demand for a longer drink, I was able to create one particular cocktail I’m quite proud of. It’s been dubbed the ‘Sonoran Iced Tea’ – although does not contain many of the ingredients you’d find in a classic iced teas – another blog dedicated to this cocktail. The recipe can be found above.

I attended the event for 3 hours, and during that time I created some great cocktails, but more importantly I showed others how to make them, although It’s not even worth taking a poll to see that the mojito was the most favoured drink at the event (everyone wanted a Mojito!).

Once you show people how to mix a cocktail, they can appreciate it more as they enjoy it. The best thing to remember is to explain it as you make it, especially if they want to know. For example; in the mojito’s case, explain why you need certain amounts of sugar/mint/soda etc… They can then experiment to their own tastes and also know what flavours to mix and what ones to keep away from.

Whilst this was my secondary aim, it was an important one, as I wanted to see how easily people can take to a simple cocktail recipe, and how willing they are to adapt it to their own tastes.

As I always say, cocktails are all about experimentation. No cocktail would ever have been invented had it not been for experimentation. The sea breeze would not have occurred if someone had not tried to mix different fruit juices to different spirits.

Anyway, message here is that experimentation is integral to any Mixologist, you just need that little bit of passion and a little curiosity. Either way you need to realise quickly what works and what doesn’t. If you can do that, and do it well, you stand a good chance of creating something special.

So that’s the feedback and feelings resulting from my 2^nd ever event! Hopefully you all found it interesting; I shall be doing some smaller easy reading blogs about cocktail recipes I like. Including the new star on the block from this party the ‘Sonoran Iced-Tea’ until then…