Disney designed the Flying Tigers decal.

I found this one on CocktailDB while looking around for drinks using grenadine. In my post on The Fogcutter I mentioned how small quantities of gin can make an interesting contribution to rum cocktails. Since this drink is another example of that idea I thought it would be worth a try. (more…)

Having made some quality grenadine, the next step is to find some drinks to try it in. Three drinks immediately come to mind, the Clover Club, the Pink Lady, and the El Presidente. The Clover Club and Pink Lady are simply grenadine sweetened and flavored gin sours, while the El Presidente is a complex rum, orange Curacao and vermouth affair that gets a gentle lift from a teaspoon of grenadine. (more…)

Falernum is a spiced syrup with a rum base used as a sweetener in certain tropical drinks. The precise origins of falernum are a little murky. Supposedly it originally hails from Barbados.

It is certainly relatively common in Barbados, being drunk in classic local drink the Corn’n’Oil (rum, falernum, Angostura Bitters, and a squeeze of lime). The Corn’n’Oil shows how versatile and easy to use Falernum is. You can simply splash it into rum to enhance the rum, or it can contribute to some more elaborate concoction like the Don the Beachcomber Mai Tai. It is sort of like a mildly alcoholic tropical version of sweet-and-sour mix.

So far I have relied on making falernum myself. (more…)

So this time round, Mixology Monday (hosted at Kaiser Penguin) is about wickedly potent drinks – i.e. drinks you cannot safely drink more than one of. I didn’t have to think too long about what drink to write about. Since picking up a copy of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, the Early Fogcutter has been a big favorite of mine, and one too rarely enjoyed. That being the case, Mixology Monday gave me a great excuse to mix one up.

Recipe follows: (more…)

This is just a little record for myself and anyone else who is interested, covering my Pimento Dram making experiments. For those who don’t know, Pimento Dram is an allspice flavored liqueur with a rum base from Jamaica. I have had two attempts at making Pimento Dram, the first not very successful and the second quite successful. (more…)

I never got around to experimenting with the Kummel I bought a few months back. I think I got a couple of decent drinks out of my recent exploration of apricot brandy so I figure I will try and do the same with Kummel over the next few days. To kick things off here is a slightly unusual Kummel drink from the Savoy. This one drags Kummel away from Northern Europe to holiday in sunny Jamaica, where it meets fun ingredients like Pimento Dram liqueur and Jamaican rum.

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I tried out a range of apricot brandy drinks while selecting my entry for the recent Raiders of the Lost Cocktail. The following gives a summary of what I tried, ranked not very scientifically from best to worst. (more…)

Ernest Hemingway, endurance drinker, greets Fidel Castro, endurance orator

Auckland is suffering in the grip of a pressing lime shortage. Unrest has been quelled so far through the imposition of martial law (Batista will be smiling in his grave), but nobody knows how long the authorities can maintain even this crude semblance of order. OK, I may be exaggerating slightly. Everything is surprisingly normal considering that there have been no limes in the supermarkets since before Christmas. This means I can’t enjoy a Daiquiri despite the summery weather. The good thing though is that I’ve been meaning to write about the Daiquiri for a while, so with Daiquiris on my mind but none to be had I may as well get writing. (more…)

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday is Repeal Day, and Pre-prohibition drinks are thus in order. Pisco is flavor of the month at my place since I managed to pick up three different brands of the stuff. That makes the Pisco Punch the obvious choice for this month’s drink.

I mentioned Pisco Punch the last time I wrote here. The problem with Pisco Punch, and it is quite a problem, is that the original recipe seems to have been lost. Certain things about the drink are known with certainty though. (more…)

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday (hosted at Cocktail Nerd) is Fizz. A few obvious things came to mind (Tom Collins, G&T, French 75, etc.), but I thought I’d try and do something nobody else was likely to come up with. Given how well a heavy dose of bitters worked in the Calvados Cocktail I made last month, I thought that this month I’d once again go for something bitters heavy. This time though I decided to use Angostura. (more…)