Introduction to Rum

Intro:

It is rather hard to define the entire rum family as a group because of the variety of rum produced. Each of the light, gold, dark and spiced rums have their own distinct characteristics and furthermore the rums produced in each country differ from one another due to varying laws and tradition in production.

History:

After Columbus's introduction of sugarcane to the West Indies in 1493 the first rum was produced in Brazil, Barbados and Jamaica making rum the first spirit of the New World. By the mid 1700's rum was being made throughout the Carribean and South America. It soon became popular in New England and was produced there as well. The Rum Sling made of rum, sugar, water and lemon juice is considered the first American cocktail.

Distillation:

The use of sugar cane distinguishes rum from other liquors. The sweet juices from the sugar cane are turned into molasses and this syrup is then fermented into rum. Rum is then aged in casks, the type of cask used is the determining factor on the color of rum produced in the end.

Light Rum:

Light-bodied rum is sometimes referred to as White or Silver and is a very subtle liquor, much like vodka with a sweet tooth. These rums are generally aged in stainless steel tanks for up to a year and filtered before bottling. This process gives light rums their clean, light flavor and makes this variety the most common rum for cocktails.

Gold Rum:

Medium-bodied rums are often called Gold or Amber rum and are rich and smooth. This is a result of either the production of congeners (organic compounds produced during production) or the addition of caramel. Gold rums are often aged in oak casks which also contribute to their dark, smooth characteristics. Gold rums make a smooth sipper and can be used in place of light rum in some darker cocktails.

Dark Rum:

Heavy-bodied or dark rums are typically used in rum punches and are combined with light rum in many cocktails such as a Hurricane. These are the richest rums that recieve their flavor from being aged in charred oak casks. Besides adding a rich, sweet flavor to cocktails, dark rums are the preferred sipper of the rum family, especially Angostura 1824 and Barbanco 15 year.
A subcategory of dark rums are those called blackstrap. These are produced from the darkest molasses produced by the third boiling while refining sugar and the resulting rum is equally as dark, rich, and thick. Examples of blackstrap rums are Cruzan Black Strap and Captain Morgan Black Spiced Rum.

Flavored Rum:

Flavoring rum by adding spices and aromatics during the distillation has become popular in the latter part of the 20th century. Beginning with coconut and spiced rums, the variety of flavored rums has grown to exceed the number of flavored gin and vodka options available.

Overproof Rum:

Overproof or high-proof rum is often only used as a float or dash in cocktails. This potent rum is 75% pure alcohol (150 proof) and can be dangerous to the human body if it is not diluted in some way. Never use overproof liquors of any kind in cooking or near an open flame.

Cachaça:

This Brazilian rum differs from others because it skips the molasses stage and uses pure sugar cane juice in the distillation process. Cachaca is the sweetest rum available and can best be tasted in a Caipirinha. Read more about Cachaça and find more cocktails.

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Backyard Peach Daiquiri

I have created the drink that will boost me to greatness.

To which you say: "Surely you are exaggerating."
To which I say: "You gotta try this."

My flavor inspiration: I have a little weber grill. It is blue and I love it, and sometimes people come over on Sunday nights and everyone brings things for the grill. Once Cyndy brought peaches, and after all the burgers were finished grilling she put the peaches on the grill, each with a scoop of brown sugar in the pit. Half an hour later, they were one of the most amazing things I've ever tasted.

Anything you can eat you can drink, right? I had to give this a try. The peaches and brown sugar were obvious. I added a little lemon juice to the mix, to balance out all that sweetness. What to do for a base? How about rum? A nice aged rum, to impart a little smoky/woody flavor, like being cooked over the grill. After I had already made the first version of this cocktail, a thought popped into my head: hey, what about that peach bitters I bought a while back? I added in the bitters. It was brilliant. It was like the discovery of vulcanized rubber: accidental genius.

You will need:5 slices of delicous, fresh Texas peach (peach season is almost over in Houston (didn't it just start?), but if you hurry you can still get some at the farmers market.)
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
2 oz aged rum (I used Flor de Caña gold. Turns out there is light aged rum, and gold aged rum - and maybe dark aged rum? I used to think there was just rum.)
.5 oz lemon juice (love your cocktail, make it fresh)
2 dashes Fee Brothers' Peach Bitters
Muddle the peaches and brown sugar together in the mixing glass of your shaker until you have a delicious sugary peach mush. Fill the glass with ice and add the rum, lemon juice and bitters. Shake until it hurts. Strain into a cocktail glass. (Rimmed with brown sugar, if you're feeling fancy.) Enjoy the hell out of it.

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Blackberry Ginger Mojito

Fresh blackberries at the farmers market + explosion of mint in the backyard + ginger ale left over from last cocktail project = this. You're welcome.

Gather together:
7 fresh, delicious Texas blackberries
6 mint leaves
1.5 oz rum (or 2, but only if you really like rum)
.5 oz lime juice (make it fresh - your mojito will thank you)
.5 oz simple syrup (I use a simple syrup made with turbinado sugar in my mojitos - I like to think it gives them that little extra something.)
crushed ice
ginger ale

In a cocktail shaker, muddle (or smoosh with the back of a spoon) the blackberries and mint until they make a delicious minty-berry mush. Add a handful of ice and then pour in the simple syrup, rum and lime juice. Shake and strain into a tall glass. Fill the glass about 2/3 of the way with crushed ice and top with ginger ale. Add a straw and give it a little stir. At this point, if you're feeling fancy, you could garnish your mojito with a half wheel of lime and a sprig of mint. Or if you're feeling impatient you could just go ahead and drink it.

The verdict: Wow. That goes down easy.

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Pirate Berry Infusion

The original recipe for the Pirate Berry Infusion comes from this book, which has lots of recipes for infusions using seasonal fruit. Apparently this is a book is for people who really, really like drinking, because the original recipe calls for two 750 mL bottles of rum, which comes out to...a lot of rum. I'm pretty sure that with nearly 2 liters of berry-flavored rum I could make a daiquiri for everyone I've ever met in my entire life.

So I cut the recipe in half, and made a few other tweaks, too - I substituted cinnamon sticks for cinnamon syrup (mostly because...I was too lazy to make a cinnamon syrup), and I used a little bit less fruit than the recipe called for and cheated by muddling it instead. The original recipe didn't call for any muddling, which I thought was odd because, well, blueberries are not infusing into anything in any big hurry unless you help them out a little bit.

It turns out that infusions are a lot harder to make up (or tweak) on the fly than your average cocktail. (Most cocktails don't require you to invest a week and an entire bottle of liquor.) I managed to screw this one up twice - the first one was too sweet (I forgot about it and let it infuse too long - whoops), and the second one had hardly any flavor at all. (I think the berries weren't fresh enough.) Finally, on the third try, I manged to get it Just Right. 

 

 

 

Pirate Berry Infusion

1 750 ml bottle dark rum (I used Gosling's)

1 pint raspberries

1 pint blackberries*

1 pint Texas blueberries

1 cinnamon stick, broken in half

1 tsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice**

*These were still available locally as of the making of infusion number one...but sadly, not anymore.

**Acts as a sort of preservative, without adding any discernable flavor.

Place the cinnamon stick in the bottom of a glass jar, and layer the berries on top. Muddle the berries lightly as you add each layer - emphasis on lightly. The goal is to break the berries up a little so they release their flavor into the rum, not smash them into a paste. You'll want to muddle the blueberries the most and the raspberries the least, because they are already kind of smooshy and will succumb easily. When you're done muddling, add the rum and the lemon juice. Seal the jar and let it sit in a cool, dark location for a week, or a few days longer if you want a stronger berry flavor. You can always taste the rum to check its progress. (I'm sure you don't need to be encouraged to do this.)

Once the appropriate waiting period is finished, strain the rum into a bottle (it will be a nice cranberry color - purdy), and you're ready for:

The Pirate Daiquiri

2.5 oz pirate infusion

.5 oz fresh squeezed lime juice

.5 oz sugar syrup

Stir all ingredients together in a glass full of ice. After stirring, let the glass sit for a couple minutes - you want to make sure the ice melts into the drink a little to mellow out the booze. (Or you can use a shaker and eliminate the waiting.) Strain into a martini glass, garnish with a cinnamon stick if you're feeling fancy, and enjoy.

 

 

 

Verdict: Sweet and berry-licious, with just the right amount of sour from the lime and a hint of cinnamon to boot. Yum. 

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Wtf is Cachaça?

Short answer: cachaça is like rum, but from Brazil.

Long answer: you knew I would give you the long answer, didn't you?

First things first: how in the world does one say "cachaça"? For a long time (I am now embarrassed to think about this) I pronounced this word as "kuh-CHAH-kuh", and nobody corrected me because apparently no one else I know knows how to pronounce it, either. Finally, for this blog post, I consulted that greatest of all authorities, the internet. I've always said that Portuguese is like Spanish, but smooshier, and the word "cachaça" is no exception. Turns out the little thing that looks like a 5 under the last c (it's called a "cedille") alerts you that the c is a soft sound, so the word is actually pronounced "ka-SHAH-suh". Which will make you sound very sexy. Or, just like you have a lisp. Try this out early in the morning, when your sleepy voice is operating at a nice alto. (Or bass, or whatever. Does this happen to anyone else? I swear my voice is like an octave lower for about an hour after I wake up.) Ka-SHAH-suh. Ka-SHAH-suh. Kashahsuh. Kashahsuhhhh.

Kashahsuhhh is the third most consumed spirit in the world, because there are a lot of people in Brazil, and they like to drink. (The first and second are vodka - because there are a lot of people in Russia, and they really like to drink - and soju/shochu, an Asian spirit distilled from rice. (Which I have never, ever heard of, which probably means it will be the Next Big Thing on the cocktail scene.)) Cachaça differs from rum in that it's distilled from fresh sugarcane, whereas most rum is distilled from molasses. Molasses is a by-product of sugar production - it's what's left after the refineries boil the cane juice as much as possible to extract all the sugar crystals, because sugar producers are greedy bastards.

A great deal of cachaça is consumed in the form of caipirinhas. The caipirinha (kai-pur-EEN-ya - another sexy, unpronounceable word) is the national drink of Brazil. It's made of: lime, sugar, and cachaça. That's all. So, you might think - if cachaça is brazilian for rum, and a caipirinha is just cachaça, lime, and sugar - isn't that just a mojito, without the mint? I once thought this, too. And I was wrong.

See, because of the whole being distilled from fresh sugarcane juice thing, cachaça (according to the leblon cachaça website) has a "fruitier, fresher nose" and "distinctive vegetal notes remniscent of tequila". Well, I don't know what a nose is supposed to taste like, but I think this calls for...a taste test!

First the smell:
Rum: sweet, boozy, clean.
Cachaça: it smells like tequila. That's what I keep thinking of.

Then the taste:
Rum: Probably my $12 bottle of Baccardi was not really intended for sipping. But here are my impressions: Sweet, warm, almost like baked goods. Nice alcohol burn. This is hard liquor, after all.
Cachaça: Starts out sweet, like the rum, and then explodes into a whole bouquet of...something. (I'm seriously thinking about becoming a sommelier, if only to enlarge my vocabulary to describe taste sensations.) A bit smoky, a bit vegetal - it doesn't taste quite like tequila, but it's got that little extra something that makes tequila not quite as well-behaved as the other liquors. It's rich, robust, and unabashed. Like rum, but...manlier.

Lastly, because your cachaça education would not be complete without it, I give you...the caipirinha.

To start: take a lime and slice the ends off. Cut it in half, and remove the pith from the middle. (This part is bitter, so removing it will make for a sweeter drink.)

Cut the halved lime into four slices, and put them in a glass, along with two teaspoons of superfine sugar.

I once thought superfine sugar and powdered sugar were the same thing, but...I was wrong. Superfine sugar will dissolve completely, giving you a nice translucent caipirinha, whereas powdered sugar will dissolve but make the drink cloudy. I used powdered sugar. Don't tell anyone.

Muddle the limes and sugar together until the limes are juiced. Fill the glass with crushed ice -

And add 2 oz of cachaça. Give it a couple of good stirs, and you're ready to start savoring.

Verdict: The lime is a good compliment to the unusual taste of the cachaça. Not quite like a margarita, not quite like a mojito...you may just have to try it for yourself. 

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Kendra, here's what to do with that pesky rum

I am always happy to help a friend. And when I hear that a friend has copious amounts of alcohol and is unsure what to do with it...well, that's like a cocktail emergency. And I am like a cocktail superhero. With great power, as they say, comes great responsiblity.

Okay, this is a bit facetious. But for reals - Kendra, sojurning in the exotic land they call Germany, found herself with a surfeit of Bacardi Gold Rum. Did I have any suggestions? Well, it has been a while since my latest rum drink, but your bartender always relishes a challenge. Kendra told me she and the hubby had been making Rum n' Cokes with the confounding rum, but they tasted like medicine. Well, propitiously, I had just acquired a copy of Imbibe magazine, the one with the article about the 25 most influential cocktails of the last century. Right there, on the first page, was the Cuba Libre. I thought a Cuba Libre was the same thing as a Rum n' Coke. Not so fast!, said Imbibe magazine. The different between a Rum n' Coke is and a Cuba Libre is that a Cuba Libre has lime juice in it - and that is a big difference indeed (went the magazine). Also propitiously, I happened to have a bottle of Bacardi Gold, bequeathed to me by a certain generous friend upon her move to St. Louis. So I pulled out the Bacardi and made myself a real Cuba Libre.

Cuba Libre(with thanks to Imbibe magazine and Jonathan Philips.)
4-5 oz Coca-Cola
2 oz Bacardi Gold Rum
juice and peels of half a lime

Squeeze the lime and then drop it into the glass. (Not sure if this is official Cuba Libre protocol, but it looked pretty in the Moscow Mule so we're going with it.) Fill the glass with ice, and add the rum and coke. Garnish with a couple of lime wedges.

Verdict: The lime definitely adds a little something. I may never be satisfied with a plain old rum n' coke ever again. (Alicia tried it (right before we went for a run, which is a great time for a cocktail), and she liked it too. I'm not sure I can trust myself anymore, since I liked the Hemingway reviver.)

But I wasn't going to stop with just a dressed-up Rum n' Coke. To prove myself a master of my craft, I needed to come up with something a little more exotic. My second attempt involved pineapple juice, rum, and ginger ale. It was terrible. It is not recorded here. It tasted, as Kendra said of the original rum n' cokes, like medicine. My third cocktail was much better.

The thought process for cocktail #3 was as follows:
1. Isn't that a bag of frozen blueberries in the freezer?
2. Wasn't there some drink with blueberries and rum on the menu at the Anvil not too long ago?
3. Lori makes those drinks, the Scarlet Jos, with mixed berries and SoCo and sweet n' sour and club soda. So we know that frozen berries + booze + sweet n' sour + fizzy = Good.
4. Brown sugar + gold rum has been a winner in the past. Let's try that.
5. Ginger is one of those things (like champagne, or lemon) that inexplicably mixes well with everything. So let's get some of that up in there (because I am unemployed and I have all the time in the world and club soda is for wussies and we're gonna go CRAZY).

With all this going on, it wasn't too long until:

The Blueberry Gin Rum-yThawed (or fresh) blueberries*
2 oz Bacardi Gold rum (or any old rum)
.75 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 tbsp brown sugar
Ginger ale (or Ginger beer, if you're feeling adventurous.)
crushed ice

*If you have fresh blueberries, they will work just as well as the frozen ones. The advantage of frozen blueberries is this: 1. You can get them any time of year, and 2. They are cheap. And they keep practically forever. (Maybe you are lucky enough to have some delicious Texas blueberries that you had the prescence of mind to freeze. If so, bully for you. I will have some, too, as soon as my blueberry bushes outgrow their blueberry-adolescence.) But what do you do with the frozen blueberries? Frozen blueberries are cold and hard and un-muddlable. Here is what you do: fill a glass with hot water from the tap. Place the frozen blueberries in the glass. Give the blueberries a couple minutes and then strain out the water. Ta-da! Cocktail-ready.

Cover the bottom of an old fashioned glass with the thawed blueberries. (If you're using a taller glass with a smaller bottom, make a double layer.) Add the sugar and lemon juice and muddle (or smoosh with the back of a spoon). You want to muddle just enough to melt the sugar and break the skins of the blueberries - the idea is to get the flavor of the blueberries to infuse into the drink, but not to mash them into a pulp. After muddling, fill the glass with crushed ice, add the rum, and stir. Top with the ginger ale (or beer) and add more crushed ice, if desired.

Verdict: I did done good. It's sweet, with a little bit of spice from the ginger and a little bit of kick from the rum. Using ginger beer instead of ginger ale will make this a different drink entirely - not as sweet, with more pronounced spiciness from the ginger. It's a more complex and somewhat less accessible cocktail, so of course it's my favorite, since I like things that are complicated. But who are we kidding? They're both delicious. Do try this at home. 

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Brugal Añejo Rum Old-Fashioned at Brenner's on the Bayou.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from the folks who represent Brugal Añejo rum. There are some cocktails on the menu at Brenner's steakhouse featuring their rum, they said - would I like to try them? Why, yes. Yes I would.

So last Thursday, I headed down to Brenner's, accompanied by loyal drinking buddy Kassie. (Before this I accidentally went to Brennan's, because my reading comprehension skills are slipping. More on that later.) I met the bartender, Michael Manahan, who made me one of his own creations, the Brugal Anejo Rum Old Fashioned.

Now, I'm quite familiar with the concept of an old-fashioned. I've sipped plenty at the Anvil, and made quite a few of my own, including this lavender and elderflower version. But this? This was like nothing I've ever had before. All the nuance you would expect from the interplay of flavors in a bourbon old-fashioned, with a wonderful smoothness. I could drink these all day.

What, I asked Michael, while sipping my way to booze nirvana, inspired him to put rum in an old-fashioned? This is really a very unusual product, he told me - more like a whiskey or a scotch. It's a blend of rums aged between 2-5 years in American oak barrels previously used for Jack Daniels. So of course then I wanted to try the rum straight - maybe I should've done this first? - and he obligingly poured me a little glass. Holy crap. I took a sip and was in love. It was sweet like a rum, but oaky like a nice old scotch. And so, so smooth - no rocks, no nothing. Just super smooth, drinkable rum.

Want to make some old-fashioneds of your own? Here's how it's done. First, muddle a slice of orange, a cocktail cherry, and a couple dashes of bitters together with 1 tsp of sugar. 

Add ice and 2 oz rum; shake and strain into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass. Top with a splash of soda water. I understand this is a bit different from the usual procedure for an old-fashioned (which doesn't involve shaking) - but it's hard to argue with the results.

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The Anna Banana

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup banana liqueur
• 2 tablespoons coconut rum
• 2 tablespoons peach schnapps
• 1 1/2 cups vanilla ice cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. In the container of a blender, combine the banana liqueur, coconut rum, peach schnapps, vanilla ice cream and vanilla extract. Cover and blend until smooth. Serve in coconuts for fun!

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Virgin Strawberry Daiquiri

Ingredients

• 2 large strawberries, hulled
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 3/4 cup chilled lemon-lime soda
• 4 cubes ice

Directions

1. In the container of a blender, combine the strawberries, sugar, lemon juice and lemon-lime soda. Add the ice and blend until smooth. Pour into a fancy glass to serve.

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Strawberrylicious Daiquiris

Ingredients

• 1 (1 pound) strawberries, halved
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1/3 cup unsweetened pineapple juice
• 3/4 cup spiced rum
• ice

Directions

1. Combine strawberries and sugar in blender; blend until smooth. Pour in pineapple juice, lime juice, and rum. Pulse until combined. Serve over ice.

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Strawberry Daiquiri II

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup frozen strawberries
• 4 ice cubes
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 1 (1.5 fluid ounce) jigger rum

Directions

1. Place the strawberries, ice cubes, salt, sugar, and rum into a blender. Cover and puree until smooth.

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Strawberry Daiquiri by Request

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup rum
• 2 tablespoons sweetened lime juice (such as Rose's®)
• 2 tablespoons grenadine syrup (such as Rose's®)
• 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
• 2 cups ice cubes
• 1/2 (16 ounce) package frozen strawberries
• 1 tablespoon whipped cream, divided (optional)

Directions

1. Place the rum, lime juice, grenadine, confectioners' sugar, ice cubes, and strawberries into a blender. Cover, and puree until smooth. Pour into glasses and top each with a dollop of whipped cream, if desired.

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My Father's Lime Daiquiri

Ingredients

• 3 limes, juiced
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 10 fluid ounces white rum
• 4 maraschino cherries
• 6 cups ice cubes

Directions

1. In a blender combine lime juice, sugar and rum. Blend and add ice one cube at a time until mixture is thick and smooth. Pour into 4 glasses and garnish with maraschino cherries.

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Lime Daiquiri

Ingredients

• 1 cup ice
• 1 cup light rum
• 1/2 (6 ounce) can frozen limeade concentrate
• 1 cup carbonated water

Directions

1. In a blender, combine ice, rum, limeade concentrate and carbonated water. Blend until smooth. Pour into glasses and serve.

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Frozen Lime Daiquiri

Ingredients

• 1 (12 fluid ounce) can frozen limeade concentrate
• 12 fluid ounces rum
• 1 tray ice cubes

Directions

1. In a blender, combine limeade concentrate, rum and ice cubes. Blend until smooth. Pour into glasses and serve immediately.

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Daiquiri

Ingredients

• 1 (6 ounce) can frozen lemonade concentrate
• 6 fluid ounces chilled lemon-lime soda
• 6 fluid ounces light rum
• 1/2 (10 ounce) package frozen sliced strawberries
• 2 cups ice cubes

Directions

1. In the container of a blender, combine the lemonade concentrate, lemon-lime soda, rum and strawberries. Cover, and blend until smooth. Add ice and blend to desired thickness.

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Bing Cherry Daiquiri

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 fluid ounces bing cherry infused Cruzan Light Rum
• 1/2 fresh lime, juiced
• 2 heaping bar spoons powdered sugar
• 1 lime wheel

Directions

1. Shake all ingredients until well chilled, strain into a cocktail glass, garnish with a lime wheel.

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Best Strawberry Daiquiri

Ingredients

• 6 cups ice
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 4 ounces frozen strawberries
• 1/8 cup lime juice
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 3/4 cup rum
• 1/4 cup lemon-lime flavored carbonated beverage

Directions

In a blender, combine ice, sugar and strawberries. Pour in lime juice, lemon juice, rum and lemon-lime soda. Blend until smooth. Pour into glasses and serve

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Basic Daiquiri

Ingredients

• 3 fluid ounces light rum
• 1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 2 cups cracked ice

Directions

1. Pour the rum, lime juice, sugar and ice into the container of a blender. Blend for 10 seconds, or until ice is fine. Pour into two daiquiri glasses.

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The Real Mojito

Ingredients

• 10 fresh mint leaves
• 1/2 lime, cut into 4 wedges
• 2 tablespoons white sugar, or to taste
• 1 cup ice cubes
• 1 1/2 fluid ounces white rum
• 1/2 cup club soda

Directions

1. Place mint leaves and 1 lime wedge into a sturdy glass. Use a muddler to crush the mint and lime to release the mint oils and lime juice. Add 2 more lime wedges and the sugar, and muddle again to release the lime juice. Do not strain the mixture. Fill the glass almost to the top with ice. Pour the rum over the ice, and fill the glass with carbonated water. Stir, taste, and add more sugar if desired. Garnish with the remaining lime wedge.

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