Cubre

It's been a good few months since I last joined in the online cocktail soirée that is Mixology Monday. This month's brief - set by Doug at the The Pegu Blog - was to design a drink with lime.

Fortunately, I'd just restocked my citrus supply, and an entire bowl of the luscious green things were staring up at me, begging to be squeezed. I love a well-limed Cuba Libre (rum, cola, lime juice) and settled on reinterpreting this classic long drink.

Having recently visited the almighty Purl cocktail bar in west London, and marvelled at its use of "cola reduction" in one of its beverages, I decided to get all chemistryish myself and boil down a small can of Pepsi to extract its essence. Shaken with lime juice and a good slug of rum, the resulting cocktail tasted like a Cuba Libre, only stronger and (crucially) more limed.

Cubre

60ml (2oz) light rum
30ml (1oz) cola reduction*
15ml (0.5oz) fresh lime juice
Lime peel

Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake with determination. Strain into a martini glass and add a lengthy twist of lime peel.

*To make cola reduction pour a can of cola into a pot and heat on the stove. Boil until about two-thirds of its volume has evaporated, leaving a cola syrup.

This is a seriously fun drink: a refined, more sophisticated version of the original, which tastes quite lovely, and limey. If you like Cuba Libres give it a try.

UPDATE: Check out Doug's full MxMo round-up, featuring a lifetime's supply of lime-based cocktail recipes from across the blogosphere, right here.

Kamehameha Rum Punch

The K-Rum Punch, hailing from Hawaii circa 1960, was taken from drinks blog A Mountain of Crushed Ice, and one would do well to prepare at least a hillock of said ice to make a batch of four. I don't usually bother with fiddly drinks like this, but it was a hot Friday evening, and my friend J had been kind enough to bring us a bottle of rum to play with. And so...

Kamehameha Rum Punch

30ml (1oz) light rum

60ml (2oz) unsweetened pineapple juice

15ml (0.5oz) lemon juice

1tsp blackberry brandy

1tsp grenadine

1tsp sugar syrup

30ml (1oz) dark rum

Shake everything but the dark rum with ice and strain into a tall glass filled with crushed ice. Float dark rum on top and garnish with a pineapple chunk speared to a cherry.

This was great. I don't tend to go nuts for fruity drinks, but this one went down just right. The rum float was a funny thing: I had only golden rum, rather than properly dark stuff, so perhaps that explained why it wasn't floating as well as it might have. But it definitely gave the cocktail a nicely layered look (see right) and the crushed ice kept things very cold all the way down. Next time I'm going to procure some cocktail umbrellas and the like.

Mojito

The mojito is one of those drinks I'd always intended to blog, but it's taken time to build up to it. I've tasted an amazing mango variant and attempted a party version, but making a proper one at home takes some effort. A supply of fresh mint can be an almighty obstacle for starters, and that's before you've considered the crushed ice. Oh, and it helps morale if it's not raining outside. But I had to get round to it eventually, mainly because this Cuban refresher is a truly special cocktail.

Mojito

Six mint leaves
45ml (1.5oz) white rum
15ml (0.5oz) simple syrup
1/2 lime
45ml (1.5oz) soda water
Crushed ice*

Place five mint leaves and the simple syrup into a highball glass and use a muddler to gently mash the leaves to release the minty oils. Add the half a lime (slicing into four segments works nicely) and muddle some more, taking care not to shred the mint leaves (get too rough and they can taste bitter). Add crushed ice, then the rum, and stir carefully. Add soda water, and some more ice if necessary, and garnish with another mint leaf.

*For crushed ice: Put some ice cubes into a plastic bag, wrap with a tea towel and whack with a hammer until suitably crushed. Best attempted outside.

So there you go. This is a rewarding cocktail, even if - as has been written elsewhere - it's a pain-in-the-ass to make. But life wasn't supposed to be simple, right? No, it was supposed to be difficult, easy to mess up, complicated, and ultimately disappointing on an existential level. Time for another mojito, methinks.

Daiquiri

Never mind the Gimlet, if it's a short, sharp refresher you're after on a sunny spring evening try a Daiquiri, which essentially replaces the vodka with rum.

Daiquiri

1.5 oz white rum
0.75 oz lime juice
0.5 oz simple syrup

Place ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake well and strain into a small, preferably chilled cocktail glass and (optionally) garnish with a twist of lime peel.

Although I refuse to count out vodka entirely, I'm beginning to become more conscious of its limitations, in cocktails at least. Rum, by contrast, is growing on me.

MORE DAIQUIRI: Read the Rum Dood on this "most iconic" of rum drinks.

2023 update: The Daiquiri, effectively a rum sour, re-entered my rotation recently due to my encountering Hamilton 87 White Stache (pictured left), an aged white rum sourced from the West Indies offering amazing coconut notes.

Mo-heat-o!

These drinks, essentially mojitos sans soda water, were made in a friend's kitchen at a rather lively party (hence the plastic cups). The precise preparation method has been lost to booze-induced amnesia, but the essentials involve shoveling as much rum, lime, simple syrup, fresh mint and ice as you can afford into as many vessels as you can find and shouting jubilantly and incoherently. Salud!

Mango Mojito

The Cinnamon Club

30 Great Smith Street
London

SW1P 3BU

I had always assumed a mojito required soda water, and plenty of recipes confirm this. With the mango version here, however, I was given a choice - soda water or simply a mountain of crushed ice. Being a dedicated experimentalist, I opted for the ice mountain, and my first sips, tasted before the ice began to melt and dilute the rum, were intense as well as intensely cold. Mango puree was used in addition to the usual fresh lime and mint leaves (not sure about the sugar), which gave it a nice sweet/sour taste as well as a thicker texture than the usual, more watery affair. The rum was Bacardi, an unsporting choice given that company's efforts to expand the US trade embargo against Cuba - birthplace of the mojito, let's not forget - and other un-Cuban activities. Politics aside, I may need to procure a mallet so I can start crushing my own ice.

Serendipitea

So, there's this thing called Mixology Monday, in which online cocktail enthusiasts exchange wisdom about mixed drinks. This month's challenge was to come up with a winning concoction involving tea, and I thought I'd dip in my oar.

Rooibos is not technically a tea at all, but fortunately the design brief permitted other infusions (known as tisanes, apparently), so I immediately fell upon my box of Rooibos Vanilla, which I insist tastes like custard. The only vanilla-ey bottle in my collection was the brandy-based Tuaca liqueur, which also hints at orange, and that reminded me of a lovely rum blazer I'd had at a Soho bar a couple of years ago, which used orange peel to great effect, prompting me to pull out my Havana Club (Anejo Reserva). A little more sweetness was needed, triggering the triple sec, with an orange twist to underline the point.

Serendipitea

90ml (3oz) Rooibos Vanilla tea
30ml (1oz) golden rum

15ml (0.5oz) Tuaca

15ml (0.5oz) triple sec

Orange twist

Steep one Rooibos Vanilla teabag in about 4oz of boiling water for a good five minutes to make the most of it. While it's stewing, pour the rum, Tuaca and triple sec into a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Add 3oz of (still hot) tea and stir well to make everything cold. Strain into a delicate-looking glass and garnish with an orange twist, taking care to spray the surface with a good deal of oil from the peel.

This is a most partakable brew tasting of vanilla and orange and - is that caramel? Easy to drink (not too sweet, not too bitter), just about enough booze to count, and, crucially, it doesn't taste like cold tea. If anyone's willing to give it a try I'd love to hear their comments. But first, go to CocktailVirgin, the host of this month's episode of MxMo, and see what delightful drinks the experts have conjured.

Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum

I can't decide whether or not I really like rum. My top rum experience was probably a warming Rum Blazer from The Star at Night a couple of years ago. Other than that, I occasionally turn to my bottle of Havana Club for a Cuba Libre, and that's about it. Then recently I came across an interesting list of recommended rums for the beginner looking to start a collection. In the spiced rum section it suggested Sailor Jerry, and by coincidence the very next night I found myself in a pub with a bottle behind the bar, and ordered a shot. Note the ridiculous glassware (above) - I really don't understand why it's beyond most English pubs to cater for spirits fans.

Sadly, while the vanilla on the nose was appreciated, this was mainly sickly-sweet and flavourless, save for a strangely chemical spice. Perhaps it might work with cola, but sipping this stuff neat was not fun, and yet again I was left wondering why anyone would choose rum over a decent Scotch. Of course, it's unfair to compare a spirit recommended as a base for rum punch with a proper single malt. For a fair fight the rum would have to be an appropriately aged one, and the relevant section of the same beginner's guide suggests the Appleton Estate 12-year old. To be continued...

Innocence Lost

The Innocence Lost is what happens when a virgin pina colada (also known as an Innocent pineapple, banana and coconut smoothie) is relieved of its virginity with the help of some rum of questionable quality.

There is something particularly annoying about the calculated tweeness peddled by Innocent's marketing managers in a bid to convey their sense of "fun". I'm referring, for example, not to their suggestion that you shake the carton before serving, but to their helpful footnote that it's best to screw the cap on before you do so. And so tediously on. There is therefore something especially satisfying about taking Innocent's admittedly tasty, and healthy, fruit smoothie and adulterating it with liquor - in this case some leftover rum.

60ml (2oz) Morgan's Spiced rum
180ml (6oz) Innocent pineapple, banana and coconut smoothie

Pour rum into a glass. Add Innocent smoothie. Stir thoroughly until properly mixed. Pop in a glacé cherry, if you have one.

And there it is: what was once pure rendered impure; what was "fun" made fun.

Dark and Stormy (Spiced)

The Dark and Stormy doesn't strike me as particularly stormy. But this drinkable mixture of rum and ginger beer is so easy to make I'm willing to forgive its lying claims.

Rebelliously (for this drink demands dark rum) we procured a bottle of Morgan's Spiced, which is rather more golden in hue, and which added vanilla and cinnamon flavours to the mix. Not sure about this rum - if it's a boozy vanilla drink you're after I'd go for Tuaca every time. But Morgan's is cheap and, unlike Tuaca, robust enough to stand up to some fairly spicy ginger beer. My favourite ginger thus far is Old Jamaica, which has a real kick to it, and when I'm not corrupting it with booze it's my soft drink of choice too. Some Dark and Stormy recipes say add a bunch of lime juice, but after giving that a go I decided the citrus was surplus to our needs. Instead I impaled a wedge of lime on the rim of each glass so imbibers could squeeze their own to taste.

Captain's orders as follows:

60ml (2oz)  Morgan's Spiced rum
90ml (3oz) Old Jamaica ginger beer
Lime wedge

Fill a highball glass with ice. Add the rum and ginger beer and give it a good stir. Serve with lime wedge garnish.

It was pretty refreshing, and if you like ginger beer you ought to like this. But I really need to try it again with a properly dark rum. Watch this blog-space.

Eggnog

Feeling brave? Then try making this legendary winter beverage. I discovered a recipe for Eggnog here, but decided that since one is likely to drink just the one (I reckon raw eggs and cream are better in smaller portions) it made sense to up the booze content a fraction and be done with it.

30ml (1oz) dark rum

30ml (1oz) brandy

0.5oz light brown sugar

60ml (2oz) cream

1 whole egg

Nutmeg*

*Lacking ground nutmeg, I was forced to use allspice, which I found a little too dominant; clovey. Do stick to nutmeg.

Mix rum, brandy, sugar, cream, egg and a pinch of ground nutmeg into a shaker. Fill with ice and shake "like your life depends on it". Strain into glass and garnish with a secondary nutmeg pinch.

A handy definition of a winter drink is anything you'd find abhorrent on a hot July afternoon. Eggnog definitely falls into this category. It's creamy and comforting, rather than warming, but probably just the ticket in certain undetermined circumstances.