Fog Cutter

I’m on a bit of a Beachbum Berry run here, since acquiring a batch of his books. You’ll have to forgive me, and rest assured I will stop before I get to plagiarism.

Today I bring the Fog Cutter, another Tiki standard from Victor ‘Trader Vic‘ Bergeron. In his Grog Log, the Bum quotes Trader Vic as saying: “Fog Cutter, hell. After two of these you won’t even see the stuff,” and there’s no doubt that it’s a potent mix. Two ounces of rum in a cocktail can already be considered a generous serving. If on top of that you add another ounce and a half of hooch, you get something pretty explosive. And I haven’t counted the float yet.

There were a few reasons for trying this one out. Firstly, it’s a classic in its realm. Also I had all the ingredients, which is pretty rare for most of the Bum’s recipes. Well, with one exception, but I’ll get to that. This includes my latest toy, Orgeat syrup.

The rum mentioned in the book is light Puerto Rican rum, which is a euphemism for Bacardi Carta Blanca. I always substitute a decent rum instead of that particular one, and it’s usually Havana Club Añejo 3 Años. The spicy notes add character to any drink, and it’s probably the most historically correct anyway. There is no note in the book of when the drink was created, but the Bacardi that all these Tiki legends used was made in Cuba in the same distillery and using the same recipe as the current Havana Club. Even if the drink wasn’t created prior to the Cuba embargo, I reckon Trader Vic knew exactly what he was aiming for when he used Bacardi, and this was probably it.

My missing ingredient was sweet sherry, since I usually keep some of that around in the winter. The summer in Spain calls for the dry Fino or Manzanilla varieties of Sherry. I had a reasonable substitute, though, in Málaga Virgen, a sweet fortified wine made from Pedro Ximenez grapes. These grapes are used at least in part in most sweet sherries, and although the wine is missing some of the character of being fortified with sherry brandy, it’s pretty similar.

It wasn’t much of a big deal anyway, because I used sherry brandy in the drink, whereas most people would probably use something from France. So all the elements ended up there, even if the components were a little different.

By the way, have you noticed the photo in this post? I figured that it would be a good idea to start doing that with this new design, you know, to spruce things up. If by sprucing up I mean highlighting my failures, of course.

First of all, you may have noticed I’m not exactly Rick from Kaiser Penguin when it comes to taking pictures of drinks. I hope to improve, but until then you’re stuck with my experiments. Second of all, you see that brown sludge at the bottom of the glass? That’s the float. Yeah, I know, let’s pretend it didn’t happen. And third of all, even though I tried to follow Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s instructions to the letter, my orange twist sucks.

But whatever, I’ll give you the recipe and you can try and do better.

Recipe:

2 oz. Lemon juice
1 oz. Orange juice
1/2 oz. Orgeat Syrup
1 oz. light Rum
1 oz. Brandy
1/2 oz. Gin
1/2 oz. sweet Sherry

Shake everything — except sherry — with ice cubes. Pour into tall tiki mug and add more ice cubes to fill. Float sherry on top of drink.

Notes:

The first time I made the Fog Cutter I skipped the float altogether, and only included it the second time for completeness and the photograph. That didn’t work out too well, and I ended up mixing the float with the rest of the drink, which wasn’t too great.

I’m left without knowing what it’s like made exactly right, but I’ll probably be skipping the float the next times I make it. The cocktail is strong enough without it anyway, and the tartness just right.

Rating:

- A good drink, but too strong to enter my regular rotation.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.