For this month’s Mixology Monday, Rick over at Kaiser Penguin has chosen the theme Limit One as a nod to those classic tiki drinks that came with such a warning label attached. Of course, this had less to do with the patron’s concern for the customer’s well-being and more to do with marketing and generating what today we would call “buzz”. I believe the first drink to bear this warning was Don the Beachcomber’s Zombie, but many followed in this vein, normally mixing enormous quantities of different rums together to make drinks that would leave you hung-over if you happened to glance in their direction.

I didn’t want to do a tiki drink, because I reckon that about 80% of this month’s entries will be tiki, so I’m going to talk about the Papa Doble, even though I actually already covered it way back in June last year. If you read that post you’ll notice that I highlight a discrepancy with that recipe, because it contains the same amount of rum as a regular Daiquiri, yet the drink supposedly owes part of its name to being a double.

This Drinkboy forum thread has a convincing explanation in the form of a different recipe to the one I originally posted, this one from a book called Papa Hemingway - A Personal Memoir by A.E. Hotchner. Actually, I recommend you read the Amazon extract of that book to get a little vignette both of Hemingway and also of Havana back in the good old days.

Back to the recipe, this new one comes in at a sturdy 4 ounces (well, 3 3/4, but I rounded up) of rum, which is about twice as much as a normal Daiquiri takes, and also twice as much lime juice, so it now passes the “double” test. As well as much more grapefruit juice, another variation is that this drink is blended, whereas I mixed up the first version in a shaker.

So how does it measure up? Well, it’s not that different from just making two of my first recipe, but somehow it’s missing something. I’m going to notch it up to the fact that it’s still winter, and you really need to be in the searing heat to fully enjoy this ice-cold wonder…

Recipe:

4 oz. White Rum
2 oz. Lime juice
1 oz. Grapefruit juice
1/4 oz. Maraschino liqueur

Blend with 3/4 cup of crushed ice and serve in a large goblet.

Notes:

Very cold, sour and bitter. A killer combination in the summer, but maybe overkill in March.

Rating:

- Make the smaller version, at least that way you can have twice as many…

Head on over to Kaiser Penguin to see the rest of this Monday’s entries.

I’m not really into sipping spirits. There are exceptions, like a brandy or eau-de-vie after a meal, but as a general rule I don’t do straight booze. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the nuances of a fine spirit, of course, but I prefer having a vehicle to help it on its way.

Usually an Old Fashioned will do the trick for bourbon as well as other dark spirits such as rum. However, while browsing Beachbum Berry’s latest book Sippin’ Safari, the Rum, Gum & Lime struck me as having similar qualities and being more adapted to rum because of the lime juice it contains. Having tried it, I can happily report I wasn’t wrong. This simple recipe is great for appreciating a fine rum without having to drink it straight.

The Bum also recommends Ron Pampero Aniversario as being a good rum for this drink, if you’re undecided as to which rum to go with. I picked up a bottle since it was on my shopping list anyway, and have to second this recommendation. It really is a smooth and rich rum, and is a pleasure to taste. The original was made with a rum called Infierno, from Cuba, but this hasn’t been available for decades.

I’ll be using the Rum, Gum & Lime in my rum tastings from now on, no doubt about it.

Recipe:

1 1/2 oz. Rum
1/2 oz. Lime juice
1 tsp. Simple Syrup
1 oz. Seltzer

Stir everything in an old-fashioned glass with ice, and garnish with lime and orange peels.

Notes:

You may want to adjust the seltzer and simple syrup amounts to your taste and the rum you’re using. If the rum isn’t very intense, it can end up tasting watered-down with a full ounce of seltzer.

Rating:

- A cool tool for rating rum (I should work for The Sun)

It’s been a crazy week weather-wise here in Madrid. The end of the summer has brought a great unpredictability in the weather, and conditions are changing drastically from one day to the next. I’m tempted to say it’s all because of global warming, which would allow me to indulge in the popular hobby of blaming politicians, but Madrid has always been like this at the beginning of autumn (or fall, for those of the American persuasion), so I’ll just enjoy the good days in preparation for the winter.

On one of the warmer days we’ve had this week I found myself looking for something refreshing and new, and while browsing books I found just the thing in David Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails. While conjuring up images of people in comedy moustaches wearing suits and ties at the height of a New York summer, Wondrich introduces us to the Roof Garden Cooler, a drink invented at the Waldorf Hotel in the early twentieth century and designed to keep you cool despite the feeling of being wrapped in a carpet and thrown into an oven.

It’s a very nice tipple on its own merits, and is even more admirable when you consider it’s nothing more than a glorified wine cooler. It’s not too strong, using only vermouth as the alcoholic component, so you can engage in the activity of cooling yourself down without worrying too much about nasty side-effects. Hell, even my wife liked it, so I really can’t fault it.

Recipe:

2 oz. dry Vermouth
1 oz. Lime juice
1/4 -1/2 oz. Simple Syrup (original recipe states 1/2 teaspoon superfine sugar)
1 dash Angostura Bitters
Ginger Ale

Combine all ingredients in a glass, stirring until the sugar is dissolved if you haven’t used simple syrup. Add a few ice cubes and top with ginger ale.

Notes:

There really isn’t much to say, this drink is not too complex, apart from what the vermouth brings to the table.

I was surprised at how refreshing it was without any shaking or crushed ice in sight. Usually a built drink warms up relatively quickly, since it was never as cold to begin with. This one didn’t last long enough for that, though…

Rating:

- Don’t bother being traditional, you can have one while enjoying the air-conditioning.

When Great Britain was still the colonial power in the world, one of the lesser-known colonies it held was Burma, the largest country in Southeast Asia. Modern Burma, or Myanmar, is a thoroughly unpleasant place to live because of the oppressive military dictatorship that runs the place, especially in recent times.

Back when it was a colony, on the other hand, life was good if you were a foreigner. If you could get past the local climate, which was probably unlike anything you had ever experienced before if you were European, your quality of life was much higher than that of any local. Decent food, all the gin-and-tonics you could stomach (for medicinal purposes, of course) and in the evenings you could head to the club, just like any British gentleman.

One of these clubs was the Pegu Club. experts can’t agree on whether it was located in Pegu, a town about 60 km. northeast of the capital, Rangoon, or if it was in Rangoon itself. Regardless of its physical location, it was well regarded by its patrons, which included people like Rudyard Kipling, and must have been a pretty special place.

It’s signature drink was known just as the Pegu Club Cocktail. A simple mix of gin, Cointreau and lime juice, it is one of the great classics that has descended into obscurity with the passing of time. However, since the recipe is so simple, there really is no excuse for at least trying it once.

The problem is that all-too-common lack of an authoritative recipe. Thankfully it’s just a problem of proportions, since the list of ingredients is agreed-upon, and it allows you to mess around with what you prefer. I tried the version in Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, and a few others I found on the net, and finally decided on one that reduced the amount of lime juice somewhat, since I felt it was overpowering the drink. Here is what I came up with.

Recipe:

2 oz. Gin
1/2 oz. Cointreau
1/2 oz. Lime juice
2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Shake with lots of ice until the shaker is frosty, and pour into a cocktail glass.

Notes:

I think with a good pungent gin I might push the gin back to 1 1/2 oz., but I’ll need to wait until I can get to a liquor store to try that because my gin stocks are currently very low.

Still, it’s pretty good. I’d encourage you to try it.

Rating:

- Let’s get hot and sweaty.

This is the drink I was going to write about for the last round of Mixology Monday, which I unfortunately missed due to being on holiday in a tropical jungle in the Congo, or the technological equivalent (i.e. my in-laws’ place). It’s what happens when one is too lazy to prepare things in advance.

The Suffering Bastard is noteworthy for being a tropical drink that doesn’t use rum. Apart from the name, of course, which makes it instantly memorable. It was created around 1950 at the Shepheards Hotel in Cairo, Egypt, and the name supposedly comes from some British officers mishearing a passing comment about a “suffering bar steward”.

In his seminal Grog Log, Beachbum Berry remarks that the original was made with brandy and ginger beer instead of bourbon and ginger ale. I didn’t have any ginger beer around, since it’s difficult to find here, and just swapping brandy for the bourbon would make a Horse’s Neck with some gin and lime juice thrown in, so I only tried the newer version.

So what’s it like? Well, it’s ok. The bourbon overpowers the drink somewhat, and doesn’t leave much room for tasting everything else. Maybe with a robust gin and a delicate bourbon it might work better, but I don’t think I’ll be making another one in a hurry.

There was one good thing, though. I was toying with not including a photo because I couldn’t get any decent ones (I’ll have to work on that), but I couldn’t resist showing you a close-up of a successful lime twist after the Fog Cutter attempt.

Recipe:

1 oz. Bourbon
1 oz. Gin
1 oz. Lime Juice
4 oz. Ginger Ale
1 dash Angostura Bitters (to taste, I like two or three dashes better)

Notes:

As I mentioned above, the Bourbon overpowered the rest of the drink. I used Jim Beam bourbon, since I didn’t want to try something more expensive on an unknown cocktail. Maybe something more delicate might work better, but I have my doubts, so I didn’t bother…

Rating:

- Cool name, pity about the drink.

Urban folklore places the phrase may you live in interesting times as an old Chinese curse. The implication is, of course, that if your life is anything other than peaceful and predictable, then the interesting events are probably not good.

Bearing this nugget of information in mind, I’ll tell you that the Chelada is an interesting drink. This one comes from Mexico and, judging from what I’ve been able to find, is fairly popular. The idea is that beer on its own is boring, which is actually pretty much right on the money if we’re talking about Mexican light beer. To give it a little more zing you first add ice to keep it really cold, and then add some lime juice and salt to give it a little more bite.

Weird, huh? It gets worse. The above combination is what gets called a Chelada, and is actually not as bad as it seems as long as you don’t go overboard with the salt. There is a more sinister variation that calls for pretty much anything hot or spicy that you can find. There is no fixed recipe since each person makes it as they prefer, much like a Spanish Sangría. I have seen versions calling for Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce (you can use it instead of salt) and many different kinds of hot sauce, among other ingredients — I found it interesting that some recommend you don’t use Tabasco, since it adds too much flavour to the resulting drink when all you want is to feel your mouth burning. This monster version is called a Michelada.

There are also variations in the beer you should use. Whereas most people will probably use Corona (Coronita in Spain) or Sol, a decent version can apparently be made using Negra Modelo, a dark beer made by the same folks as Corona. And I haven’t even begun to enumerate additional ingredients like Clamato, etc. You can find a bunch of versions in the Wikipedia Michelada entry. I found the Manuchelada to be especially disturbing because of how complicated the preparation seems.

Recipe:

Juice of 2 limes
1 bottle Mexican Beer
salt

Rim a pint glass with the salt and fill with ice. Squeeze the limes into the glass and fill with the beer.

For a Michelada add:

Hot sauce to taste (I used some Portuguese piri-piri sauce, a chilli pepper-based hot sauce).
Soy sauce to taste.
Worcestershire sauce to taste.

Notes:

There isn’t much to say, really. The Chelada on its own was ok, if a bit strange. But I can imagine getting the palate used to the interplay of lager and lime juice. The Michelada is reminiscent of a Bloody Mary, but much lighter. It’s not a bad drink per se, I just can’t imagine a situation where I’d prefer it over anything else.

Rating:

- Icy Spicy Beer. As odd as it sounds, but cool to whip up as a party trick for people who think they’ve had it all.

The Planter’s Punch is one of that class of drinks with no fixed recipe. If you look in ten different places, you’ll likely find ten different formulations. Many books and databases even include several variations, giving each one a number.

I decided to look into the history of the Planter’s Punch to see if I could find a definitive or original recipe, but things don’t seem to be that clear. According to Wikipedia, the first known reference to a Planter’s Punch is in the August 8, 1908 edition of the New York Times, where a generic recipe is given as this little poem:

This recipe I give to thee,
Dear brother in the heat.
Take two of sour (lime let it be)
To one and a half of sweet,
Of Old Jamaica pour three strong,
And add four parts of weak.
Then mix and drink. I do no wrong —
I know whereof I speak.

Now I don’t know about you, but to me that seems like an invitation to improvise. The recipe gives four ingredients — lime, Jamaican rum, something sweet and something weak. Lime and rum are fixed, so we’re left with two ingredients to play with. Thankfully the measures were easy to translate into modern units, with each part being half-an-ounce in my interpretation.

For Sweet I decided early on to use my newly acquired Orgeat syrup (there’s a Mai Tai post coming soon when I can source the quality ingredients needed). I tried another version with a new homemade grenadine I’ve been toying with, but the Orgeat was somehow more satisfying. That may just be me favouring something new, though.

Weak is obviously some sort of fruit juice. Orange and pineapple are the usual suspects here, so I wanted a little change from that, but without going all out and using mango or passion fruit either. I settled on grapefruit juice as being out-of-the-ordinary enough without being cliché tropical.

For the rum, I cheated slightly because I found that the full given amount of dark Jamaican rum overpowered the drink. So I reduced the Jamaican rum to one ounce, and threw in some Havana Club Añejo 3 años for it’s distinctive nose and taste. I suppose that reading my new Beachbum Berry book arsenal is having an effect on me.

As to the name, it’s an allusion to the numbers given to variations I mention in the beginning of the post, joined with a rather geeky pop-culture reference.

Recipe:

1 oz. Dark Jamaican Rum
1/2 oz. Light Rum
3/4 oz. Sirop d’Orgeat
1 oz. Lime juice
2 oz. Grapefruit juice

Shake with plenty of cracked ice until you can’t feel the tips of your fingers, and serve in a large tall glass.

Notes:

The Orgeat is pretty pronounced, so you may want to reduce it to 1/2 oz. to make it more subtle. Either way, it’s a nice drink that’s refreshing and not too sweet.

I’ll also be trying this with a slightly less pungent Jamaican rum, and using the full 1 1/2 oz. to see how that works out.

Rating:

- Refreshing and different.

One of the timeless summer classics, the Margarita is a typical example of a decent drink with a bad reputation. When it is well made, with quality ingredients, it is a nice and balanced drink suitable for hot afternoons.

Like many classics, its origin is lost in the mists of time. Robert Hess outlines quite a few of the available stories in the Drinkboy Margarita recipe page. I don’t have enough data to choose any one account as being more likely than the rest, so I won’t bother. However, it’s safe to assume that a 1930’s/40’s origin is likely.

This date can help explain reason why the Margarita became so spectacularly popular, since it coincides both with the beginning of the tiki, and by extension tropical-drink, craze and also with the beginning of the United States’ view of Mexico as a party-place of sorts. The combination of tropical theme and the Mexico angle given by tequila may have pushed this drink over many others to its current status as one of the most well-known cocktails in the world.

But this is all speculation, of course. Maybe part of the appeal is because of people’s view of tequila as an especially nasty spirit, imbuing the Margarita with a certain mystique and aura of danger, and making it intriguing and attractive to many.

Whatever the reason for trying one, many tend to indulge in a few more, due in no small part to the fact that it’s actually not a bad drink. Unfortunately, the morning after ends up being more memorable than the night before.

The components of this potion are as well-known as they are simple — Tequila, lime juice and triple-sec. If you want your drink to be the best it can be, you need to use the best ingredients. To begin with, a 100%-agave tequila, preferably a young tequila with a little bite to it, is essential. The lime juice should be freshly squeezed and not from a bottle. Finally, the triple-sec must be Cointreau, there is no equal.

Finally, the signature of the Margarita is the salt around the rim of the glass. The technique for this is simple. Place some kosher salt in a saucer, run a lime wedge around the edge of the glass and dip the tip of the glass sideways in the saucer until the outside rim is covered in salt. Many places will just put your glass upside down into a plate of salt, but that will result in salt sticking to the inside of the rim as well as the outside. From here it can slide down into your drink making it salty, which is a very undesirable effect.

As to how to combine these ingredients, there are a few accepted ratios. I’ve settled on the 3:2:1 ratio of tequila/Cointreau/lime juice, which Drinkboy also endorses after a suggestion from Gary Regan. Other recipes call for equal parts of all ingredients, or else a 2:1:1 which reduces the sweetness somewhat.

Recipe:

1 1/2 oz. Tequila
1 oz. Cointreau
1/2 oz. Lime juice

Shake everything with ice and strain into a salt-rimmed cocktail glass, or Margarita saucer.

Notes:

Although It’s not a drink I normally consider, it’s status as a classic is indisputable. The taste is really very distinctive and mixing up a few as a party trick will usually get you looks of admiration, especially if you can drink it and not fall over.

Some people recommend making them with Grand Marnier, an orange liqueur with a brandy base, although in those cases the ratios should be modified to accomodate the additional sweetness of the Grand Marnier.

Rating:

- Maybe if I was more of a Tequila connoisseur, I might like it better.

This post is actually about two different drinks that just happen to share the same name and ingredients. Confused? Read on.

I was actually looking for some information on tiki legend Don the Beachcomber when I came across this cocktail. There are a few recipes out there with the same name, so I used the one I found most frequently. Luckily, it’s also the recipe that used ingredients I had on-hand.

The reason I mention two drinks is that most sources simply call for rum, which has many different incarnations, so I tried mixing up a couple of these with two very different rums to compare the outcome.

The first rum I used was Captain Morgan’s Black Label Jamaica Rum, my default dark rum. I won’t lie to you, it wasn’t great. The balance was off and the rum overpowered everything except the maraschino liqueur, which is almost impossible to tame. The sugar rim worked quite well in improving the drink somewhat, but I still wasn’t impressed.

Not one to accept defeat so readily, I figured I’d try the other rum in my arsenal at the moment, the Havana Club Añejo 3 Años. This light rum is a staple in many cuban drinks, and since the Beachcomber is similar in nature and ingredients, I figured it would work better. I wasn’t mistaken, this new drink was lighter and more refreshing than the previous effort, with the rum and lime working together and the maraschino giving it that touch of bitterness. Altogether a much better drink.

If you’re looking for something similar to a Papa Doble but in a cocktail glass, you could do worse.

Recipe:

1.5 oz. light Rum
0.5 oz. Lime juice
0.5 oz. Cointreau
1/4 tsp. Maraschino Liqueur

Shake everything together with plenty of ice, and serve in a sugar-rimmed cocktail glass.

Notes:

Don’t even think about omitting the sugar rim. Without it, the cocktail is simply too tart, and in a cocktail glass with no ice it’s not going to remain cold enough for this to be a pleasant experience.

Rating:

- A decent, if unadventurous, summer concoction.

Since Brazil’s national spirit is cachaça, it’s only fitting that their national drink be the Caipirinha, a cocktail where it is the main player.

Recipe:

2 oz. Cachaça
2 tsp Sugar
4 Lime wedges

Cut a lime into 6 wedges. Into a wide-bottomed glass, drop four lime wedges and the sugar and muddle vigorously. When all the juice has been extracted from the wedges, fill the glass with crushed ice and finally pour in the cachaça. Stir everything together and serve with a straw.

Notes:

If you’re looking for a great summer drink, you can’t really go wrong with booze and limes. We’ve seen it while looking at cuban cocktails, and the caipirinha reinforces the idea.

You can try this drink with cubed ice and it will also work well, it depends on how much dilution you’re after.

Oh, and if you’re feeling virile, you can make a real man’s Caipirinha. The site is in portuguese, but I’m sure the pictures will get the point across.

Rating:

- It doesn’t get four stars because I’m unlikely to have cachaça at home on a regular basis.