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.

It’s been a difficult week here at Casa Dave. First, I managed to catch a ‘flu (in August for crying out loud!), and have been on medication for a few days. This has cramped my cocktail style like nobody’s business. If you add to this the descent of my in-laws over our previously peaceful abode, then you’ll be able to appreciate my predicament of wanting to contribute to this round of Mixology Monday without actually being able to get in the mixin’ and drinkin’ mood.

However, I’ve managed to eke out a swift half-hour, from 23:30 to 00:00 on Monday actually, to perform a quick experiment and report back on the results. Ironically, since I’ve been unable to actually try any drinks, I’ve been thinking about this month’s theme quite a lot. The theme is Orange, which is so broad as to be infuriating. What am I after here? A cocktail made of only orange-based ingredients? Any cocktail that has any orange in it? An orange-coloured drink?

I was baffled. Then, while reading my new copy of Beachbum Berry’s Sippin’ Safari, I saw just the drink I was after.

The Hula Hula Cocktail is unusually rum-free for a tiki-style drink. It is also fairly traditional in structure. Created in 1934, this drink comes from Ray Buhen, one of Don the Beachcomber’s original cocktail mixers. The three ingredients are gin, curaçao and orange juice, making this drink the perfect subject for a quick-and-dirty post.

I’ll admit I used blue curaçao in mixing it up, since it’s the only one I have at the moment (hey, the only difference is the food colouring — check out my curaçao page) and it ended up looking very modern and blue. Unfortunately, it was pretty dire. Equal amounts of everything made it taste kind of sludgy, and I had my brain on overdrive thinking of how to save it given that I only had about 10 minutes of my allotted time left.

I had done everything right — a decent gin, Marie Brizard curaçao and fresh orange juice — and still, it wasn’t even an O.K. drink. My first reaction was to add another ounce of orange juice, to try and clear up the mess it left on the palate. It was an improvement, but still too similar to the original. In a flash of inspiration, I added a couple of dashes of bitters and yet another ounce of OJ (hell, the theme is orange, isn’t it?).

That seemed to do the trick. If you ignored the swamp-green colour in the glass, the drink was pretty nice. There was a certain clarity to the flavours that wasn’t there before, and it was distinctively orangey without tasting of oranges. On its own I don’t think it has much future, but as a base for further explorations I think it shows promise.

Sorry to Mr. Buhen, since I know I’ve probably picked a drink he never meant anyone else to taste (the Bum mentions it’s from his personal notebook). Still, I’m happy just to play around with drinks. I’m a bit of a geek that way…

Oh, and it’s a little past midnight here in Spain, but there are still a few more hours of Monday left elsewhere in the world, so I’ll take the leeway and run with it.

Recipe:

1 oz. Gin
1 oz. Curaçao
3 oz. Orange juice (1 oz. in the original)
2 dashes Angostura Bitters (none in the original)

Shake everything together and serve in a (large) cocktail glass.

Notes:

There isn’t much else to say that I haven’t mentioned already in my account above. Maybe with a gin that differs significantly from the “standard”, like Plymouth or maybe even Genever, it might have been different.

Rating:

- Not great on its own, but useful as a base for further experimentation.

Check out the rest of the Mixology Monday entries at Intoxicated Zodiac.

Hey Dave, where have you been?

On holiday, like I said in my previous post. Here, if you must know.

Did you get much cocktailing done?

Nope, my folks don’t have the same urge to store fifty different bottles at home that I do. Hell, they don’t even have a shaker.

Sounds like an excuse to present a crappy MxMonday drink…

Actually, I’ve been thinking about it for a two or three weeks. That doesn’t mean it’s any good, of course, it just means that this entry isn’t entirely improvised.

So what did you come up with?

Well, I considered being “original” and maybe doing something like the Brandy Alexander.

That’s the kind of “original” that everyone else thinks of too.

Exactly. So then I thought about maybe dusting off the Hummingbird or something similar.

Risky business, covering a cocktail you only published a few weeks ago…

Yup. Finally, I remembered that Barceló has a new rum cream and that I conveniently had a bottle purchased at my wife’s behest, so I decided to come up with something that uses it. I don’t know if it’s great, but at least it’s mine. And I even came up with a cool name.
What’s this rum cream like?

It’s made using Dominican aged rum, in a recipe I suspect is similar to most other cream liqueurs. This rum is apparently aged in Bourbon casks for a length of time before being used to make this cream. Barceló’s aged rum is actually quite nice on it’s own, and the rum cream is also decent. It’s not something that comes at you, though. It’s basically just Bailey’s with rum.

What can you possibly mix that with?

Remember we’re talking rum here, so I wanted something traditionally tropical but also creamy. Coconut cream fits the bill perfectly.

Interesting, I can’t find any recipe on Google that combines those two ingredients.

Neither could I, possibly with good reason… Anyway, I finally needed a hint of sweetness and flavour to contrast with the existing profile, so I added a little Amaretto. Maybe it’s the easy way out, but it works fairly well.

And since it’s a tropical drink, we’re talking blender here.

Great. By the way, what’s with the name you’ve given it?

Coco Blanco is the name of a bird native to Santo Domingo, which is where Barceló rum hails from. You may know it, it’s called the White Ibis in English. Also, the drink uses coconut and comes out white, so it’s a kind of play on words.

Well, are you going to make us a couple or what?

Coming right up…

Recipe:

1 1/2 oz. Rum Cream
2 oz. Coconut Cream
1/4 oz. Amaretto

In a blender, mix the rum cream and coconut cream with about half-a-cup of ice. Blend until smooth, serve into a wide glass and pour a splash of amaretto into the glass using a spoon to spread it out over the surface. The idea is to get it to streak slightly when stirred using the straw.

Notes:

You have to be careful with two things here.

Both the rum cream and coconut cream have relatively delicate flavours, so if you overdo the ice it’s going to get watery and tasteless. However, if you don’t add enough ice, the drink is going to be too sweet. A hint: It’s called a Coco Blanco, so the drink should be white before adding the amaretto. If it’s rum cream colour, then you need more ice.

Also, be very careful not to overdo the amaretto. If you get it just right, it should add to the drink without taking over. It’s way too easy to pour in too much, so start with a little and work up from there. You shouldn’t need more than half a tablespoon.

Rating:

I can’t rate my own drink, although my wife seems to like it and has already tasked me with making it next time we have friends around. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Visit Morsels & Musings for the rest of the Mixology Monday entries.