There's a funny little, sunny little melody...

So as luck would have it, I was beaten to the punch on tonight's drink. I was going to do "Jasper's Jamaican" but Trader Tiki over there in my blogroll beat me to it this afternoon. So I went with Plan B and put my own little twist on it. Tonight's drink is the first Tiki drink on the blog here, and it's a simple one (at least compared to some...there's Tiki drinks that you can get at Tiki-Ti in LA that have 8+ ingredients, some that need to be specially made). Trader Tiki commented in his post on Jasper's Jamaican that most Tiki drinks are variants on the Daiquiri, much like Harpo's Special from the other day. I'll give you the straight up recipe first, and then tell you about my addition (as that's an ingredient that you'll likely need to make yourself).

Outrigger
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
3/4 oz triple sec
1 1/2 oz Barbados Rum (I went with Mount Gay and was not disappointed)
sugar

Rub the rim of a cocktail glass with the spent lemon shell and coat with sugar (I used demerara sugar). Shake the juice, triple sec and rum with ice cubes and strain into your sugar-rimmed glass.

Now my variant on it added a scant 1/8 oz of Pimento Dram. You can find it commercially as St. Elizabeth's Allspice Dram, or you can make your own, which takes a while, but is incredibly good. Here's what you'll need

2 1/4 cups overproof rum (go with 151-proof Lemon Hart or 126 proof Wray and Nephew...leave the Bacardi alone)
1/2 cup whole dried allspice berries
3 cups water
1 1/2 lbs brown sugar

Crush the allspice berries coarsely with a mortar and pestle, combine in a large jar with the rum and seal it up. Let it steep for 10-14 days, shaking it every day. Once it's done steeping, pour through a strainer lined with cheesecloth, then pour that liquid through a coffee filter. You'll be happier without little bits of allspice in it.

Combine the sugar and water over heat to make a 1:1 simple syrup, cool, and add that syrup to your rum infusion in a clean, sterilized bottle and let it sit in the back of your fridge for a month or more. As it matures, it'll become very smooth, but very spicy. A little will go a loooooong way.

As for the modified Outrigger, I'm almost thinking the 1/8 oz of pimento dram I used tonight was a little too much, but it plays with this rum VERY well. The lemon juice and triple sec's citrus makes this almost Christmas-like when combined with the allspice liqueur, but not quite...the rum keeps it summery. I think if I upped the lemon juice a little more and added a dash of lime juice, it'd be even better. It wouldn't be an Outrigger anymore, but it'd be good!