Adventures in Tiki Mixology

For years, tiki drinks have languished under the misapprehension that they are only sugary, syrupy confections made with cheap rum. And sadly, that became sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because with few exceptions, that's how they came to be made. The classic, exotic ingredients, with names like "pimento dram" and "falernum" were lost or just deliberately omitted, so that ingredients like commercial mai tai mix and corn syrup-laced passion fruit flavored goo and sour apple mix (!) could be added instead. Well, mercifully, there have been some devotees of Tiki culture who have kept the old ways alive, and others who have sought them out. And it's thanks to wonderful people like those that I can tell you about a great ingredient that you can make yourself; falernum.

Falernum, as I mentioned in last night's post, is a liqueur that's usually a rum base, and is flavored with lime, cloves, ginger, almond, and various other spices. And to make it takes about 20 minutes (just spread over two days). Using a recipe from Kaiser Penguin as a jumping off point, I started mine yesterday, finished it today, and made my first drink with it tonight. It's got two stages; the first one, what Rick at KP likes to call "Soak lots of tasty things in rum" and the second one, where you whip up a quick simple syrup and add it to the booze you soaked everything in during step 1. Here's what I used to make mine:

8 oz overproof rum (I used Wray and Nephew White Overproof)
30 cloves
1 nutmeg
1 tsp whole allspice
1 dozen assorted peppercorns (I went a little OCD and used 3 each of white, green, black and pink)
zest of 8 limes
1/2 cup julienned ginger

Quickly toast the spices over medium heat until they're nice and fragrant, then drop the spices, the lime zest and the ginger into the rum. Cover with plastic wrap, and let macerate for 24 hours. It'll look like a jar of kitchen scraps, but just roll with it.

for the syrup, combine 2 cups cane sugar and 1 cup of water over medium low heat, stirring until dissolved.

After 24 hours, strain your booze-soaked mix through a fine mesh sieve and/or cheesecloth, squeezing to get as much liquid out as you can. Combine with the simple syrup and add 10 drops of almond extract. Bottle and chill.

And with that, you've got falernum. A little goes a long way...I've yet to see a recipe that calls for more than 1/2 oz of the homemade stuff at a time (There are a few companies that produce falernum for purchase, but they tend to be a lower proof or non-alcoholic, and generally a little milder than the homemade version, plus you can't customize those).

So, the drink that I'm featuring tonight with the falernum is called the Ranglum cocktail, from a a bar called Le Lion, by way of a wonderful cocktail blog called Oh, Gosh. Since the original drink features a lower proof commercial falernum, I've dropped the amount a bit to factor in the stronger nature of our homebrew stuff.

Ranglum Cocktail

2 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum, or other dark rum
1 oz lime juice
1/2 oz falernum
1/2 oz Wray and Nephew White Overproof rum
1/8 oz simple syrup

Shake all ingredients with ice, and strain into an ice-filled Old-Fashioned glass.

As Strong Bad likes to say, "Oh holy crap." This is an incredibly awesome drink, and I think if I could just freebase falernum, I totally would. It's sweet, it's sour, it's spicy, it's molasses-y, it's all sorts of good and wonderful things, and it's all in one drink. Plus, there's a ton of booze in there...Gosling's Black Seal is 80 proof, Wray and Nephew is 126 proof, plus the falernum is probably somewhere around 55 proof...This is some serious happyjuice here, folks. Go make some falernum, for your own good.

Top 12 Step Program Obscure Booze Facts

12. An alcoholic beverage cannot be greater than 95% alcohol (190 proof). At concentrations higher than that, the solution will actually pull moisture from the air and self dilute. However, if you're relying on fermentation alone, you won't even get close. The best you can get with fermentation is about 36 proof, or 18% alcohol.

11. Most people are familiar with panagrams (phrases or sentences that contain all the letters of a native alphabet) from the phrase "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." However, predating that, a common one among typesetters was "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs."

10. Most drinkers in the US become acquainted with Jägermeister as an somewhat unpleasant liqueur to be downed in one gulp. It was originally used in much the same way as bitters are today, as a flavoring agent, not as the "main course." However, it's sweeter than most spirits carrying the "bitters" label, and is therefore termed Halbbitter or Kräuterlikör, respectively half-bitter or herbal liqueur.

9. The logo on Jägermeister, the head of a stag with a glowing cross between its antlers, refers the the stories of St. Hubertus and St. Eustace; both are patron saints of hunters.

8. The Bacardi logo, on the other hand, refers to the distillery that the Bacardi company had while still based in Cuba, which had fruit bats living in the rafters.

7. Estimates of rum consumption in the Colonial United States, prior to the American Revolution, averaged out to every man, woman and child drinking the equivalent of 3 gallons (13.5 liters) of rum annually.

6. By an act of Congress, bourbon whiskey has been declared to be the official spirit of the United States.

5. Bourbon whiskey must, by law, be made of at least 51% corn. Rye whiskey, on the other hand, must be made from at least 51% rye. Bourbon tends to be sweeter, as a result, while rye tends to taste more "peppery."

4. Whiskey/whisky encompasses a broad range of spirits that are distilled from fermented grain mash and aged in wooden casks. The appellation includes rye, bourbon and Scotch, among others, and derives from uisce beatha in Irish Gaelic (uisge beatha in Scottish Gaelic) and means "water of life."

3. "Water of life" is also used, albeit in different languages, as the term for other spirits: "Akvavit" from Scandinavian countries, is a spirit distilled from grain or potatoes and flavored with herbs such as caraway, dill, fennel, or anise. "Eau de vie" is a clear distilled fruit brandy, often made from stone fruits, pears or apples.

2. Apart from consuming alcohol with a meal, there are also precedents for drinking before and after, to alternately stimulate or aid digestion. Before-meal drinks, such as champagne, ouzo, or vermouth, are referred to as apéritifs, while those consumed afterwards, like bitters, port, brandy, limoncello or grappa, are called digestifs.

1. There is a cloud of pure alcohol in outer space large enough to make four trillion-trillion drinks -- if it weren't made of methanol, that is. Sadly, it's not the drinkable kind.

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany. Unless you go to a "Chili's"

Greetings and salutations to you all. I'm Chris, and I've decided that I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and start a booze blog. I, like so many, started drinking in college, and viewed it as a quick and easy way to, well, get quick and easy (moreso than normal, anyway). My tastes went from vodka (for its lack of taste) to beer (for its availability and low price point) to pretty much anything I could afford and/or mooch.

Since (ostensibly) growing up and getting into the real world, I've gone through a few more phases. For a while I was gaga over fruity drinks (don't judge me!), then I learned more about wine and grew to appreciate that, and then I moved into rum and the Tiki drink culture, which I'm still very interested in. But I've come to have a real appreciation for the drinks that predated Prohibition, and the ones that returned and arose after its repeal.

That's what started me posting on my own blog about cocktails, and that's what made me think "Hey, why not just start a blog devoted to your consumption of liquor? That way your friends can choose to see how much of a lush you are!" (The answer is "Not very." I usually don't have more than two a night, when I drink. My liver is grateful for that, I'd imagine.)

Part of the reason I latched onto "golden era" drinks, I think, is that they represent the antithesis of the predominant school of bartending here in the US...the mantra of "faster! bigger! cheaper!" and trying to pour simultaneously for 38 giggling sorority girls who want, "like, a Cosmo, but not something as totally cliché as a Cosmo, you know?" A Cosmo, as David Wondrich, eminent cocktail historian comments in "Esquire Drinks," is "[a] mutant child of the Sidecar and the Cape Codder...it has all the appearance of tradition without any of the workmanship." We will not ever make one here. Hence the name of this blog. We are aiming to be urbane, not cosmopolitan...

Now, I've never been a full fledged bartender. I was a bar-back at a restaurant for a while, and I had my license and everything, but I saw what my bartenders would go through during the dinner rush, and it's hard to display any element of craftsmanship when you're pouring and shaking as though the very hosts of Hell are sitting at the bar, reaching for the salted peanuts. I much prefer the (most likely idealized) notion of the laid back gentlemen bartender of yesteryear. For a sense of what I think we need, please read "The Local Bar" by Kate Hopkins at "The Accidental Hedonist" (who's incidentally got a book on whiskey coming out later this year). If you find yourself nodding agreement, you're exactly the kind of person I'm aiming this blog at. If you think she's out of her gourd, may I suggest you head for TGI McTchotchke's GoodTime FoodDrinkery and pick up something candy-tasting in a commemorative hurricane glass?

My first posts will likely be reworkings of some of my greatest hits from my old personal blog, but after a while, I hope to get some new stuff up on here. Hope you'll stick with me.