Over the years there have been several “bowl” style drink recipes that, for me, epitomize the laid-back attitude of tropical consumption. While I enjoy an outlandish ceramic Tiki mug filled with exotic juice and rum as much as the next beach bum, I also appreciate the idea that sometimes a drink is just so big (or so strong) that it needs to be

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This drink of the week is pretty easy to pull off. It’s a Caiprissima, which is like a Caipirinha only it uses rum instead of cachaça, and of course, this one also has cherries in it. According to my notes, I saw this somewhere back in June so it’s probably a summer drink. It’s been raining in December around here, so a summer drink sounds like a good drink in my book. This Caiprissima variation was created by Meaghan Dorman of Raines Law Room, Manhattan. If you are familiar with the Caipirinha, you know the drill—just use rum and throw in some cherries!

The process goes something like this: Take some pitted cherries and drop them into a shaker. Add your simple syrup (or just a couple spoons of sugar if you prefer) and muddle them into oblivion. Drop in half of a lime cut

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One of the best gifts you can give someone interested in cocktails is booze. You don’t even have to break the bank (although you might reconsider picking from the bottom shelf) because it doesn’t have to be the rarest or the most expensive item in the shop. Pick a decent base spirit and you really can’t go wrong. For example, there’s no such thing as having too much gin for classic cocktails, and who would turn away a nice bottle of whiskey or rum? Certainly not me, so if you want a no-brainer gift idea that will be used and appreciated, look no further. The problem with this approach is that a bottle of alcohol may not be the most personal or creative gift idea. It will work as a last resort, but you can do better!

If a bottle of booze is the baseline,

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There are a couple schools of thought when it comes to Hot Buttered Rum. One is that the best recipe is actually not for the cocktail at all but rather a batter that you use as the basis for the drink. It’s hard to deny that a good batter recipe probably makes a fantastic cocktail, but there is another approach that I find appealing for a different reason. It follows the idea that if a recipe is too hard or just too time consuming, you probably aren’t going to make it. I am not one to back away from a challenge, but I also recognize that not everyone wants to commit

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Besides the Fizz, there are several sloe gin cocktails worth trying, and one of them is the Millionaire #1. This drink appears in Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book. It’s also another great cocktail that

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The obvious solution is to simply muddle a handful of cranberries in your mixing glass and build the balance of flavor using other cocktail ingredients. That’s what Misty Kalfoken of Drink, Boston does in her Boston Bog. This cocktail

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I am referring to the Apple Smash, a basic rum cocktail that makes great use of fresh apples both in the drink and for the garnish. With so many different apples available this time of year, why not give this easy recipe a try? After all, fresh apples are underused in cocktails and it’s nice to have a recipe that works without requiring a bunch of odd ingredients. In other words, you probably have everything you need to make this drink right now—just grab some apples and you are ready to go. Heugel suggests Honeycrisp, but it’s fun

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Coca Leaf Tea

Most of you are probably thinking, “But isn’t the formula for Coke one of the most guarded secrets on earth?” Well, yes and no. Many aspects of the recipe are known (the ingredients are written right on the can), but there is some truth to the story that only a select few individuals know the formula of the primary flavoring component. However, some very convincing evidence exists that the Original Recipe—the one first created by Coca Cola inventor John Pemberton back in 1886—may have been revealed in a newspaper

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There’s more than one recipe for the Mojito. I even posted a different one a while back to accompany a fine article I wrote about simple syrup. It’s a refreshing summer drink and a great way to hide some rum inside a few mint leaves, lime and sugar. So, I figured it was about time I featured it as the Drink of the Week.

It’s not my favorite cocktail, but a lot of people love it, and why wouldn’t they? Rum, sugar, lime, mint—what’s not to love? I suppose you could consider the Mojito a cross between a Julep and a Daiquiri, but by that logic, every cocktail is just a combination of something else. I was going to get into some of the historic details about this Cuban classic, but I decided plenty has been written about that elsewhere. So, I thought I’d focus on the drink’s

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The idea behind this is simple: you swap out the sweetener in a cocktail (in this case, we replace simple syrup in a Collins)

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I am no rum expert, but I am learning, and although I have managed to collect a few bottles, there seems to be no end in sight. Rum (and related sugar cane spirits) are distilled all over the world. Some are made from molasses while others are distilled from fermented cane juice. Distilleries use column stills, pot stills and sometimes both. They can match the alcohol content of other spirits or create overproof varieties. There are light rums, gold rums, spiced rums and dark rums (enough to make an adult Dr. Seuss story). Some are bottled immediately and others get better with time. With qualities that used to be merely a result of storage and shipping, the finest rums in the world today are aged in oak barrels and carefully blended to produce flavors that could drive a whiskey lover to

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Tracing this drink’s origin puts it somewhere in the middle of Prohibition. It first appears in print in Bill Boothby’s World Drinks and How to Mix Them published in 1934. Sometimes called the Honey Bee, or the Honeysuckle, the basic format is a gin sour that balances the lemon with honey instead of sugar or simple syrup. Boothby’s version also had a spoonful of orange juice, but that disappeared from other references. The extra kick

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I suppose I should have featured something green, or at least something that contains Irish whiskey for the Drink of the Week. This cocktail does have mint, if that counts. I normally just use herbs that I grow myself, but that’s hard to do

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When cold weather dominates the land, it’s hard not to think about places you might rather be—instead of digging out from the latest snow storm. Why not bring home a little of the exotic, maybe from the not-so-distant Caribbean? This week and next, we will feature two Caribbean cocktails that share something in common: Cuba.

And that’s not all they share. Although US readers are legally barred from traveling to Cuba as tourists (let alone enjoying any products that originate there) you should know that Cuba has played an important role in shaping the cocktail landscape. Most notably, a bar called El Floridita in Havana has made many significant contributions—most of them attributed to the 1918 bartender/owner Constantino Ribalaaigua Vert. Constante, as his friends referred to him, featured numerous daiquiris and classic American cocktails on his menu. One daiquiri was

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Like the Scofflaw, this Drink of the Week pokes fun at our “Noble Experiment”, but in this case, it’s more than just words. At the time, since it was not illegal to drink alcohol, only to manufacture, sell and transport it, anyone with a boat could head a mere three miles out, buy whatever they wanted and drink it on

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The Fog Cutter has had its share of variations too, as one might expect with so many ingredients. Some bar recipes have even blindly suggested pouring everything from the speed rail into the mixing glass. That would never do, and although

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If there is an expert alive today that knows more about tiki mixology than anyone else, it’s Jeff “Beachbum” Berry. His research, along with that of several others, has produced a growing compendium of tropical masterpieces along with a few surprises. One of these is the original Don the Beachcomber recipe for the Zombie which appeared in a New York Times article. The Beachbum acquired a

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This year, a friend of mine passed along a tip about a cocktail contest being held by

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O’course, them thar Royal bilge-suckers be savin’ up rations o’ plain ol’ Navy Grog fer quench. Aye, e’en a Corsair knows not to be ignorin’ citrus, else ye be placin’ the black spot ‘fore ye be makin’ berth. I be keepin’ ye from walkin’ the plank by pushin’ a right, fine Bumboo upon me great, grand matey!

Ahoy, me hearty, thar ain’t no caulkin’ when nothin’ crawls out o’ ye bung hole. Ye sprog be needin’ to plunder a few ‘sential gredients ‘fore ye weigh anchor. All hands hoay! Let’s splice the mainbrace!

Modern Bumboo 2 oz dark (as Davy Jones’ locker)

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Falernum is an exotic rum-based liqueur from Barbados that is infused with flavors of lime and spices. The simplest recipe comes from Rick at Kaiser Penguin, but I added some toasted almonds to the mix. He breaks it down into two basic steps. First, you prepare the rum infusion that sits overnight. Then, you prepare a rich simple syrup. Strained and combined, your falernum is ready to use.

Falernum Infusion: 8 oz overproof rum (or any rum you like) 8 limes, zest only 50 cloves 1

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It’s certainly not a complicated drink by any stretch. The official version requires that you add 1.5 ounces of Gosling’s Black Seal rum to a tall glass of ice and top with their brand of ginger beer. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. Nothing wrong at all. In fact, this official recipe is both simple and delicious. Even if you can’t get your hands on Gosling’s brand of ginger beer, Reed’s is always available at Trader Joe’s, and I expect others would

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Trends come and go, and this was certainly the case with the Polynesian tiki craze of the 1950s. However, in the current mixolgy movement there is plenty of room for tropical cocktails, and with so many rums and other ingredients available, tiki culture is bigger than ever! And why shouldn’t it be? Tiki cocktails are among the most complex, most ambitious, and most flavorful concoctions out there. Multiple rums in one drink,

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So, who’s Jerry Thomas, you might ask? Only the most

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It may not look Like much from the outside—if not for the name painted in large letters across the building you might drive right by. You won’t see rickhouses stacked with aging oak barrels. There’s no farmland in sight and no thoroughbreds at pasture. It’s just another commercial building on a regular city block of Portland’s east side. But there’s a little bit of magic happening behind this unassuming facade.

House Spirits Distillery was started in 2004 by Lee Medoff and Christian Krogstad, both of whom were beer makers in a town where you can hardly throw a handfull of malted barley in the air without it landing on a microbrewery. These guys took it to another level. Building upon their combined experience brewing and wine making, they started distilling, and within a year they launched Aviation, a successful

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They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and I suppose that also could apply to cocktails. It certainly does for me. I mean, have you ever wanted a mixed drink—at home or otherwise—and you were forced to invent something based on the ingredients at hand? Well, it’s likely that this is exactly how the Daiquiri came into existance. Some things Cuba

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This week in history. . . I was researching this week in history and found a few things that seemed thematic to me, although not every story has a good ending. First, on this day in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. I know, it’s not a happy event, and it’s certainly not an image most of us will forget. So, let’s just get the sad stuff out of the way first. In the coming week on February 1, 2003, the world watched in shock and disbelief as the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart on re-entry. Again, it’s another sad day for the space program. Meaning no disrespect to those brave spacefarers who lost their lives, there were a couple positive achievements that also occurred.

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Retail Comparison First, you need to consider the fact that bars and restaurants provide a lot more than just a markup on cocktails—they offer a service that includes mixing the drink (sometimes with expert precision), serving it in appropriate glassware, fancy garnishes, and an unbeatable selection of spirtits, modifiers and mixers that can be hard to match when you stay at home. Of

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It’s Sugar, of course! It really is that simple. The most basic recipe for simple syrup is to measure one part sugar and one part water and combine them. When the sugar dissolves

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