Cocktail #45: Beachcomber's Gold

Ice can be just as an important part of a tiki drink's garnish as a lime wheel or pineapple leaf. Back in the day, Don the Beachcomber had a lot of fun with different ice garnishes. The Navy Grog and Captain's Grog ice cones are great examples. Another fun trick that Don did with ice, was the ice shell. This is a garnish where you mold ice inside the cocktail coupe, in such a way that a layer of finely crushed ice coats the inside the the glass as well as rises above the edge of one half of the glass, forming a "hood." I noticed this cocktail, Beachcomber's Gold, in Jeff Berry's Grog Log recently and thought I would give it a try (the Colonial Grog in Berry's Potions of the Caribbean also employs an ice shell - my fellow tikiphile and pal The Meek Tiki made this one a little while ago, ice shell and all).

Using a large blender, I created "snow ice" - very finely blended ice - and then used the handle of a wooden spoon to help mold the snow ice inside a cocktail coupe that had been sitting in the freezer. It was a little tricky to get the "hood" to form, but with enough pressure you can basically force the ice over the edge and with any luck it will stay in place. Once I got a good ice shell in place, I quickly placed the glass back into the freezer to firm it up. Mine ended up staying in the freezer for a couple days, which worked well.

As for the drink itself, there seem to be quite a few versions of this one floating around. In the end, I actually went with a recipe I found on the wonderful site, Atomic Grog, which purports to be the "ancestor recipe" of a drink called Liquid Gold. It differs significantly from the version printed in Jeff Berry's Grog Log. Apparently Berry himself was perplexed by the many versions of the Beachcomber's Gold, as the Atomic Grog notes that Berry "devotes five pages in his 2010 book, Remixed, to this dilemma and explores three different recipes." Since Remixed is a more recent printing than my Grog Log I decided to go with the Atomic Grog's version of the cocktail. It is as follows:

0.50 ounce fresh lime juice
0.50 ounce sugar syrup (I used Demerara syrup since I already had a batch made; this will change the flavor a bit)
1.00 ounce gold Puerto Rican rum (I used Bacardi)
0.50 ounce gold Jamaican rum (I ended up using Mount Gay, which is from Barbados)
0.50 ounce dark Jamaican rum (I used the darkest rum I had, Black Seal, which is from Bermuda)
6 drops (about 1/8 teaspoon) Pernod
4 drops almond extract

Blend with around 1/4 cup of crushed ice and strain into a champagne saucer or cocktail glass lined with an ice shell.

As the Atomic Grog goes on to note, "This is the 'Hollywood and Palm Springs' version of the Beachcomber’s Gold, which Berry traced back to 1937." The Grog Log's version is much different, employing French and Italian vermouth, as well as bitters along with rum, and Pernod. It also omits lime juice and simple syrup, and uses only one kind of rum.

Even though there are only six drops of Pernod in this cocktail, it is a dominant flavor in the drink, along with lime and the scant amount of almond extract. The rums, in a way, almost take a backseat to the Pernod. This was unexpected but not altogether a bad thing -- in fact, this is one of the more unusual, interesting drinks I've made during this project. It doesn't shine though as a favorite, but I did enjoy this cocktail. One issue with it -- well, with the ice shell -- is that after about 3-5 minutes, the ice will start to melt and eventually the drink becomes a slushy, as the melted ice slides down into the drink itself. Not a deal breaker, but slightly annoying.

Bottom line, if you're having a couple people over, this is sure to impress (but only a couple - too much effort for a big gathering, at least for me). And it's a creative, interesting cocktail for sure. Definitely worth the try. Cheers!

Since this is apparently the "Palm Springs" version of this drink, I'll leave you with a Palm Springs tourism video from the 1950s. Until next time!

Cocktail #44: Callaloo Cooler

I'd seen a few exotic cocktails in the books I've been using that incorporate the liqueur Cherry Heering (the classic, most well known being the Singapore Sling). As Imbibe Magazine notes, Cheery Heering is "a ruby-red liqueur made by soaking lightly crushed Danish cherries and a blend of spices in neutral grain spirits, then cask-maturing the mixture for up to five years, adding sugar during the aging process." This liqueur didn't sound particularly appealing to me, nor particularly versatile. And it is probably yet another $25+ bottle that would barely see the light of day. So, I usually skipped those drinks.

But the other day I was visiting my trusty suburban Binny's Beverage Depot, and took a gander at the airplane bottle section (not available in Chicago city limits locations due to blue laws). Sometimes you can find weird spirits in the airplane bottle section - spirits that you don't normally use, and certainly don't need an entire bottle of - for a couple bucks. As I spun the rack, I noticed a cherry liqueur (though not the actual brand, Cherry Heering). Price: $1.99. Done. I took it home, and looked it up online to compare it to the genuine article. Turns out this version - Montmorency - is made in Bosnia-Herzegovina (rather than Denmark), has an ABV of 25% (rather than 21.8%), and, like Heering, is made from real cherries. Not bad.


I then set out to find a cocktail recipe that incorporated it, and found one in Smuggler's Cove - the Callaloo Cooler.

Created by Melissa Garcia, the recipe is as follows:

1.00 oz. seltzer
0.75 oz. fresh lime juice
0.50 oz. cinnamon syrup
0.50 oz. Cherry Heering
2.00 oz. blended lightly aged rum (I used Mount Gay)
1 dash Angostura bitters

Pour the seltzer into a Collins or highball glass. Add remaining ingredients to a cocktail shaker with cubed or cracked ice. Shake and strain into the Collins or highball glass. Carefully add cubed or cracked ice to the glass to fill and garnish with grated cinnamon and a mint sprig.

This cocktail could easily go into Robitussin territory. But, the proportions are just right. I can imagine that some folks might get a taste of the cherry liqueur and immediately associate with a cough syrup flavor, which obviously would be a turn-off. So you want to measure carefully. For me, I tend to go for spicier, drier cocktails and even though you wouldn't think that cherry fits that description, for me, that is the general profile of this drink. The cinnamon and bitters temper the cherry liqueur in a really nice way, and all the flavors, including the rum, meld together really well. Maybe not one of my absolute favorites, but I did really like this drink and would easily make it again. 

And here's why I love YouTube - the person who posted this writes, "Probably never used commercially this jingle came from a demo record that was found in a job-lot of 78s. The record had 2 versions, this 'cha cha' version and a beat version on the other side."

So, I leave you with a Cha Cha Cherry Heering jingle. Until next time, cheers!

Cocktail #43: Q.B. Cooler

This week I was in search of a pleasant sounding drink that used passion fruit syrup, since I made a batch a couple of weeks ago with some very expensive fresh passion fruits. I'm not sure how long this stuff keeps (perhaps the splash of vodka I added will help?) so I wanted to make use of it while it was still good.

Paging through my tiki drink companion, Jeff Berry's Grog Log, I came across the Q.B. Cooler. Berry doesn't provide much background on this one, other than to say, "by Don the Beachcomber, circa 1941, when the house rule was "a limit of two to a customer." It was only after I made and consumed this delightful cocktail that I did a little Googling to see if I could find more info on it. As it turns out, it seems that Berry himself may have updated the recipe in a later version of this book (Beachbum Berry Remixed). I'll provide both - the one I used from the Grog Log as well as the seemingly updated version I've found online.

Grog Log version:

0.50 oz. fresh lime juice
0.50 oz. orange juice
0.25 oz. passion fruit syrup
0.25 oz. sugar syrup
2.00 oz. dark Jamaican rum (I used Plantation Original Dark)
1.00 oz. light Puerto Rican rum (I used good old Havana Club)
Dash Angostura bitters
1.8 tsp Pernod

Blend with 12 oz. crushed ice for 5 seconds and pour into a double old fashioned glass. Add more crushed ice to fill. Garnish with mint sprigs.

I garnished with a long orange peel, mint, and a cocktail cherry speared to a lime wheel with a plastic flamingo pick, naturally.

My Googling led me to this version, on the lovely site, Chemistry of the Cocktail:

1.00 oz orange juice
0.50 oz lime juice
0.50 oz honey syrup
0.25 oz falernum
1.00 oz soda water
1.00 oz gold Jamaican rum
1.00 oz light Puerto Rican rum
0.50 oz Demerara rum
2 dashes Angostura bitters
0.25 tsp ginger syrup

As you can see, this version removes passion fruit syrup completely, uses some different types of rum, adds falernum, honey syrup, and ginger syrup, and removes Pernod. So, quite a different drink, it seems. I've found similar versions with ginger syrup in my Interweb travels, so it would seem this is the ultimate Q.B. Cooler recipe - I need to try it soon to compare! Many writers seem to compare this version, and in fact claim it was the inspiration for, Trader Vic's Mai Tai.

I did find one little nugget about the origin of its name - according to Kindred Cocktails, the "Q.B." stands for "Quiet Birdmen," which, according to Wikipedia, is "a secretive club in the United States for male aviators" and was originally founded in France in 1919 (and then in the USA in 1921) as a sort of drinking club.

Anyway ... my verdict? Wonderful cocktail. It has the potential to taste too "juicy" or "punchy" - like some nebulous "tiki drink" one might get at a cheesy Florida beach bar. But what saves it, in my opinion, is the Pernod and the Angostura bitters. These two ingredients - scant as they are - add an important spicy/dry note to the drink which gives it a bit more interest than it otherwise would have. Considering the second version, I can only imagine that aspect of it is enhanced by ginger syrup, which I've never tried, as well as the falernum.

I'll leave you with something that a good friend of mine recently turned me on to. Korla Pandit was a midcentury performer who played eerie organ music with an "Indian" twist. He purported to be a Hindu, despite the fact that Hindus do not wear turbans (Sikhs wear turbans, and do not wear jewels in them). In reality, he was an African American man from St. Louis, a secret that he kept to himself until nearly the day he died. He actually made an appearance as himself in the wonderful Ed Wood in the party scene.


His music has sort of an "Indian Esquivel" feel to it. If you like that sort of thing, check out Korla Pandit! Here he is playing Miserlou. Cheers!

Cocktail #42: Boo Loo (In a Pineapple)

Despite being a bit behind schedule, I'm in the final stretch! Forty-two down, ten to go!

This week, I wanted to do something easy, and something fun. How can you ever go wrong with a drink served in a pineapple? I've done a couple pineapple drinks in the past, and it never gets old. I found this recipe for the Boo Loo (in a pineapple) in Jeff Berry's Grog Log. He doesn't provide any attribution for this one other than "circa 1965."

Let's get right into it:

A few small chunks of fresh pineapple
2.50 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice
1.50 oz. fresh lime juice
1.00 oz. honey
1.50 oz. club soda
1.50 oz. Demerara rum (I used Hamilton)
1.50 oz. gold Puerto Rican rum (I used Mount Gay, which is from Barbados)
0.75 oz. dark Jamaican rum (I used Plantation)
0.75 oz. 151 Demerara rum (I used Lemon Hart)

Heat the honey until liquid, then mix with juices and fruit in a blender. Stir in rums and soda. Pour into a 36 ounce snifter -- or a hollowed out pineapple -- that is filled with crushed ice.

I served mine in a pineapple, as you can see. I messed up the way I chopped the top off and it ended up not working as a cap, so then I just cut the leaves off right at the base and speared them into the pineapple core with a cocktail pick.

Now, you may notice that this sucker contains *a lot* of alcohol. I would encourage you to try halving this recipe in order to not imbibe so much in one drink. Then again, if you want to settle into a Friday night with this sucker, who am I to suggest you do anything differently - but you've been warned!

My first impression after taking a sip was that the honey, which was very noticeable, went really well with the darker rums present in this cocktail. Yes, this drink is very boozy. But, considering the amount of rum present, it actually was easy to drink and incredibly did not feel overpowering. The club soda and a little dilution once some of the ice melts surely helps - the 10th sip will definitely be different than the first. I enjoyed this drink a lot, but next time I'd probably halve the recipe and dial the honey back just ever so slightly.

I'll leave you with a little Andrews Sisters number, which I actually hadn't heard before: "Hula Ba-Luau." Cheers!

Cocktail #41: Jet Pilot

I've been wanting to try to make a Jet Pilot for a long time. It's one of the more complicated cocktails out of the previous 40 I've made, and it seemed to tick a lot of boxes on my "usually like" list - interesting history, a sort of dark/spicy flavor profile (with the cinnamon syrup, herbstura, etc.), and on top of that, a name inspired by the jet/space age.

The recipe comes from Martin and Rebecca Cate's Smugger's Cove. Cate credits the recipe back to Jeff "Beachbum" Berry's Sippin' Safari book, which I do not own, and from what I understand, the drink was created in 1956 by Mariano Licudine (who worked for Donn Beach at one point), and based the drink on Donn Beach's Test Pilot. The version below, Cate notes, comes from The Luau in Beverly Hills, CA.

Postcard from the Luau, via Critiki. From the personal collection of Tim Haack

Get your shakers ready ...

0.50 oz. fresh lime juice
0.50 oz. fresh grapefruit juice
0.50 oz. cinnamon syrup
0.50 oz. John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum
1.00 oz. black blended rum (I used Gosling's Black Seal)
0.75 oz. blended aged rum (I haven't sprung for an aged rum yet, so I used my old standby, Plantation Original Dark)
0.75 oz. black blended overproof rum (I used Lemon Hart 151)
1 dash Herbstura (equal parts Pernod/Herbsaint [a licorice liqueur] and Angostura bitters mixed together)

Add all the ingredients to a drink mixer tin, or a shaker. Fill with crushed ice (and some "agitator cubes" if using a mixer), flash blend or shake, and open pour with a gated finish into a double old fashioned glass. No garnish*.

* Given the name of this blog, and the fact that my lovely wife Jen can create nearly anything in miniature form out of sculpy clay, I asked and she kindly agreed to sculpt a mini 1960s style fighter jet to be used as a garnish. I also couldn't resist using a blinking ice cube!

Astro ponders the limits of outer space

Verdict: Fabulous. As I suspected I would, I really loved this cocktail. It's pretty strong, but it has a wonderful spicy flavor profile, with a hint of sweetness. This may not be everyone's cup of tea (Jen made quite a face when she tasted it) but I found this to be really a lovely drink. Granted, there's a ton of ingredients, some difficult to make or find, but if you've already got a lot of this stuff in your bar, this one is a winner in my book, and worth trying out.

Cheers!

Enjoying a Jet Pilot on the patio on one of Chicago's first warm afternoons

Now, enjoy some Jazz for the Jet Age from Dave Pike:

Cocktail #40: Siboney

I just realized the other day that about one year has passed since I embarked on this little project. And here I am, only 40 cocktails in after 52 weeks. So it goes. I guess I need to pick up the pace!

The Siboney. Fresh Passion Fruit Syrup Makes this Drink

This week we have a very simple cocktail that's easy to make and very accessible -- and is now one of my new favorites. I found it in Jeff Berry's Potions of the Caribbean and he credits it back to Trader Vic, circa 1950s, but found in The Trader's 1974 book, Rum Cookery & Drinkery. Berry notes that the Siboney "is a good example of how Trader Vic took the Daiquiri template in interesting directions--and how he kept the inventory down at his bar. Double to Siboney, add a dash of Angostura bitters, and serve over crushed ice in a pilsner glass; now you have the Trader Vic Grog."

This cocktail contains passion fruit syrup, and readers of this blog will be familiar with my bad luck/incorrect use of Monin Passion Fruit Syrup. Well, this week I decided to bite the bullet on some expensive passion fruits at the shop and make my own. There's tons of recipes out there for this stuff, and Berry and Cate have their own variations that use passion fruit puree (which, for me has been harder to find than passion fruit), so I landed on this one from Episurious.com, which I halved:

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup passion fruit pulp (from about 7 ripe passion fruits)

Combine all ingredients in heavy small saucepan. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat to low; simmer until syrup is reduced to 1 1/2 cups, about 15 minutes. Transfer to bowl, cover, and chill. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep chilled.)

I added about an ounce of vodka to what I had leftover hoping to make this keep for a couple weeks.

Anyway, WHAT A DIFFERENCE THIS MADE! Instead of being totally overpowering, the fresh passion fruit syrup gave this just a hint of what the Monin stuff would have done with a similar amount. It was subtle and delicious, and didn't hit you over the head at all. I'm tempted to dump the Monin stuff down the drain after tasting a cocktail with the real McCoy.

To make a Siboney:

1.00 oz. dark Jamaican rum (I used Plantation)
0.50 oz. fresh lemon juice
0.50 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice
0.50 oz. passion fruit syrup

Shake well with ice cubes. Strain into a tiki-stemmed (or regular old coupe) cocktail glass. I garnished with a slice of lime.

As I said, the verdict for this cocktail for me was fabulous - a new favorite! The most present flavor is pineapple when you first sip, followed by the rum and passion fruit. The lemon juice takes the edge off of the sweetless of the passion fruit syrup, and balances it all very nicely.

This is a cocktail I will undoubtedly come back to again and again this summer. Next time I might reduce the pineapple juice by a hair to let a bit more of the rum shine through, but all in all, this one's a keeper.

Cheers, and happy spring!

Cocktail #39: Demerara Dry Float

This cocktail has been on my "to make eventually" list for a while, and it wasn't until recently that I was finally able to do so - with the gift of a bottle of Lemon Hart 151 Demerara rum from the Meek Tiki and his lovely wife Amber - thank you again!

This drink appears in both Jeff Berry's Intoxica! and in Martin and Rebecca Cate's Smuggler's Cove and I've borrowed variations on both recipes to make this drink. Here's Berry's recipe, to which he credits Donn the Beachcomber, circa 1941 (my modifications noted):

2.50 oz. fresh lime juice
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
1.50 oz. passion fruit syrup¹
0.25 oz. sugar syrup²
1.00 oz. Demerara rum³
0.25 oz. Demerara rum⁴
0.50 oz. maraschino liqueur

Method: shake everything - except the 151 rum - with ice cubes. Strain into a double old fashioned glass filled with crushed ice. Carefully float the 151 rum. Do not stir.

¹ Given my experience with the Monin passion fruit syrup of it being way too overpowering if used in recommended quantities, I decided to halve the amount for this drink to 0.75 oz. If you have made your own passion fruit syrup or perhaps use a different, less powerful brand, your mileage may vary. For the Monin, 0.75 oz. was just about right.
² I used Demerara sugar syrup instead
³  I upped this slightly to 1.25 ounces
⁴ I went with Martin Cate's version and used 0.75 oz. of the Lemon Hart 151

I also went with Cate's version of serving this drink - with a "side of danger!" - and poured the 151 rum into a separate shot glass. Cate recommends "encourag[ing] guests to pour as much or as little of the overproof rum into their drink as they like, and experience how the drink flavor changes."

A side of danger! Lemon Hart 151

When I realized that a full 2.5 ounces of lime juice went into this sucker, my expectations dropped slightly since I assumed that the citrus would be overpowering. While indeed tart, it actually was nicely balanced by the Demerara syrup and passion fruit syrup. The Demerara rums played really well with the tartness of the lime, and the sweetness of the syrups. I ended up really enjoying this drink from the get-go. I drank several sips before floating any of the Lemon Hart 151 onto the top of it. After the float of about half of the shot glass, the flavor did indeed change, and not just strength-wise in terms of the alcohol. The drink became a bit smokier from the 151, with a bit more caramel flavor. Really very nice!

If you're a person who likes tart and sour things, you'll be into this. As my better half said, after tasting it and making an unpleasant pucker face, "of course you like this. If you could, you'd probably rim the glass with Sour Patch Kids coating!" Hmmmm ...!

Floating the 151 rum

Post 151 float

Jeff Berry ends the recipe page for the Demerara Dry Float with the "Beachcomber's Creed" composed in the early 1940s by Donn's first wife, Cora "Sunny" Sund:

"Our number one pre-requisite / Never stand when you can sit / And if you can - lie down a bit / Relax - no matter what you do / Enjoying life is up to you / The world is just a point of view / When day is done - and comes the night / No pastime makes the stars so bright / As greeting dusk with rum's delight / of all life's pleasures, deeplly drink / At every worry give a wink / It's much later than you think"

Cheers to that.

A slightly different take on the same sentiment, about 40 years later: