When Black Friday Comes

If you’re reading this in the United States, you probably know it’s a big shopping day here. Whether you like that sort of thing or don’t, a tropical drink might help.



When Black Friday Comes

• 2 oz amber Martinique rum (Saint James)
• 2 tsp allspice dram
• 1/4 oz absinthe
• 2 oz lime juice
• 2 oz ginger beer

Shake all except ginger beer with ice and strain into a 10-ounce glass. Top with ginger beer and fresh ice. Mint sprig.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

For the rum, I went with Saint James Royal Ambre. It’s mellower than some other Martinique rums but the funk is definitely there, and it plays subtly with the absinthe and allspice. This drink should be good with Caribbean or Chinese food.

I use a lot of Fever Tree Ginger Beer—my favorite. It has the light body and clean flavor I prefer. The little market where I do most of my daily shopping stocks Bruce Cost’s Ginger Ale, tasty if a bit rich for highballs. It’ll work in the above recipe.

Maybe someday I’ll get it together enough to make Erik’s luscious-looking fermented ginger beer.

SF Pub Crawling: Trad’r Sam; Trick Dog

Lots of running around like the proverbial decapitated chicken lately, tasting beverages of every description. There were two must-trys from my list that I finally squeezed in: one old, one new.

Trad’r Sam is the comfortable old favorite everyone hopes to find—so much so that I blinked a couple of times when it emerged from the deep silver fog of a Richmond morning, wondering if it could really be there. Still there. My cohort and I had a chance to chat with the affable barman Fred before a rush, and it was swell time. Try a Monkey’s Tail or a Planter’s Punch.



Trick Dog is the latest of the greatest, a cocktailian bar with food where everything’s exciting and fun. When I walk into one of these places, I try to order the drink with the strongest element of surprise, a strategy which could prove challenging at Trick Dog. But for this visit, I decided to see how my current fascination with wine cocktails might play out in their list, and was happy to find two sherry items, Bad Girl (no winking at the bartender, please) and I Am… I Said. And of course they were great, and totally surprising.

Fred’s Sherry Mai Tai

This is a great wine cocktail remix by the incomparable Frederic Yarm of Cocktail Virgin Slut. The recipe follows the basic Trader Vic template, changing the Jamaica and Martinique rums for two styles of sherry. These wines as well as the classic Mai Tai are house favorites here so of course I jumped when I saw this item on Fred’s blog. Rich and flavorful, the crushed ice held onto the sherry flavor to the last.



Sherry Mai Tai

• 1 1/2 oz amontillado
• 1/2 oz Pedro Ximenez (subbed East India Solera)
• 1/2 oz curaçao
• 1 oz lemon juice
• 1/2 oz orgeat

Shake with ice and strain into a double old fashioned full of crushed ice. Mint garnish. (Used a cherry.)
SOURCE: FREDERIC YARM, COCKTAIL VIRGIN SLUT

Sorry to be all out of mint last night when making these but the sweet almond aroma of the (naturally) candied cherry worked well enough with the other nutty flavors in the drink.

Tangelo Terrarium

We’re enjoying the last evening of Tiki Month here at the Lounge with another original tropical climate in a glass. This one’s tangy and a little spicy, sort of a snifter-sized tangerine in crushed ice.



Tangelo Terrarium

• 2 oz gold Barbados rum
• 1/2 oz Swedish punsch
• 1/4 oz allspice dram
• 1/2 oz Lemon Hart 151 (float)
• 2 1/2 pink grapefruit juice, fresh
• 1 oz tangelo juice
• 1/2 oz lime juice

Shake all except Lemon Hart with ice cubes and strain into a large snifter. Add crushed ice. Float the Lemon Hart. Tangelo twist, mint sprig.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Sort of an aquatic terrarium—or a rum one. I like overproof floats on Tiki drinks for so many reasons, not least because they’re something to look forward to in all that crushed ice at the end.

FM

We’re celebrating Tiki Month here at the Lounge, a time of fantasy and frivolity to buffer us from those slings and arrows that give even the best people a bad time. And so we bring you another luscious libation, an elixir for grooving to the radio all night long. As Fagan and Becker say, “No static at all.”



FM

• 2 1/2 oz gold Barbados rum
• 3/4 oz white crème de cacao
• 2 oz grapefruit juice
• 1 oz lime juice
• 2 – 3 dashes grapefruit bitters

Shake with ice cubes and strain into a double old fashioned. Fresh ice to fill. Grapefruit twist.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Grapefruit and chocolate in a delicate state of winter suspension.

Banana Colada

The banana: aromatic, starchy, ubiquitous. There is a race to rescue this important agricultural product from Panama disease, in case you didn’t know—pretty freaky, and a disturbingly apt metaphor for our time. I probably eat a dozen of the things a week, and would be at a total loss without them. That said, the banana’s a slightly strange drink ingredient, reducing your cocktail to a sort of alcoholic baby food. But the perfume of the banana has an allure irresistible—so much that I can’t help but try to make it work in various iterations.

Take the Banana Colada. According to the recipes I’ve found, this is a Piña Colada with banana in it. That sounds swell but I had hoped for a more direct banana-coconut relationship. Typically, these things are rarely as you imagine them, even on a Saturday with lots of planning and a guaranteed ride home. Nevertheless, I have whipped up, for your delectation, a pineapple-free Banana Colada. It does not quite have the merits of a fine Piña Colada but it is not a Piña Colada either, as far as that goes.

Special ingredients ingredients for this colada experiment: some homemade crème de banane—easy to do, even on a week night—and a little Licor 43.

Banana Colada

• 2 1/2 oz gold Puerto Rican rum
• 1 oz crème de banane (Serious Eats recipe)
• 1/2 oz Licor  43
• 2 oz Thai coconut milk
• 1 ripe banana, sliced
• 8 oz crushed ice

Blend at high speed about a minute. Banana, cherry, nutmeg garnish. Coconut mug.
ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

I used Barrilito for the rum, which seemed a little woodier than I would’ve liked with the rawness of the fruit, but worked better as the drink had a little time to develop. I’m still not entirely won over by the starchiness of the smoothie cocktail concept, but this was highly drinkable. Those juice bars really ought to offer rum as an option. Now that would be a boost.

Rum Runner

Drinks that call for crème de banane had been far down on my list for a long time because the commercial bottlings available looked suspiciously like scented lamp oil. But in a moment of wild abandon, I ordered a Rum Runner with a friend while in Nevada and was ruined forever. It was a bubble gum flavored orgy of ecstatic perversion. “Banana! Banana!” I demanded, stamping my gorilla feet.

Luckily, it’s really easy to make crème de banane, as this Serious Eats recipe demonstrates. I pretty much just followed the recipe, waiting until my bananas were at the peak of aroma, and using Mount Gay Eclipse Silver for the base. I also add a few drops of vanilla extract for complexity. Worked great.

The Rum Runner recipe itself presented a few problems. All the ones I saw in my drink book library were blended. The ones my buddy and I got were made with bar ice. More importantly, they were made with things I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole if shopping for the house. How can you lose all dignity with a shelf full of only the good stuff? Well, that’s where we aim for the chopping block here at the old Fogged In Lounge. Below are a couple of craft Rum Runners that should toss you on the seas of dementia.

Rum Runner #1

• 1 oz Bacardi 151
• 1 oz crème de banane (homemade)
• 1 oz blackberry brandy (Leopold Bros)
• 1/2 oz grenadine (Small Hand Foods)
• 1 1/oz lime juice

Shake with crushed ice and pour into a chimney glass or tiki mug.

This one was adapted from the original by “Tiki John” Ebert, as presented in Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log. I went with crushed ice and slightly rounded off measures. It makes a fine Rum Runner. For a solution of my own that captures something of my Reno insanity, try the next one.

Rum Runner #2

• 1 1/2 oz Bacardi 151
• 1 1/2 oz crème de banane
• 1 oz blackberry brandy
• 1 oz lemon juice

Shake with crushed ice and pour into a chimney glass or tiki mug.

If that seems like a lot of 151, maybe it is, but it sort of dries the whole thing down and you’ll feel like you’ve been to the casinos, for better or worse—probably both.

Gin-Tiki

I can’t let Tiki Month go by without posting a tall gin recipe. Gin’s one of my favorite tropical drink ingredients, whether it be with tonic and lots of fresh lime or one of the more elaborate mid-20th century classics like the Fog Cutter, the Suffering Bastard or any version of the Singapore Sling.

Here’s a seemingly smooth but potentially lethal one of my own, the Gin-Tiki. Beware the calm seas and don’t go down with the raft.



Gin-Tiki

• 2 oz dry gin
• 1 oz gold Puerto Rican rum
• 1/2 oz Velvet Falernum
• 1 oz white grapefruit juice
• 1 oz pineapple juice
• 1 oz lime juice

Shake with ice cubes and strain into a 12-ounce collins glass. Fresh ice to fill. Mint garnish.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

MxMo LXIV: TIKI!—Rongorongo

February is Tiki Month, and for those of you who’ve been marooned without the joys of civilization, Doug Winship of the Pegu Blog is serving up all things Tiki, including this month’s Mixology Monday. His theme, of course, is Tiki! so grab half the bottles in the bar and make extra ice—this is gonna be a MxMo to remember. ...Or at least to the extent that it’s possible to remember anything after sucking down all those big tropical drinks. Please join me in a monumental Fogged In mahalo to Doug for hosting.



Rongorongo

• 2 oz gold Puerto Rican rum (Ron del Barrilito)
• 1 oz Gosling’s Black Seal Rum
• 1 oz Grand Marnier
• 1/4 oz Velvet Falernum
• 1/4 oz St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
• 1 oz pineapple juice
• 1 oz lime juice

Shake with ice cubes and strain into a Tiki mug filled with crushed ice.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

With notes of molasses, orange peel and spices twinkling softly like little colored lights, it’s sorta like Christmas all over again in an Easter Island mug. My mugs are 12 ounces, and I could fill them about 3/4 with crushed ice without being left with a dividend.

Beyond the Sea

A big mahalo to Doug for spurring us all into Tiki action for the month of February. (Sorry I’m late putting on my aloha shirt. Too busy getting... aw, skip it.) Here’s a spice number I made up this morning: cinnamon out front doing the funk with the Smith & Cross. Note the groovy mid-century Tapio Wirkkala glass. Hey, Finland’s an island—sort of.



Beyond the Sea

• 1 1/2 oz gold Puerto Rican rum (Don Q Añejo)
• 1 oz Smith & Cross Jamaica pot still rum
• 1/4 oz St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1/2 oz Don’s Mix (B.G. Reynolds)
• 1 1/2 oz ginger beer (Fever Tree)

Shake all except ginger beer with ice cubes and strain into a double old fashioned. Add ginger beer and ice to fill. Lime garnish.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Skating

Greetings, folks. It’s the time of year when you might see a bowl of prefab eggnog at a party and know you shouldn’t go there, but you just can’t help but ruin your life, can you? Do you try to avoid it, or just give in right away and despise yourself for the rest of the weekend? You know it’s wrong, even as you kid yourself that the bottle of add-your-own next to it makes it all right—even legal—somehow. Like it’ll all balance out in the end. Sure, pal.

But wait—don’t touch that crap. How about a nice coconut drink instead?



Skating

• 2 1/2 oz gold Jamaica rum
• 1/4 oz Pernod
• 1/4 oz Galliano
• 1 tsp coffee brandy (Firelit Coffee Liqueur)
• 2 oz coconut milk
• 1/4 oz vanilla syrup (B.G. Reynolds’)
• 1/2 oz lemon juice

Shake hard with ice cubes and strain into a 14-ounce glass filled with crushed ice. Cherry, straw.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Coffee, anise and vanilla glide over a coconut-frosted rum pond. It’s wholesome—vegan, even. God Jul, Joyous Kwanzaa, grab your Gin-and-Tonic-ah, drink up.

Forbidden City

There was a half grapefruit in my fridge left over from the previous post, and I wanted to do something Tiki with it. This drink was inspired by descriptions of the old Forbidden Fruit pomelo liqueur, which seems to have been a fine thing indeed.



Forbidden City

• 2 oz gold Barbados rum
• 1 oz Demerara rum
• 3 oz fresh white grapefruit juice
• 1 tsp allspice dram
• 1/4 oz honey syrup (1:1)

Shake with ice cubes and strain into a large, ice-filled glass. Long grapefruit twist.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

The twist really makes this, contributing bright, delicate grapefruit top notes over the dark molasses and spice. I took the twist with a sharp vegetable peeler, removing a little pith with my bar knife.

Mai Tai Punsch

I was sipping a little Rhum Clément and thinking how well it would go with a tea note. This strained drink borrows flavors from the Mai Tai with Swedish Punsch in place of the curacao. I used BG Reynold’s orgeat. Lately, it’s got interesting little bits of almond, but they would’ve been strange in this so I strained them out.



Mai Tai Punsch

• 2 oz amber Martinique rum
• 1/2 oz Swedish Punsch (Underhill Punsch)
  
• 1/2 oz orgeat (BG Reynolds)
• 1/2 oz lime juice

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Mr. Keith

Gonna find my way to heaven, ’cause I did my time in hell
I wasn't looking too good but I was feeling real well

—Before they Make Me Run, M. Jagger/K. Richards

Tiki time again, or in this case, tikibilly cuz there’s definitely some rock and roll in this one. Inspiration came from the mug below, Ye Olde Treasure Mappe, found on a recent trip to Portland, Oregon. (There’s just something tikibilly about Portland, one of the many reasons I keep going back.) The Mappe is one of a numbered edition designed by Katie Mello of Rum Demon.



Mr. Keith

• 1 oz Bacardi 151
• 1 oz Averna
• 1/2 oz Cruzan Blackstrap
• 1/2 oz allspice dram
• 1 tsp absinthe
• 1/4 oz lemon juice

Shake with a cup of crushed ice, and pour into a 12-oz mug or glass. Crushed ice to fill, straw.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Dark, spicy, intense. This one made me think right away of a certain guitarist, but shares a name with my housemate’s dad as well. This drink is for him.

Demerara Cocktail

It’s tempting to call this “remixed” since I keep doing slight variations of this potent number by Mariano Licudine, but it’s just a matter of running out of some basic ingredient whenever I feel like making one. And I often feel like making one. It’s spirit-forward, rich, complex—great for those moments when you find yourself saying you want a real drink.



Demerara Cocktail

• 2 oz Lemon Hart Demerara rum (El Dorado 12 Year)
• 1 oz gold Puerto Rican rum (Mount Gay Eclipse Barbados rum)
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1/2 oz passion fruit nectar
• 1 tsp sugar syrup (1/4 oz Trader Tiki passion fruit syrup)

Shake with ice cubes and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: JEFF “BEACHBUM” BERRY, SIPPIN’ SAFARI

Hercules

I’ve been itching to play with my Demerara rum. This one draws some inspiration from another rum cocktail with Campari, the Jungle Bird. (See Tiare and Frederic editions.) It’s all about a setting for the rum, with bitters, fruit and cacao bringing out lights and complexity. A nice strong one for the middle of the week.



Hercules

• 2 oz Demerara rum (El Dorado 5-year)
• 1/2 oz dark Jamaica rum (Coruba)
• 1/2 oz dark crème de cacao
• 1/2 oz Campari
• 3/4 oz lime juice
• Dash Angostura Bitters

Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lime wheel.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Fogged In Fog Cutter

We have our own version of the classic Fog Cutter here at the Lounge, based loosely on the Beachcomber recipe found in Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Haigh. The Fog Cutter typically calls for lemon but I do this one with lime. It also calls for orgeat, but finding that I’d run out, I substituted honey.

Any rich, dark, mellow honey should be fine for this. The Capay Valley wildflower honey I’ve used in the one shown was another weekend find at the Ferry Building. It’s about the density of a popsicle. It bent the measuring spoon and I had to get a regular teaspoon from the silverware drawer to moose the stuff out of the jar. Worth it, though.



The Fogged In Fog Cutter

• 2 oz gold Barbados rum
• 1 oz pisco
• 1/2 oz gin
• 1/2 oz East India Solera sherry
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1/2 oz orange juice
• 1/2 oz dark honey

Soften the honey for a few seconds in the microwave. Shake all ingredients with ice and pour unstrained into a tall glass.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

This is an evening in San Francisco: smooth and opaque, it just rolls along, not fighting the weather.

The Golden Hind

This is a riff on the Ur-Tiki, the Singapore Sling, but with chocolate in place of cherry and ginger beer instead of plain soda. I’m a big fan of long drinks with lime and ginger beer—especially with Fever Tree ginger beer. Never thought I’d be able to say this of a product: it has that bright, sharp, clean ginger flavor for perfect highballs every time.



The Golden Hind

• 2 oz gin (Tanqueray)
• 3/4 oz oz crème de cacao (Joseph Cartron brun)
• 1/2 oz cognac (Courvoisier VS)
• 1/2 oz Bénédictine
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1 1/2 oz ginger beer (Fever Tree)

Shake all but ginger beer with ice cubes and strain into a tall glass. Top with ginger beer and add fresh ice. Garnish with cherry sprinkled with a bit of coarse sea salt. (Named for the Golden Hind.)
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

Handsome Mug

This week at the Lounge, a carefully wrapped package arrived from Tiki Farm containing a pair of Mana Mana mugs by the great Atomic Tony. Each mug is supposed to be different due to the variegated blue stone glaze, though my two seem matched. They’re amazing works of decorative art. Of course I had to make something to celebrate.



Lost Continent

• 2 oz gold Barbados rum
• 1/2 oz green Chartreuse
• 1/2 oz dark crème de cacao
• 1 oz pineapple juice
• 3/4 oz lime juice

Shake with crushed ice and pour into ceramic mug. Add crushed ice to fill. Pineapple chunk, brandied cherry.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

One of my darker ones, inspired by the huge personality of the mug, and on the drier side of Tiki. The different elements are distinct but nothing’s dominant. There’s a slightly savory note in the middle—possibly from my dry-ish Joseph Cartron cacao, a great ingredient. Middle-earth greens from the Chartreuse. Slight pineapple candy on the swallow, salt caramel on the end.

Hapi Papi

OK—last year I covered St Patrick’s Day. This year it’s Cinco de Mayo. (I honor all peoples every day with a fine drinking holiday, really.) Today’s offering is a riff on one I spotted in Beachbum Berry’s Intoxica! called Happy Buddha, and transformed without much ado into a guava Margarita. (Cross out rum....)



Hapi Papi

• 4 oz guava nectar (Ceres)
• 1 1/2 oz resposado tequila (Hornitos)
• 1/2 oz lime juice
• 1/4 oz Cointreau

Shake with crushed ice and pour into suitably happy container. Lime garnish, straw.
SOURCE: ADAPTED FROM THE HAPPY BUDDHA, FROM JEFF “BEACHBUM” BERRY, INTOXICA!

The original version calls for Rose’s Lime Cordial but is plenty sweet with fresh lime. It also calls for the old school Hawaiian-style rum (Okolehao) but responds really well to the tequila treament. I can still taste an almost rose petal wine note that would compliment the original rum or a rhum agricole.