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.

Blackberry Margarita

Greetings, folks. It’s been a rough few weeks. How about a drink?

I’ve been wanting to play with my Leopold’s blackberry liqueur since my buddy and I had Rum Runners in Reno on a photo expedition to the desert. Blackberry liqueur (aka blackberry brandy; crème de mûre) is a great ingredient for winter cocktails, a little escape in the darker part of the year.

Blackberry Margarita

• 2 oz reposado tequila (Hornitos)
• 1/2 oz blackberry brandy (Leopold Bros)
• 1/4 oz Cointreau
• 1/2 oz lime juice

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

Big tequila up front gives way to blackberry somewhere in the middle. The housemate and I had a few of these over the course of chili night, and the food brought out the lime quite a bit.

Fort Point (San Francisco)

John Gertsen created one of the same name at Drink, which is in Boston’s Fort Point, but I’m thinking of a different bay. If you’ve seen Kim Novak jump into the water in Vertigo, that’s the spot.



Fort Point (San Francisco)

• 3/4 oz Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy
• 3/4 oz London dry gin
• 3/4 oz Aperol
• 1/2 oz lemon

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

A morning cocktail I ad libbed while having bagels with a friend—on a recent visit to New York, oddly enough. Related to my Baker Beach, hence the name.

Manhattan Variations: Bushwick

Here’s a Brooklyn with sweet vermouth instead of dry. I had wondered if it might be slightly too heavy for my taste but ended up enjoying it. The inspiration of bartender Phil Ward, it was brought to my attention by Keith P, who writes theSpeakista and has a fine Manhattan series of his own.



Bushwick

• 2 oz rye (Rittenhouse 100)
• 3/4 oz sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica)
• 1/4 oz Torani Amer
• 1/4 oz Maraschino (Luxardo)

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
SOURCE: PHIL WARD, BY WAY OF THESPEAKISTA

Richer than the original Brooklyn, there’s a Red Hookish darkness from the sweet vermouth that I may even prefer in this sort of arrangement to dry vermouth.

MxMo LXV: Equal Parts—Arithmetic Leisure

Very warm thanks to Frederic of Cocktail Virgin Slut for both taking over Mixology Monday and for being this month’s host. And most of all, I’d like to thank him for eliminating the need to rack my tipsy brain trying to remember how much was measured for each ingredient in the final version of my drink because Frederic’s theme is equal parts. (Whether I can pour equal parts by the end of the evening is another story.)



Arithmetic Leisure

• 1 oz Dry Rye Gin
• 1 oz Punt e Mes
• 1 oz Campari
• 1 oz fresh orange juice

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

This aperitif cocktail is built around the Dry Rye Gin from St. George Spirits, the fruit notes from the other ingredients balancing the rye, juniper and peppercorns, and the bitter botanicals all coming together as a whole.

Manhattan Variations: Saratoga Cocktail

DJ HawaiianShirt of Spirited Remix suggested that this Manhattan relative might make an interesting taste comparison with the more familiar standard. It’s certainly very grand, swapping half the whiskey with brandy. I went all the way and made mine with Courvoisier and 100-proof rye, just as I sometimes do with Sazeracs. The vermouth on the first round was with Martini & Rossi—good to be sure—but it was much richer when made with the dense and vanillic Carpano Antica as Paul Clarke suggests.

I made a Saratoga and a Manhattan with the same amounts of spirits, bitters and vermouth, and the housemate and I each had a half. We agreed that the Saratoga was rounder, silkier, more contemplative. The Manhattan seemed edgier, like its weight was shifted slightly forward.

I dunno that I have a preference per se except to note that for all my years in San Francisco, my feet still wanna get me everywhere in a New York minute.



Saratoga Cocktail

• 1 oz rye
• 1 oz cognac
• 1 oz sweet vermouth
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist.

This recipe, more or less, appears in Jerry Thomas’s Bar-Tender’s Guide, as per my usual my time machine for the 19th-century cocktail, David Wondrich’s Imbibe!

Manhattan Calling: Manhattan Cocktail Links

The last few days, I’ve been running around like the proverbial decapitated chicken, but don’t suppose for a moment that I haven’t been thinking about and drinking Manhattans in my customary fashion. Below are a few links I happened to like, in no particular order.

The great gaz regan on the great whiskey potion.

And of course you gotta have Wondrich too.

Oh yeah—and Robert Hess has a video.

Then there’s the Wall Street Journal.

None of these mentions that story about Jennie Jerome having invented the Manhattan, presumably because she didn’t and it seems barely worthy of a footnote now. But it turns up now and then—I saw it in the first bar book I read—so you might as well have it. You can say that you read it in The NYT so it must be true that it’s not true. And there’s a variation at Churchill, appropriately, which is named after her, and more of a Brooklyn anyway.