Beginning of the End (Difford's Guide)

 

This wonderfully balanced cocktail combines some of my favorite things: aged rum, sherry, sweet vermouth and Amer Picon. The rum might not be spiced, but the cocktail is with vermouth, amaro, and flamed orange peel--it makes for the perfect winter sipper.

One of the new ingredients on my bar is George Bowamn dark Caribbean rum from the Bowman Distillery in Fredricksburg, Virginia. This rum has a great small batch, island produced flavor that really works well with American colonial-style cocktails. Rum, sherry, a quinine spirit to ward off malaria--these ingredients, taken from all over the world, came together in America through colonial trade and make up the flavor profile of our nation's cocktail history.

This is a Difford's Guide recipe that plays on the Fin de Siecle, or "End of The World," a classic cocktail with similar proportions of ingredients but uses gin instead of aged rum. 

• 1 1/2 oz. aged dark rum (George Bowman used)
• 1/2 oz. Antica formula vermouth (Cocchi di Torino used)  
• 1/3 oz. Amer Picon (homemade used)
• 1/3 oz. Oloroso sherry
• flamed orange peel garnish

Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. To flame the orange peel, cut a piece of orange zest. While holding a flame over the drink, squeeze the zest to release oils onto the flame to produce a flash and burnt orange oil fregrance. 

 

Black Stripe

Here's a strangely piratical cocktail that's good for warming you up on a winter night. Dark rum is usually made from molasses, and blackstrap rum is made with adding more molasses to the spirit to color it black. This hot drink capitalizes on the black color of molasses to keep the liquid dark after adding boiling water, as well as to add sweetness.

Blackstrap molasses is especially dark and rich. It is bittersweet because it is the sugar residue from processing white sugarcane. Cooking it down longer makes it darker and more bitter. Replacing brown sugar in a hot drink with blackstrap molasses is a good idea because it adds thickness and sugar sweetness.

The recipe says to serve it flaming and to use a spoon to extinguish the flames by stirring the rum topper under the hot water. This is not easily done. You can ignite the rum topper, but it flashes quickly and goes out almost instantly. So maybe just ignite it in front of the drinker for show, but more importantly, singe the cinnamon stick to get it smoking like incense.

• 3 oz. dark rum (Lyon Bijou Batch used)
• boiling water
• 2 tsp. molasses (blackstrap molasses used)
• lemon twist
• cinnamon stick
• fresh grated nutmeg

Add molasses, lemon twist, cinnamon stick and boiling water to a warm mug. Float dark rum on top and ignite. Stir to extinguish the flame and dust with nutmeg.

Blue Blazer

The Blue Blazer is a funny hot drink that is designed to burn before it is extinguished by hot water. I can see Jerry Thomas tossing the flaming liquid from glass to glass as the instructions suggest. The problem with the recipe that I encountered is that most scotches don't burn. The closest I could come to a combustible scotch was Cutty Sark Prohibition Edition, which flashes briefly and dies.

This is a showmanship cocktail for sure, and the original recipe describes using two glasses to toss flaming liquid from one glass to the other. Scotch won't do it, but a dash of 151 rum, about 1/4 oz. will do the trick, along the edges of the glass gives you the right light show that we are looking for. Moving the glass much puts this all out, so just appreciate the flame--which is very blue, of course--and pour the hot water to get things going. This is a great winter drink when you feel a warming cocktail will improve your health.

• 2 1/2 oz. scotch (Cutty Sark Prohibition Edition used)
• 1/4 oz. 151-proof rum
• 1 tsp. brown sugar
• boiling water
• lemon twist

Pour scotch (and 151 rum) into a mug and ignite with a lighter. If you are feeling brave, pour flaming concoction into another mug, moving them back and forth to create a tossing fire effect. Add sugar and boiling water to put out the flame and garnish with a lemon twist.