The Cocktail Barrel #7

The Cocktail Barrel is back! I recently improved the format of the recipe page and I also got some more ingredients so you can expect more recipes to come soon!

If there is a rum you’d like to see in a cocktail please get in touch with me!

A rum Mint Julep is a favourite drink of mine and, in my opinion, an overlooked combo.

So why not make my own tasty take on it? For this I chose the Bristol Spirits Trinidad 8 Year Old, a little gem I discovered at the Rum Show. It was distilled at Trinidad Distillers Limited (Angostura) and it’s a fairly heavy column rum with nice, sharp stone fruits notes.

Now I present:

Trini-minty Julep

Mint Leaves – 10
Cardamom pods – 6
Re’al Peach Syrup – 15ml
Bitter Truth Creole Bitters – 3 dashes
Bristol Spirits Trinidad 8 Year Old – 50ml

Add the cardamom pods to a mint Julep tin and crush them. Add the rest of the ingredients to the tin along with crushed ice and churn everything. Top with more crushed ice and garnish with a mint spring, pineapple leaves, dried peach and cardamom pods.

All the ingredients are here to bring out the fruity and minty notes of the rum. The result is refreshing with a good amount of peach and other moreish flavours.

I realised I have no Negroni style drinks on the site so I had to rectify that.

I went for the Hurricane Overproof Rum from the Isle of Man because its profile reminds me of a marriage of medicinal mezcal and moreish rum and also because I simply love it – I mean it clocks at 64% ABV.

The drink itself is inspired by the fairly popular Mezcal Negroni.

The name isn’t anything special and there’s a chance it’ll be already taken, but if not, let me copyright it and get those £££.

Manx Negroni

Hurricane Overproof Rum – 25ml
Campari – 25ml
Discarded Sweet Cascara Vermouth – 20ml
Green Chartreuse – 5ml
Pink Pepper & Grapefruit Bitters – 3 dashes

Add all the ingredients to a mixing glass and stir until chilled. Strain into a tumbler glass over cubed ice and garnish with a grapefruit peel.

The pink & grapefruit bitters are homemade by me and bring out the citrus and peppery notes of the rum while the Chartreuse compliments the medicinal profile of the rum. Everything else is self-explanatory for a Negroni. A lovely mix of spicy, herbaceous, bittter and sweet.

Here’s a simple and not particularly original cocktail, although very tasty.

Rum and coconut water is a no-brainer really and I feel like it’s a very underrated combo outside the Caribbean so I played a little with it.

For the rum I chose a special rum from Foursquare Distillery in Barbados, a limited edition, 60% ABV rum aged for 12 years in ex-Bourbon barrels.

I found that Barbadian rums have a natural coconut note which makes it a pretty obvious choice. So here is:

The Tropical Barrel

Foursquare 2010 – 35ml
Coconut Water – 100ml
Angostura Bitters – 1 dash
Briottet Creme De Banane – 5ml

Add all the ingredients to a highball, pack it with cubed ice and give it a gentle stir. Garnish with a grapefruit wedge.

This is the Caribbean in a cup, coconut galore along with some other tropical flavours with the banana liqueur bringing the sweet flavours out and the grapefruit giving it a bit of an edge.

If you’re using a standard 40% ABV Barbadian rum use 50ml instead.