The Best Rum Drinks I've Ever Had | How to Drink

people always ask me what's the best drink you've ever had what's your favorite drink that's tough one to answer but this episode is about my three favorite rum drinks my three favorites yes these are them i'm gonna stick with it these are my three favorite rum drinks so we're gonna do three drinks today and they're all rum and i know that rum at least in my local liquor store can be really tricky to get uh you know you might have captain morgan and bacardi available but some of the more esoteric rums i use on the show can be hard to find and actually even for me recently i have found smith and cross locally to be really hard to get which is why i am partnered with curiata and if you live in the united states there is a very good chance since i think curiota currently services 70 or 80 percent of the u.s population um that they can ship uh top quality stuff straight to you you can find them from drink.curiata.com or there will be a link just for this episode in the pinned comment below that will take you to all the stuff i'm using on this show actually one of these too this gosling's old rum i i've never seen that before i was just poking around on curiata myself saw it and said i want to try that out and so i ordered that and it's going to show up in this episode it's pretty cool stuff i like it a lot actually and remember that any orders over 200 use this code and you will get free shipping which is great it's a good deal for you okay so one of the questions i get asked all the time either it's in the comments or on twitter or when i'm live streaming on twitch which is over at twitch.tv greg from htd by the way is what is your favorite drink what's the best drink you've ever had and first that's a really tricky thing to answer it's kind of like asking what's your favorite movie i mean i need to narrow the selection range a little bit my favorite noir my favorite pre-code or my favorite horror okay we can work with that but my flat out favorite movie or my flat out favorite drink i love all my babies equally but that's kind of useless so instead that's what i'm gonna do i'm these are probably my top three favorite rum drinks that i've ever had that i've ever made for the show um and if this one does well enough i will be doing follow-ups of this episode or you know for different spirits which will help me a lot because i'll have these episodes then to serve as ready-made answers for those frequent questions uh that said by the way much like if you really pressed me for my favorite movie flat out i'm just gonna answer sunset boulevard uh and so the first drink i'm talking about is the one i most commonly use as my shorthand answer from my favorite drink it's the mai tai they're so good they are just damn good i mean they are just amazing perfect magic cocktails uh and they really are a great way to show off some caribbean rums so let's make a mai tai this drink was invented in 1944 by trader vic who is also known as victor bergeron i talked about him briefly and the mai tai in a recent episode i did about don the beachcomber because they kind of fought over who was the real inventor of the mai tai and his version is supposed to feature a 17 year old rey and nephew rum that he had had in the bar now rey and nephew stopped bottling that expression many decades ago and even from pretty much the very beginning vic was working the recipe with substitution rums but understanding that it was built around a particularly aged jamaican style rum is a great help in guiding your hand when selecting the rums you're going to use to make your mai tai and i'm going to start by pouring two ounces of rum into my shaker but which rums i select or which drums you select to make up those two ounces is a huge factor in a mai tai typically i make these using one ounce of smith and cross and an ounce of something like a demerara like an el dorado eight years or something like that um i think i used to do it with something i used to do it with a smith and cross and a rum agricole i stopped doing that i think the agricult is sort of the wrong move there it still makes a great drink it's just sort of a demerara is better anyway but i've just gotten this bottle of aged goslings from curiata i love the way this bottle smells this is just oh yes so i'm gonna do a three-way split i'm gonna start with one ounce of this old rub from goslings because i really want to kind of feature this one today and then i want to do half an ounce of smith cross which brings a fair bit of funk that jamaican style funk and then i'm gonna do a half an ounce of el dorado five [Music] that smells really good incredibly good like magic now i know by the rules of bar attending you should build your drink in order from least to most expensive ingredient but the rum thing is so foundational to the origins of this drink i kind of had to break the rules to maintain my thread of conversation here that i've got going with you i didn't want to start talking about this old smith and this old ray nephew 17 year old ray nephew and then say but first we need to cut some lime but first i do need to cut a lime i need to cut a lime in half and i need one ounce of lime juice and um these are kind of diminutive limes it may take more than one to do the job so i'm just going to actually assume it will and cut two [Music] all right one ounce of lime juice three quarters of an ounce of borjo this is um not my homemade war show this is small hand foods or show um i have been pretty lazy about making or joe lately honestly but this is the orgo i was going off of when i kind of made up my own recipe i wanted to get something close to this this is still my favorite commercially available or show it is not clear like a lot of other war joes because they leave the fats from the almonds in there and i think that that's a cool thing and an important thing when you're making or joe which is i think should be a little bit different from like a purified rarified almond syrup i need three quarters of an ounce uh do not try to replace this using something like almond extract or amaretto or whatever you really need or it is mandatory for mai tai it's kind of the secret ingredient in my time and it's cheap to make on your own if you're not a lazy bum like me now traditionally the mai tai recipe from trader vic calls for one quarter ounce of rock candy syrup i once read when vic said rock candy syrup he meant a two to one ratio syrup that had vanilla infused into it i've also read that it simply means any two to one syrup i have also also read elsewhere that he went as far beyond two to one as science would allow adding sugar and sugar and sugar to water until it simply wouldn't dissolve anymore i don't know what the truth is there what i do know is that borjo is a syrup too and the rock candy syrup even when i've done the vanilla thing really does kind of just disappear into the drink it just maybe adds sweetness so i'm going to say it's optional if you want this to be a little bit sweeter you can add some simple or if you prefer you could simply up the quantity of oregano and make it a little bit sweeter and almondier i am going to add a quarter ounce of simple here uh now i need half an ounce of dry curacao you could use another orange decor or a triple sec um i strongly prefer this i think grand marnier would be the closest equivalent um okay now i want to shake this up with crushed ice and to do that i'm going to use a lewis bag lewis bag you know i don't know where the who the lewis is that these things are named after but they're basically they were like old bank bags money bags from the uh from the oregon days three big old cubes get a wooden mallet i'm gonna shake this up with some crushed eye ice and one decent sized cube to kind of be to give it some hats to give it some weight to help it aerate um but then a bunch of crushed ice i'm gonna save the rest of that for now i'm gonna give this drink a pretty quick shake uh the chilling and dilution will be near instant because of all the crushed ice so we just really need to mix it and give it a little aeration um and i'm gonna do that half open thing because i want to hold back that one big big cube in there but all that other ice that crushed up ice that's fine i can go in the drink top that up with a bit more of the crushed ice there's science here but this is already at a point where it's so cold that it can hardly dilute more and so you can add all the ice you want it'll be safe it's not going to turn into a big watery mess certainly not real fast anyway the traditional garnish and some say it is mandatory is a half uh half a lime a lime cut in half overturned like an island um and i've been told that you're supposed to use a fresh lime for that job um whatever i will use whatever looks good my limes today looks particularly bad but there you go one fresh lime and a nice sprig of mint so that it will look like a palm tree and this is my mint saver i love this thing you don't even need to keep it in the fridge and i will make it a link available in the pin comment below boom i've also been i've been told that's not really that important doing the clap i've always learned the clap doesn't matter i don't know and then a straw now truth be told the upside down lime that is really just a visual thing you don't really need that but the mint you gotta have them in and you should line up your straw so that it forces your nose into the mint when you drink it like that oh that's so good oh my god it's been a minute since i've had a good my time i was really curious how the goslings was gonna perform here i haven't tested it yet and i love it this is a brighter more fresh tasting mai tai than i've had in a while which is surprising because the age of the goslings you would expect that to work against it it is just crisp lime tartness balanced really well against this almond sweetness and throughout it you have this oaky demerara rum funky uh burning sugar taste you get a little bit of the the jamaican style funk that you know kind of rotting bananas taste that it's not hiding it's rum either this is like a in your face glass of rum oh man i love them i die they're so good just i mean this is just i haven't had a heavenly drink if i finish that whole thing this episode's gonna be a mess so i'm not gonna do that instead we're gonna move on to my next of the three favorite rum drinks right after this okay let's put this let's put this aside let's put it together you you can sit over there safely so the next of my rum favorites from the years of making the show i've had is the el presidente and even though i don't make these drinks nearly enough i am still blown away by the experience i had when i shot this episode years ago it was just some kind of absolute magic that happened in that glass that drink was is one of the finest things i've ever ingested and this is the drink by the way that's similar to manhattan um or even maybe a rum martinez i think if you fancy yourself more of a whiskey cocktail drinker this one might be a really good entry point to the world of rum for you so let's make the drink to make this drink you're going to need your mixing glass and you will start with a little grenadine typically about an eighth of an ounce or a bar spoon it's really just a touch of grenadine it shouldn't really affect the actual flavor of the drink it's more i think just about adding a little blush to it so now i need a quarter ounce of the dry curacao now i used an ounce and a half of lily blanc here when i made this drink way back and i stand by that after all these years this drink was as i said magic and i think that's a big part of why but if you look up other recipes online you're going to see drinks calling for vermouth and maybe even dry vermouth but that's not right you you want a blunk vermouth which is a clear white vermouth that is somewhat sweetened like a red style the lilay fits that category which is why it works so an ounce and a half of lily blanc will be great here now you need an ounce and a half of rum and obviously if there was ever a drink they're called for cuban rum this is it but if you don't have access like me um i don't think a demerara style rum would be too wrong uh but in my case i'm actually going to use plantation five year i think plantation five here i was originally when i was gonna do this episode i was gonna do it with a demerara but i think the plantation i didn't think i had any left um is the better better choice so plantation five year is going to be excellent one and a half rum i'm going to crack some ice into that stir that up those cold and strain that into a coop and then that gets garnished with an orange twist with an orange twist uh and here we have a um an el presidente let's hope it's as good as it should be what a complex and wonderful flavor the evolution there is just really surprising it's a very simple list of ingredients it's kind of the perfect cocktail in that way because like a lot of drinks it's like boy there's a lot of things in here and that's how you get evolution i am pretty guilty of maximalism myself in my own designs because i am not a master um but this drink there is truly nothing left to remove you know it's just got everything it needs in it um that great you know expression the thing isn't done when there's nothing left to add it's done there's nothing left to take away this is it um the lay brings this woodsy woodiness like a sweet mildly sweet woodsiness to it that is um when paired with the right rum really kind of something magical has a the whole thing contributes this very lovely mouth feel that orange aroma and a little bit of taste that gets into the drink from it the whole thing works together so well and there it is there's the el presidente as good as it ever was absolutely one of my favorites a very elegant rum drink too it's one of my favorite things about too it's a stirred rum drink there's not a tremendous number of those that are supremely popular it's lovely it's just a wonderful way to showcase a good rum and the right rum as well and my third but hardly my least favorite rom cocktail is a caipirinha is a cabarina rum drink i'm sure i will ruffle some feathers by asserting the cachaca is rum but it's distilled from sugarcane that's kind of rum it's a specific style of rum no doubt kind of like a romagna coal and you must use kashasa for this drink to be a caperina my favorite is my beloved nova fogo silver this stuff is divine it's so good i almost made my number three one on this list the daiquiri and in truth i probably do drink more daiquiris than caprenas but that's because my wife likes zacharies and i'm very lazy i can't yet to convince her that caprenas are the true one love of the universe i love caipirinhas it's a drink i rate extremely highly which is why it's right here in my top three drum drinks start making this drink by taking a lime and cutting it into eighths but i mean i guess there's no rule about that but eighths fit better in the glass right um and then in the middle of a lime there's this white shaft that runs through it it's the pith um you'll find that all the way around the peel too but certainly you'll find it in the middle you know i have been told since making my cachaca video that your best bet is to pull that out or to cut it out of your lime because it is bitter that is true of the pith of any citrus fruit you will be well you'll appreciate the results take your eighths put them into a shake into the glass you're gonna mix it in boom like so okay muddle it a bit you know this isn't rocket science you just want to squeeze out that lime juice get some oil from the peel all of that good stuff mash it up i do i think some people probably don't i do i'm gonna add two heaping bar spoons of plain white sugar one two i don't mind mine to be a little sweet even maybe i'll do three i actually i'll tell you what too a lot of times i make these with simple syrup there's really no rules here i actually used to think that the sugar was mandatory i was told by a number of brazilian folk after i made mine that like you could do it with some with white sugar or simple syrup whatever you like it's that's one of my favorite things about the streak is that you can make it how you want it don't matter just get the sweetness level that you think you want you know and you're gonna find that through trial and error and by the way you should know that sweetness in cocktails can almost always be to taste and is the first variable you should look at adjusting in a cocktail if if it's almost just right you know if this drink is just almost perfect but you can't get the different nuances from it believe it or not adding a little more sweetness will help or this drink would be better if it was less sweet make it again with less sweetness first thing if you're going to modify a cocktail for your own tastes i would look at adjusting how much sugar you add or subtract to it right that's the first variable after that i'm gonna add two ounces of cachaca and i'm gonna use two ounces of nova fogo and i'm gonna pour that straight on top of all of that and now i'm gonna crack some ice over that and then shake it up um you have a couple of options here i'm going to actually uh that was a mistake just disappeared doing like a magic trick the glasses disappeared use the short tin on this glass you know you can take your boston shaker and just kind of shake anything with it right do i always shake these no i usually stir them actually but i also usually make them with simple syrup honestly when i'm not doing the show here i'm trying to go the traditional route i think and do it with sugar so i think it's better off shook is all the sugar going to dissolve nah probably not pour it back in boom que paina is it caprina or cailla i don't know i don't speak uh portuguese but i would love to go to brazil that is a scrumptious drink god i love that oh my god these are so good so refreshing and what makes it because you might notice that's very close to a daiquiri first off it's it's not because it's textural a daiquiri about a blended daiquiri which is a different thing daiquiri is an up cocktail to show sour it's shaking this has so much chunky ice and pulp from the limes and it's just a very different thing and you got the bits of sugar that aren't dissolved but the other thing is cachaca is rum but it does not taste anything like the rum you would use in daiquiri it has such a different funkiness to it this drink is somehow funky lime sweet salty fresh um a little bit of vegetable you get the tawar even i think there's so much going on in that glass boy is that a good drink very refreshing excellent cocktail well there they are my top three rum drinks i think i think those are my top three favorite rum drinks and i think they're going to fit different tastes too which is handy because they're fit my different moods you know you've got straight up tiki delicious mai tai very refined cocktail for like a smoky cocktail bar they're not smoking anymore but whatever the al presidente you know sort of a up drink martini competitor and then of course my quick and dirty caperina that i just love love these sons of [ __ ] i just want to sit down and i feel like there's a drink have you been to around in a bad ass dune buggy sailing over the dunes all day and you're hot and sweaty you just want to have a capper if you're looking for any of the rums i use in this episode check out drink.curiata.com or use the link in the pinned comment below we're shipping to 28 states in the united states uh and that represents i think 70 or 80 percent of the u.s population so it's a really good chance you are in the curiata service area i'm very happy very proud very thrilled about that partnership um just because so often so many people ask me where can i get this where can i get that now i finally have an answer i'm just so happy to have that um of course it is not an answer that works for everybody i mean there's nothing i can do about that but it's something i'm on twitter at howtodrink i'm on instagram at how to drink i'm now on tick-tock get greg from htd and i am on twitch at greg from htd and i have a patreon at patreon.com how to drink there's a lot of different ways you can get your how to drink fix making the show for quite a while and uh here are some other episodes that you may enjoy until then this is htd and i will see you very soon with another episode thank you so much and uh what is your favorite rum drink by the way is it one of these three or do you have a different favorite rum drink i don't know i love that but i'm into my time dude oh yeah

Channel: How To Drink

Views: 707,624

Keywords: htd, how to drink, mixology, tape brothers territory, alcohol, liquor, bartending, mixed drinks, how to, how to make, spirits, bitters, drink, cocktails, cocktail, classic, recipes, top three rum drinks, mai tai, best rum drinks to make at home, orgeat cocktails, cocktails with rum, el presidente, caipirinha cocktail recipe, rum recipes, what to make with rum, simple rum drinks, best way to drink rum, how to drink rum

Id: _O_TCeL_gV0

Length: 20min 47sec (1247 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021