Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The Jet Pilot!

What Hooper's drinking to survive the daily news.

Elegant, civilized oblivion.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. And dear Lord, THIS WEEK. I had planned to talk about a nice, light, airy champagne cocktail for spring, but I’ve been doomscrolling way too much to entertain such ethereal notions. Let’s talk about my daily medicine instead. I need something strong to get through all this. Time for a Jet Pilot. Time for several Jet Pilots. Here’s the recipe.

Jet Pilot

1 oz Gosling’s Bermuda Rum

¾ oz Planteray Special Dark

¾ oz Planteray OFTD

½ oz grapefruit juice

½ oz lime juice

½ oz falernum

½ oz cinnamon syrup

3-4 shakes Angostura bitters

Pour all ingredients into an iced shaker tin. Shake and strain into an iced rocks glass. Garnish with a cherry and a small paper airplane.

The Jet Pilot was created in 1958 at the Luau by Stephen Crane, Lana Turner’s ex-husband. Donn Beach had created the prototype for this drink — the Test Pilot — but Stephen’s version removed some extraneous ingredients and added more rum. The Jet Pilot is dark, spicy, and laser-focused on upping your blood alcohol content. It’s a concentrated, simplified version of a Zombie. I upsell these to customers at Hemingway’s who ask for a rum and Coke. They’re universally impressed and intimidated. It’s become my post-shift cocktail of choice, a painkiller and muscle relaxant par excellence. I am very, very lucky to be living within walking distance of Hemingway’s.

When I first wrote about the Jet Pilot in 2023, I suggested that it should be a special treat at your local tiki bar, a bit too strong for everyday drinking. Things have changed. The version I’m writing today isn’t quite as strong as the one I posted a few years ago, but the need for potent spirits is mighty these days. Buying three different rums and a fairly obscure liqueur seems like a big ask, but let’s get real. Making and drinking potent tiki libations is more relaxing than reading the news, and marginally better for your health. At least with the tiki drinks, you get your daily Vitamin C from all the juice.

The tiki revival of the early 2000s was nurtured in garage bars. Punks who decided the scene had gotten stale went shopping at garage sales and thrift stores, and in the process found the amazing cocktails that had been forgotten with the advent of boat drinks, fern bars, and cheap vodka. Before Smuggler’s Cove and Three Dots and a Dash opened, cocktail fans were experimenting and entertaining friends in garages decorated with palm fronds and upcycled wicker furniture. I’m not saying that you should turn your garage into a rum-soaked tropical escapist fantasy from the daily news. I’m just saying that no one’s stopping you. If you can’t find a peaceful beach getaway, make your own.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Everyone crowd in for the ingredient shot! No, closer than that. Closer.

Gosling’s Bermuda Rum: My Bermuda rum of choice. Cruzan blackstrap rum is a bit too molasses-forward. Meyer’s is a Jamaican rum, a very different animal from rich, caramel-forward Gosling’s.

Planteray Special Dark: My favorite rum of all time. A blend of Jamaican and Demerara rum, expertly blended in France before being shipped to the States. If you’ve never tried this rum, do so.

Planteray OFTD: Technically, OFTD stands for “Old Fashioned Traditional Distillation.” The team of distillers and rum snobs who created this rum all agreed that it actually stands for “Oh F**k That’s Delicious.” Dark, rich, and very, very strong. If you use this to make a rum and Coke, be very, very careful.

Grapefruit Juice: Juicing your own is pretty ambitious and probably a bit too acidic. A decent bottled brand is fine. Just make sure it’s 100 percent grapefruit juice, and not a “cocktail” that cuts the grapefruit with cheap white grape juice.

Lime juice: Always use fresh. Plastic limes produce plastic juice.

Falernum: Falernum is one of the secret ingredients of tiki cocktails. It’s a liqueur that features lime, ginger, and cloves, and getting the good stuff is a bit tricky. Here in the Midwest, it’s easiest to use Maggie’s Farm Falernum. Maggie’s Farm hails from Pittsburgh, and their falernum is pure magic. For the rest of the country, I’d recommend John D. Taylor’s falernum — it’s the gold standard. Don’t use a “falernum syrup”; it’s not the same thing.

Cinnamon Syrup: Two parts sugar, one part water, and a cinnamon stick. Simmer on the stovetop until the sugar melts and it smells like cinnamon deliciousness. It’ll keep in the fridge forever.

Angostura Bitters: Be generous with your shakes. The Angostura spices add dimension to the drink, and some bitterness is needed in this glass.

My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday-Saturday, 4-10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by, and I’ll make a drink for you … or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette.

OPEN THREAD!