Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The Ankle Breaker!

Have some 151 proof rum. Everything will be fine.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. This will probably be the last cocktail I’ll write for you on this platform – we’re moving to Substack! To commemorate this totally stress-free and not-at-all-scary change, I thought I’d provide you with a cocktail featuring 151 proof rum. It’s smooth, tasty, and flammable! Here’s the recipe:

Ankle Breaker

1 oz Hamilton 151 proof rum

1 oz Heering Cherry Liqueur

1 oz fresh lemon juice

1 oz simple syrup

2 shakes orange bitters

Shake all ingredients carefully. Strain into a rocks glass or tiki mug. Garnish with cherries and a small umbrella.

Yes, I know — 151 proof is strong stuff. Roughly 75 percent of this rum is flat-out ethanol. You can make a Molotov cocktail with this beauty. The TSA considers it a hazardous material — you can’t bring this bottle onto a plane. However, if used properly, it’s not a one-way ticket to hangover city. Every liquor begins life around this strength. A “barrel proof” bourbon is roughly 40 proof. Distillers water down what comes out of their stills to 80 proof, the lowest ABV possible to label something as “undiluted” rum, bourbon, tequila, etc. High ABV bottles have more of the good stuff and less water in them than normal bottles. And you can add your own water to a glass.

Even more importantly, you can add stuff other than water to your glass to bring the proof of a cocktail down to human levels. Jeffery Morganthaler, a West Coast bartending legend, created a spreadsheet that lets you calculate the ABV of any cocktail. (He advocates publishing that information on your menu, which I think is brilliant.) This drink is roughly 40 proof — strong, but not as strong as an Old Fashioned. More to the point, the concentrated flavor of the rum can beat down other intense flavors, like the acid of the lemon juice and the medicinal notes of the Cherry Heering.

Unsurprisingly, this cocktail comes from the tiki revival movement. The original drink was created at the Swamp Fox Room in the Marion Hotel in Charleston, SC, and named after an incident with the original Swamp Fox, Revolutionary War General Francis Marion. According to legend, Marion decided to leave a boring party at the hotel by jumping from a second story balcony, possibly after downing a few drinks like this one. (We’ve all been there.) Jeff “Beachbum” Berry published the recipe in his book Remixed in 2009 . It’s a surprisingly tasty drink. I’m not a fan of Cherry Heering or lemon juice, but in this glass you’ll find something similar to a good cherry cola. I’m fairly convinced that Berry included this recipe to demonstrate how to approach overproof rum. If you’re a cocktail enthusiast, I’d urge you to mix this up and partake of the lesson.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Ingredient shot. The cocktail mysteriously vanished shortly after this photo was taken. Matthew Hooper 

Hamilton 151 Demerara Rum: You can step away from the ledge and use a normal 80 proof rum here, like Mount Gay. If you do, you will have a radically different cocktail in your hands. Off the top of my head, I’d recommend something like this:

Ankle Sprainer

1 ½ oz Mount Gay Rum

½ oz Cherry Heering

1 oz lime juice

1 oz simple syrup

2 shakes orange bitters

I haven’t actually tasted said cocktail, but I think this will put you in the right neighborhood. Be brave, try both, and taste the differences. Keeping an overproof rum in your liquor cabinet is a little bit like owning a pit bull. Both can be welcome in your home, but you need to know what you’re doing. (As an aside, I screwed this up exactly once. I made an Old Fashioned with a Haitian rum that was new to me. It was 141 proof. I spoke in tongues for the next hour. My wife was … displeased. Never again.)

Cherry Heering: This herbal cherry liqueur dates back to 1818. When you first try it, you’ll think it tastes like cherry cough syrup. But when you add it to other mixers, it blossoms. It only shows up in a few cocktails on the menu, such as the Blood and Sand or the Singapore Sling. This might be one of the only cocktails that manages to coax the cherry flavor from Cherry Heering properly, in my estimation.

Lemon juice: Lime juice is my normal go-to in cocktails, but I wanted extra acid in the drink to fight the other unruly flavors. Normally lemon stands out in a glass, but the rum and Cherry Heering beat the fruit into submission. Fresh juice only, please. Plastic fruits give plastic juice.

Simple syrup: Sugar and water, equal parts, heated until the sugar melts.

Orange bitters: The cherry and rum flavors tend to spike a bit when you first taste the cocktail — first you taste the rum, then the cherry, then the ethanol. The bitters smooth out the rough edges in the drink.

In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below! Seriously, my boss is awesome, if you like reading my recipes please chip in! And if you'd like to buy some bar gear or books from Amazon, please click here! 

See you soon on Substack! You can find me on Threads and Insta at samurai_grog!

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