Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The Dark and Stormy!

Hooper's getting serious about rum again. Hold on to your hats.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. After all of the excitement of this week, I knew that I needed to give you an appropriate cocktail. Thankfully, it’s an easy one, and one of my favorites. Let’s raise a glass to America’s sweetheart and drink a Dark and Stormy. The recipe’s below:

Dark and Stormy

1 oz spiced Goslings Rum, or your spiced rum of choice

1 oz Hamilton 86 rum

Goslings ginger beer

Lime wedge and maraschino cherry

Pour the ginger beer into a double old fashioned glass over ice. Hold a spoon upside down over the glass, with the tip of the spoon touching an ice cube. Slowly pour the rums into the glass. Garnish with the lime wedge and cherry on a bamboo spear.

Spiced Goslings Rum

4-6 whole black peppercorns

2 whole cloves

4 allspice berries

1-2 inches of a cinnamon stick

3.5 oz demerara syrup

1 small whole vanilla bean

3 cups Goslings Bermuda Rum

Set a pan on the stovetop over medium high heat. Add all the spices except for the vanilla and toast for 30 seconds. When the pan is fragrant, remove from heat. Add the spices and syrup to the rum. Store in a cool dark place 2-3 days, shaking daily. Strain the spices out of the rum after three days.

I should start off by saying, rather loudly, that a Dark and Stormy isn’t a “real” Dark and Stormy unless it uses Goslings Bermuda Rum and Goslings Ginger Beer. I need to say this loudly, because Goslings trademarked the recipe for a Dark and Stormy quite some time ago, and I don’t want to make lawyers mad. If you mix a random ginger beer and rum at a bar and call it a Dark and Stormy, the Goslings family will want a word with you.

That being said, what you drink at home is your own business. A simple Dark and Stormy is your favorite rum, your favorite ginger beer, and a lime wedge. If you love Mount Gay and have some Bundaberg or Fevertree or Canada Dry Bold lying around the house, go for it. No one’s judging you. A simple one-and-one, like a Lemmy or a G&T, is wonderful in its own right. It’s been a long week in a series of long weeks. Be happy.

Personally, I’m a hardcore rum nerd. Instead of just pouring my favorite rum into my favorite ginger beer, I wanted to take an opportunity to build a spiced rum — specifically, something that would compete with Kraken in the home bar. Most store-bought spiced rum lacks any real spiciness; Captain Morgan is vanilla and cherry “flavored” at best. I love the look of Kraken bottles, but their contents are just awful. I’ve tried to make spiced rum at home before, but the results were too dry and spicy to drink alone. This attempt was much better; I learned a few things that helped tremendously. There’s a strong argument for breaking out some booze and soda on a Friday afternoon, but if you’d like to play along with me and do another infusion, I think you’ll find some good reasons for Captain Morgan to stay in port.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Ingredient shot. It's hard to drink this spicy beast in one gulp. But I tried. Matthew Hooper 

Goslings Spiced Rum: I wanted to maximize the amount of spice I could coax out of my raw ingredients in a day or two. I borrowed a technique from my wife’s Indian recipes to manage that. Dry-roasting spices brings their essential oils to the fore and improves their quality a great deal; they’re the secret weapon in many classic dishes. You only need a brief time in a hot pan to get results.

The trickiest part here is knowing when to strain the spices from the rum. Spices are, well, spicy, and if you wait too long the rum is difficult to work with. After two days, the spices were distinct but manageable. Adding some syrup to the bottle helps the flavor dramatically. Spice without sugar turns into heat and numbness, not flavor.

Hamilton 86 Rum: A terrific rum in its own right. I used this mellow, caramel-laden rum to temper the spiced rum as needed. If I wasn’t interested in adding yet more spice to some ginger beer, I’d use the Hamilton by itself (while muttering an apology to the Goslings under my breath).

Ginger Beer: There are many excellent ginger beers out there. Goslings is very good and easy to find. I think that I’d use Reed’s ginger beer if I wasn’t under a watchful legal eye; some Jamaican funkiness paired with caramel and spice would be great. Canada Dry makes a “bold” ginger ale that is quite nice; it’s sweeter than most ginger beers, but not as sweet as soda. There are no rules, drink what you like.

Presentation: It’s so easy and fun to float booze on top of soda. It’s a dramatic presentation with dark rum and pale ginger beer; I’ve earned a bunch of tips by taking my time and making this pretty. Work slowly. The spoon helps a great deal, but it isn’t strictly necessary. Take your time, and you’ll make something pretty.

Garnish: The lime and cherry are a classic garnish for many drinks. It’s commonly referred to as a “flag.” The cherry is completely without flavor, but it looks pretty. The lime, on the other hand, is great with rum. Slide the fruit off the stick, drop the cherry in the cocktail, squeeze the lime juice in the drink, and enjoy.

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! 

OPEN THREAD!