Matt Robold, aka Rum Dood, has made it the final 5 candidates in Tommy Bahama’s Rumologist contest. You can vote for him once per day on Facebook and I highly encourage you to do so.

As a reward for making it this far, Matt has created a delicious Daiquiri variation. Enjoy!

TBD Sour

2 oz Rhum Agricole Vieux
1 oz Lime Juice
.75 oz Chai Tea Syrup (2:1)
.5 tsp Maraschino

Shake with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Dust with fresh allspice and garnish with a mint leaf.

Via Doug at The Pegu Blog, I see that Matt Robold aka RumDood is one of 20 finalists in Tommy Bahama’s First Rumologist contest. You can vote for Matt after liking Tommy Bahama’s Facebook page. Oh and you can vote once per day, so vote early and often!

p>It’s hot out. And when it’s hot out, there’s nothing better than staying cool with a refreshing cocktail. While there’s no doubt that frozen tiki cocktails like the Piña Colada or Missionary’s Downfall are as cooling as it gets, most of us don’t bring a blender to the beach. Below are four of my favorite cocktails that will keep you cool without requiring an electrical outlet.

Originally made at Shoomaker’s in Washington, DC by Democratic lobbyist Col. Joe Rickey in 1883, the Gin Rickey is the official, native cocktail of our nation’s capital. It’s my favorite summer cooler, as the crisp line and gin combination has the effect of air conditioning in a glass.

Gin Rickey
2 oz gin
Juice of half a lime
Soda water
Juice half a lime into a wine glass and drop the lime shell into it. Add gin and ice, top with soda water.

The Ridgely is a creation of a family friend, but is one of the first rum cocktails that I ever fell in love with. Tart and crisp, it’ll cool your core when you’re lying poolside.

The Ridgely
2 oz dark rum (Mount Gay works best)
Juice of half a lime
Tonic water
Ginger Ale
Add rum and lime juice to an ice-filled highball glass. Top with equal parts tonic water and ginger ale. Garnish with a lime wedge.

The Dark ‘n’ Stormy is a quintessential rum highball. Made with rich, dark Bermudan rum and spicy ginger beer, it is both refreshing and flavorful. Goslings Black Seal Rum is required to make it a real Dark ‘n’ Stormy. My favorite ginger beer brands are Regatta and Goslings ginger beer.

Dark ‘n’ Stormy
2 oz Goslings Black Seal Rum
Ginger Beer
Lime
In an ice-filled highball glass, fill with ginger beer and top with 2 ounces of Goslings. Squeeze in a lime wedge and enjoy.

Finally, to change things up, I recommend trying a whiskey-based highball, a Horse’s Neck with a Kick:

Horse’s Neck with a Kick
2 oz bourbon or scotch
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Ginger ale
Spiral lemon peel
Peel a lemon in one-piece spiral and extend this into a Collins glass. Add ice, bourbon and bitters and top with ginger ale.

All of these drinks are refreshing quaffs that are perfect for outdoor summer drinking. You don’t need a blender to stay cool, but as you can see plenty of ginger ale, ginger beer, club soda, and tonic water will help your cause.

Nonetheless, I was really excited to get a sample of Banks 5 Island Rum recently. I’d read about it at over at Tiare’s blog, A Mountain of Crushed Ice, last fall. She wrote, “I don`t think i`ve come across a white rum that has so much of the dark rum flavor before..but on the other hand there´s many white rums i`ve never yet tasted.” That’s a pretty intriguing description and one that I really found true myself.

Banks 5 Island Rum is a white rum, blended from rums from Trinidad, Jamaica, Guayana, Barbados and Java. I found the nose to be incredibly interesting, with a mix of lemon, floral scents, cane sugar, pineapple, white grape and a thin strand of alcohol vapor. The taste was equally complex, with papaya, banana, burnt sugar leading the way and a light, peppery finish with a slight burn. The mouthfeel is very thick and creamy. In short, this is a really unique, dynamic white rum with tremendous potential.

I’d also received a bottle of PAMA Liqueur to sample and my first inclination was to do a variation of a Brunswick Sour combining the two. A Brunswick Sour, which I first experienced when Derek Brown was the head bartender at The Gibson, is simply a classic Daiquiri topped with a float of merlot. Unfortunately, PAMA is much more dense than merlot, so when I tried to float it on top, it ended up settling on the bottom of the glass. The drink was still tasty, but ended up imbalanced, with the last third of the glass dominated by PAMA.

As a better cocktail to feature Banks 5 Island Rum, I went with a variation on the classic Between the Sheets cocktail. Jay Hepburn at Oh, Gosh! had a post on this drink a few years ago, though I found a recipe which made a bit more sense for my tastes.

Between the Sheets

1 oz Banks 5 Island Rum
1 oz cognac (Courvoisier VSOP)
1 oz Cointreau
1 oz fresh lemon juice
0.25 oz simple syrup

Combine in an ice filled shaker and make the ice sing. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish with an orange peel.

Between the Sheets is a really nice cocktail. Driven by the Banks rum, it is rich and velvety, with a strong vanilla/orange flavor. The rum isn’t the sole player in this drink and I’m sure that there will be many other cocktails that I find great uses for the Banks 5 Island Rum, so stay tuned for more.

Disclosure: This post was made possible because I received free bottles of Banks 5 Island Rum and PAMA Liqueur for the purposes of sample and review.

Tropic Lightning

1.5 oz light Jamaican rum
0.5 oz Trader Tiki’s Vanilla Syrup
0.5 oz lime juice

Shake briefly with ice and strain into a champagne flute, top with 3 oz Champagne, garnish with a lemon peel.

First, this is just an awesome, awesome cocktail. The vanilla Daiquiri base becomes light and even more refreshing with the addition of Champagne.

But more importantly, this is going to be a cocktail that I remember and drink happily for the rest of my life because it’s what I made for my girlfriend Lori while I asked her to marry me and what we continued to drink after she said “Yes,” and we shared the good news with family and friends.

Trader Tiki’s Vanilla Syrup & the Tropic Lightning: Helping cocktail bloggers get hitched since 2011.

The WSJ piece includes one recipe of Derek’s creation which I’m pretty certain I’ve had before and is flat-out phenomenal. It’s a Daiquiri variation that uses Blackstrap rum and Cynar.

The Getaway

1 oz blackstrap rum
½ oz Cynar
1 oz fresh lemon juice
½ oz simple syrup

Shake with ice until extremely cold and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Effing brilliant!

As I said above, it’s great to see Derek, as with other DC craft cocktail bartenders, continue to grow their national presence and be recognized for their outstanding work. Kudos Derek!

For anyone whose only experience with Egg Nog has been the syrup that comes in a milk carton and is available in your super markets dairy section, it’s not surprising that you don’t like Egg Nog. After all, how many good cocktails are available at any supermarket in a cardboard container? I’ve never been a huge fan of Egg Nog, but at the Repeal Day Ball, Jeffrey Morgenthaler of Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon made one that I couldn’t get enough of. It was light and sweet, not cloying or heavy. I really couldn’t get enough of it.

Since it’s now holiday times – prime Egg Nog season – I tracked down Jeffrey’s recipe on his blog. I’m not certain that this was the one he used (though since Sailor Jerry was a sponsor of the Ball, I think it’s likely).

Egg Nog (Morgenthaler Recipe)

2 large eggs
3 oz (by volume) granulated sugar
½ tsp freshly-grated nutmeg
2 oz brandy
2 oz spiced rum (I use Sailor Jerry’s)
6 oz whole milk
4 oz heavy cream

Yields 2 servings

Beat eggs in blender for one minute on medium speed. Slowly add sugar and blend for one additional minute. With blender still running, add nutmeg, brandy, rum, milk and cream until combined. Chill thoroughly to allow flavors to combine and serve in chilled wine glasses or champagne coupes, grating additional nutmeg on top immediately before serving.

If you’re not a fan of the eggs in Egg Nog, a great holiday alternative is Atholl Brose. This centuries-old Scottish cocktail is made with scotch, oats, cream and honey. It’s a fantastic alternative for Egg Nog, though ideally should be aged for a few days before serving. I made a big batch last year and it was a hit with folks I’ve served it to. The end result is a cocktail that tastes like a thick, creamy, scotch and honey liqueur. Trust me, it’s not bad at all.

…The lack of interference by people at bars whose drinks are getting stolen or knocked over by monkeys is also kinda surprising.

Tender Bar, like most other bars in Japan, is inside a low-rise building that houses other bars. There are almost no street-level bars in Japan. To go to a bar, you have to usually enter what looks like an apartment or small office building, ride the elevator to the appropriate bar, and enter an apartment-sized bar. Tender Bar had about 30 seats, Bar High Five had about 15. At Tender Bar, Uyeda-san and his staff dress in white jackets and black pants. Everything about the setting is formal, from the style of dress to the techniques used to make drinks. Every movement Uyeda makes is precise. While he has another person behind the bar with him, they only prep ingredients or do the most basic highballs. Everything else is his work.

While we had a few rounds at Tender Bar, one drink that stood out was their Boston Cooler.

Boston Cooler

45 mL Light Rum
15 mL lemon juice
1 tsp simple syrup
Ginger Ale

Combine rum, lemon juice and syrup in an ice-filled shaker and shake. Strain into an ice-filled highball glass. Top with ginger ale and garnish with a lemon peel.

If you wanted to convert this to English measurements, the equivalent is about 1.5 oz rum to 0.5 oz lemon juice.

What made this cocktail so great was actually the ginger ale. We found in Japan that ginger ale – whether a domestic brand or Canada Dry – was consistently more flavorful than American ginger ale. It approached ginger beer, though I would be wary about subbing in a ginger beer that had too much spice – what you’re looking for is a gingery, but not peppery ginger beer if you want to capture the Japanese style of ginger ale.

The cocktails at Tender Bar were precise and superb. Despite its more formal attitude more akin to a shrine, it was still a really fun experience. While I thoroughly enjoyed the quality of cocktails at both Tender Bar and Bar High Five, I did have a lot more fun at Bar High Five, hanging out with Hidetsugu Ueno and talking throughout the night. Ueno’s style of interaction with customers is just more akin to what we have in the US. I highly recommend visiting Tender Bar, too, but will be headed back to Bar High Five first the next time I’m in Tokyo.

This is my first experiment with posting instructional cocktail videos. I’m doing a project next month where I’ll be travel blogging and I wanted to see how well my iPhone 3G worked as a video camera. The lighting on this is pretty awful and my dryer buzzes in the middle of it. You can probably tell I’m not that comfortable on camera and wasn’t working off of a script, so it’s pretty raw.

I recently got an authentic Swizzle Stick from Cocktail Kingdom. Swizzle Sticks are natural wood branches that grow with prongs perfect for cocktail mixing. They are very hard to find and until recently were not available for sale online. Mine isn’t quite straight or smooth, but that’s what happens when the tool comes from nature and not a machine press.

I got the recipe for this Chartreuse Swizzle from Tiare at A Mountain of Crushed Ice.

Chartreuse Swizzle

1 oz Green Chartreuse
1 oz White Rum (Flor de Cana 4)
1 1/2 oz Pineapple juice
1 oz fresh lime juice
1/4 oz Falernum
2 dash Angostura Bitters
Float Smith & Cross

Add ingredients to a suitable glass full of crushed ice. Swizzle to mix, float Smith & Cross and garnish with plenty of fresh mint, and add straw.