Spiced Rum Jungle Bird cocktail
Here is how to make the rum cocktail:
Cocktail ingredients for a single serving
- 50ml Swan Knight Distillery golden spiced rum
- 15ml Campari
- 25ml Cointreau
- Soda water to the top
- Glassful of crushed ice
Recipe
- Mix the above ingredients together
- Pour into a hiball glass filled with crushed ice
- Add a straw
How and when to drink this spiced rum cocktail
A perfect summer sunshine cocktail that is great for sipping with family and friends. The Cointreau brings out the spices from the rum so that there is a depth to the cocktail, with just a hint of bitterness from the Campari. Finally, the soda water provides a long, refreshing finish.
You can replace the Campari with Aperol, and also the Cointreau with Triple Sec, depending on your palate. Both options seem to work well and we certainly enjoyed experimenting with them. We found that a degree of caution was required with the amount of Campari, in order to not disturb the balance of the drink, but that you can be reasonably heavy handed with the Cointreau as long as it does not overpower the spices from the rum.
Inspiration for the cocktail
The original cocktail recipe requests pineapple juice with simple syrup so this version is orange, rather than pineapple, based but the concept is still the same. It is considered a Tiki cocktail and its origins hail from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. It first appeared in the 1970s on the menu at Aviary Bar in the Hilton Hotel, although the exact year appears hazy. The recipe used dark Jamaican rum but naturally, we preferred our rum as the spices run nicely through the resulting cocktail.
There are a number of variations of this renowned cocktail, whose names all relate to birds. The Japanese Jungle Bird can come as a similar recipe but with added Midori or it can use sweet potato Shochu and coffee liqueur. The coffee liqueur theme also appears in the Black Bird cocktail and we agree that, if used with respect, it can make a great drink. Replacing Campari with Aperol (as suggested earlier) can create a Bird of Paradise cocktail while the addition of passion fruit juice creates an aptly named Passion Fruit Jungle Bird.
For us, the move from fruit juice as a mixer to soda water, transforms the cocktail into a lighter, more refreshing drink but as in all cocktails, a lot of the fun is trying different combinations of ingredients and seeing which ones work best for your palate.
Cocktail ingredients for a single serving
- 50ml Swan Knight Distillery golden spiced rum
- 15ml Campari
- 25ml Cointreau
- Soda water to the top
- Glassful of crushed ice
Recipe
- Mix the above ingredients together
- Pour into a hiball glass filled with crushed ice
- Add a straw
How and when to drink this spiced rum cocktail
A perfect summer sunshine cocktail that is great for sipping with family and friends. The Cointreau brings out the spices from the rum so that there is a depth to the cocktail, with just a hint of bitterness from the Campari. Finally, the soda water provides a long, refreshing finish.
You can replace the Campari with Aperol, and also the Cointreau with Triple Sec, depending on your palate. Both options seem to work well and we certainly enjoyed experimenting with them. We found that a degree of caution was required with the amount of Campari, in order to not disturb the balance of the drink, but that you can be reasonably heavy handed with the Cointreau as long as it does not overpower the spices from the rum.
Inspiration for the cocktail
The original cocktail recipe requests pineapple juice with simple syrup so this version is orange, rather than pineapple, based but the concept is still the same. It is considered a Tiki cocktail and its origins hail from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. It first appeared in the 1970s on the menu at Aviary Bar in the Hilton Hotel, although the exact year appears hazy. The recipe used dark Jamaican rum but naturally, we preferred our rum as the spices run nicely through the resulting cocktail.
There are a number of variations of this renowned cocktail, whose names all relate to birds. The Japanese Jungle Bird can come as a similar recipe but with added Midori or it can use sweet potato Shochu and coffee liqueur. The coffee liqueur theme also appears in the Black Bird cocktail and we agree that, if used with respect, it can make a great drink. Replacing Campari with Aperol (as suggested earlier) can create a Bird of Paradise cocktail while the addition of passion fruit juice creates an aptly named Passion Fruit Jungle Bird.
For us, the move from fruit juice as a mixer to soda water, transforms the cocktail into a lighter, more refreshing drink but as in all cocktails, a lot of the fun is trying different combinations of ingredients and seeing which ones work best for your palate.