Spiced Rum Old Fashioned
Here is how to make the rum cocktail:
Cocktail ingredients for a single serving
- 50ml Swan Knight Distillery golden spiced rum
- 15ml Simple Syrup
- 5ml Bitters
- Decorative orange peel
Recipe
- Mix the above ingredients together
- Pour into a tumbler filled with 1 or 2 large ice cubes
- Curl or twist the orange peel into a spiral shape and place carefully on top of the ice cubes
How and when to drink this spiced rum cocktail
Every time we make one of these cocktails, I can't help but admire the colour of it. The orange peel does more than add a touch of class, as it slowly adds an orange tang to the drink. For a deceptively simple cocktail, it provides a host of flavours with the spices from the rum being brought forward by the bitters and then finished with the orange peel. For us, it is an after dinner drink where we can sit and chat, but we have occasionally drunk it on dark winter nights.
Getting the mix between the rum and bitters right is the key to this cocktail. Once you are happy with that then add the simple syrup to taste. It took us quite a while to find the right balance for our palates, and we tried a few types of flavoured simple syrups along the way (all of which we eventually rejected as competing with the spices from the rum).
Inspiration for the cocktail
The Old Fashioned is the world's oldest officially recorded cocktail, tracing its roots back to an 1806 New York publication (The Balance and Columbian Repository) that defined a "cocktail" simply as a potent blend of spirit, sugar, water, and bitters. At the time, it was also called a Bittered Sling but by the 1830s, the spirit being used included rum, gin or brandy and as more spirits entered the cocktail world, so the range of the drink recipes expanded. In fact, by the 1860s ingredients such as absinthe, orange curaçao and other liqueurs were being added. As a result, customers in bars were asking for simpler, pre 1850s drinks and hence the original recipe became known as an Old Fashioned.
The Old Fashioned cocktail uses Whiskey as a base (either Bourbon or Rye, depending on taste) and there are recipes that use brandy or gin instead. Personally, we were not fans of the gin recipes but the brandy variants we could definitely get behind. As in all cocktails, the best quality ingredients create the best flavoured drinks and this is no exception. Changing the base spirit, even within the same family i.e. spiced rum, can dramatically change the flavour of the cocktail so as always, do your own research to find what works best for you.
Cocktail ingredients for a single serving
- 50ml Swan Knight Distillery golden spiced rum
- 15ml Simple Syrup
- 5ml Bitters
- Decorative orange peel
Recipe
- Mix the above ingredients together
- Pour into a tumbler filled with 1 or 2 large ice cubes
- Curl or twist the orange peel into a spiral shape and place carefully on top of the ice cubes
How and when to drink this spiced rum cocktail
Every time we make one of these cocktails, I can't help but admire the colour of it. The orange peel does more than add a touch of class, as it slowly adds an orange tang to the drink. For a deceptively simple cocktail, it provides a host of flavours with the spices from the rum being brought forward by the bitters and then finished with the orange peel. For us, it is an after dinner drink where we can sit and chat, but we have occasionally drunk it on dark winter nights.
Getting the mix between the rum and bitters right is the key to this cocktail. Once you are happy with that then add the simple syrup to taste. It took us quite a while to find the right balance for our palates, and we tried a few types of flavoured simple syrups along the way (all of which we eventually rejected as competing with the spices from the rum).
Inspiration for the cocktail
The Old Fashioned is the world's oldest officially recorded cocktail, tracing its roots back to an 1806 New York publication (The Balance and Columbian Repository) that defined a "cocktail" simply as a potent blend of spirit, sugar, water, and bitters. At the time, it was also called a Bittered Sling but by the 1830s, the spirit being used included rum, gin or brandy and as more spirits entered the cocktail world, so the range of the drink recipes expanded. In fact, by the 1860s ingredients such as absinthe, orange curaçao and other liqueurs were being added. As a result, customers in bars were asking for simpler, pre 1850s drinks and hence the original recipe became known as an Old Fashioned.
The Old Fashioned cocktail uses Whiskey as a base (either Bourbon or Rye, depending on taste) and there are recipes that use brandy or gin instead. Personally, we were not fans of the gin recipes but the brandy variants we could definitely get behind. As in all cocktails, the best quality ingredients create the best flavoured drinks and this is no exception. Changing the base spirit, even within the same family i.e. spiced rum, can dramatically change the flavour of the cocktail so as always, do your own research to find what works best for you.