Egg Not: Rum Drinks Revisited
3 Winter Drinks to Warm Your Spirit
Just like the seasons themselves, our palates change with the calendar. In the hot months, we tend to like bright, juicy cocktails. As the weather cools, we prefer more savory drinks. And, when it’s cold out? Hot drinks of all types come into favor. A steaming mug warms up your hands and your soul like nothing else can. Here are three easy ways to give yourself a little vacation from the shorter days of winter.
Hot Buttered Rum
Traditional hot buttered rums suffered from an unappetizing oil slick of butter on their surface, which this recipe avoids through the magic of fat-washing. OK, it’s not magic, but it is science (and that’s even cooler).
8 oz. barrel-aged rum
½ stick of locally produced, organic butter
2 t. ground cinnamon
½ t. ground nutmeg
1 t. ground allspice
Toast your spices over low heat until they are fragrant, then add the butter. When it is melted, stir to combine, then brown the spiced butter until it looks like caramel. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Add rum, and let sit overnight.
Transfer the rum mixture to the freezer to solidify the butter, then lift the butter solids out of the jar, and strain the rum through a paper coffee filter. Then, combine:
2 oz. buttered rum
6 oz. hot water
Garnish with a cinnamon stick and serve immediately.
Home ’Chata
Traditional horchata recipes start with rice and water, then you make your own rice milk.
We’re taking a shortcut by starting with vanilla rice milk, available in grocery stores. One final note: I tried this recipe with a variety of spice mixes and I liked them all about equally well, so play around with this formula, once you feel confident. This mixture was my particular favorite for its soul-satisfying abundance of allspice.
1 lt. vanilla rice milk
4 cinnamon sticks
20 star anise pods
40 allspice berries
1 c. water
2 c. sugar
Toast the spices over medium heat until fragrant, then add the water and bring just to a boil before turning heat down to low. Simmer for 30 min., then remove from heat. Strain out and discard the solids, then return the liquid to the pan and add the sugar. Stir to dissolve, and set aside.
1.5 oz. barrel-aged rum
6 oz. winter spice horchata
Heat the rice milk, then stir in the spice syrup to your desired flavor.
Herbal Tea Toddy
When recipes are very flexible, I say that they have a very forgiving formula. The tea toddy is one such drink. I encourage you to try this one, then get creative with other tea blends and bitters.
Combine and stir to dissolve. Refrigerate any unused portion, or use it to make your own liqueur by adding it into spirit.
6 oz. Rishi Cinnamon Plum tea, heated
1 oz. Tea Syrup
6 ds. bitters, like Angostura or Bittercube Trinity
1 oz. barrel-aged rum
Combine and serve immediately. Garnish with a cinnamon stick.
