Posts Tagged ‘daiquiri’
Denizen Rum – The Fun Guy at the Party
- Published on Monday, 02 July 2012 11:30
- Geoffrey Kleinman
- 0 Comments
A great party often has someone who seems to get along with everyone, has fun, and helps really set the tone for the evening. Denizen is that in a rum. Made from a blend of charcoal filtered aged rum from Trinidad and funky pot still distilled rum from Jamaica, Denizen Rum is flavorful and affable with superb character.
Jamaican rum is prized for its intense flavor and deep charred sugar notes. In the Denizen Rum blend, the essence of these flavors is captured but made much more accessible with the easy going and light rum from Trinidad. Denizen is blended in Amsterdam, which is a key locale for the rum trade and is home to some legendary rum blenders.
The nose on Denizen Rum is light and clean, with soft sugar cane notes along with hints of tropical fruit including banana. There are no vapors in the nose and it’s sly in its subtlety. The entry is packed with flavor including pineapple, banana, fresh sugar cane, and toasted marshmallow. The flavors here are well stated without being too intense and are fairly consistent throughout the palate. The finish is long with a light tropical passion fruit adding to the mix along with a subtle oak spice and sweet soft powdered sugar. Ultimately Denizen Rum cleans up with a light, cool feeling on the palate, leaving you wanting more.
As delightful as the Denizen Rum is neat, the real magic of the rum is just how mixable it is. Denizen makes a pitch perfect classic daiquiri, works exceptionally well in a mai tai, and gets along with Coke beautifully. There seems no end to Denizen’s mixability.
What’s amazing is that Denizen gives you so much and yet it’s priced ridiculously low at $15.99 a bottle. It’s mind boggling how such a great rum could also be so affordable. Denizen isn’t just great rum, it’s a must have bottle for anyone even remotely interested in making cocktails at home.
The Classic Daiquiri – Rum's Perfect Cocktail
- Published on Monday, 21 May 2012 04:13
- Geoffrey Kleinman
- 0 Comments
The rum daiquiri is one of world’s great drinks, yet it’s often prepared so poorly that you’d never know it. Somehow, someone, somewhere got it into their heads that a daiquiri should be thrown into a blender with lots of sugar, and lots of fruit, and made into something closer to a slurpee than a cocktail. In reality, a properly made classic daiquiri is a beautifully elegant and delicious drink.
While we don’t know exactly where or how the classic daiquiri was invented – many countries and bars lay claim to its origin – the drink came somewhere out of the Caribbean where sugarcane, rum, and limes are plentiful. As with many great classic cocktails, the daiquiri is made with three simple ingredients: rum, lime, and sugar. This basic structure is nearly identical with other tropical rum classics like the Ti Punch, Caipirinha, and Mojito (which adds mint to the mix).
A great classic daiquiri is all about balancing lime, sugar, and strong rum. It’s extremely easy for one of these elements to overpower the daiquiri, so when making a daiquiri it is essential to be precise with your measurements and always use a jigger. It’s also extremely important to use fresh lime juice. Using bottled lime juice will turn your drink into something barely palatable. This difference is as significant as the one between a fast food hamburger and a burger at a steakhouse.
The Classic Daiquiri
1 1/2 oz Rum
3/4 oz simple syrup
3/4 oz fresh squeezed lime juice
Shake with ice and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a lime.
The best place to start with the classic daiquiri is with a white rum like Bacardi Supreme, Brugal Especial Extra Dry, Angostura Reserva, or Denizen Rum. Starting with a white rum shows off the dry quality of this cocktail and makes it a perfect aperitif cocktail that holds its own against other great aperitifs like the martini.
The daiquiri can also stand in as an ideal after dinner drink if you choose a more complex rum like Banks Five Island Rum or a darker rum like Appleton Estates – you get something that tastes completely different. Using darker sugars for your simple syrup like demerara also dramatically transforms the drink.
The daiquiri may have gotten a bad rap from its time spent as a blended slushy, but it is truly one of the world’s great cocktails, one that when prepared correctly will impress even the most picky of imbibers.
Photo by Jackson Stakeman
