If you like summer, beach, cocktails, bar, tiki culture (delete where not applicable), drinking cocktails, drinking summer cocktails, drinking summer cocktails on the beach, drinking summer cocktails on the beach at the Tiki bar, you’ve met with The Mai Tai cocktail (or with the one of derivative).
In the article below we’ll prepare very easy tiki cocktail but before that, we need some special ingredients which are usually hard to buy. But don’t worry – for what it’s harder to buy, it’s easier to do it homemade with pleasure!
What is Velvet Falernum?
Falernum owes for his name to famous Ancient Rome wine Falernian (Latin falernum) but today it has nothing to do with the wine and the current recipe is dated to the 18. century.
It got the adjective “velvet” because of the specific taste it leaves on one’s tongue.
The literary magazine All the Year Round founded and owned by Charles Dickens described it in the year 1892 as “a curious liqueur composed from rum and lime juice”.
Today it’s possible to find many other recipes on the web but over time we began to prefer to follow those that confirm the power of simplicity.
Let me tell you something about rum, that needs to be used. You probably have to order overproof rum online or ask some of special supplier. Do it. There is no way to use any other kind of rum for this recipe.
Velvet Falernum
Ingredients
For rum mixture:
- 250ml overproof rum (my favourite is Jamaican Wray & Nephew 63% vol.)
- 50 pieces of cloves
- 45 pieces of allspices balls (1tbs)
- grated peel of 8 limes
- 100g of peeled and sliced ginger (approx. 1/2 cup)
For sugar syrup:
- 150g cane sugar
- 180ml water
Instructions
- Place the peel from the limes with cloves, ginger and allspice in a sealable container, add rum and let it macerate for at least 24 hours at room temperature.
- Then heat the cane sugar syrup - mix water just below the boiling point with sugar in a ratio of about 1:1 and let it cool down.
- Meanwhile, strain the rum mixture over the strainer and then again over the cloth filter to eliminate any bits that might negatively change the taste later.
- After cooling down, pour the rum mixture into the sugar syrup and shake it well. Let stand to the next day and that’s it.
Notes
In the end, you will get more than 500ml the full taste, semi-sweet, concentrated spicy liqueur. If you store it in a dark place it will be stable for months cause alcohol.
How to make Rum Swizzle cocktail
Once the falernum is ready, let’s try to prepare this really easy peasy limee squeezy drink. Swizzle style cocktails are prepared with the special method swizzling preferably with the swizzle stick (still you can use ordinary kitchen stirrer, but it wouldn’t be so sexy).
If you would like to make your life a little bit more complicated (and sweeter), there is Bermuda rum swizzle, the national drink of these islands, which also contains pineapple and orange juice.
The drink is possible to serve in classic rock glass or for example in a nice colourful teacup but your imagination has no limits.
Rum Swizzle
Ingredients
- 5cl aged rum, the more quality, the better (I like Pusse'rs rum)
- 3cl our prepared Velvet Falernum
- 2cl fresh squeezed lime juice (we can use the remaining limes after falernum)
- 1 dash of Angostura Bitters
Instructions
- In the first step fill the cup with crushed ice and add all the ingredients.
- Sink the swizzle stick to the cup and swizzle it carefully.
- Top it with crushed ice and splash with Angostura Bitters.
- Garnish it with mint leaves and lime (fresh peel or vedge or dehydrated wheel).
- Serve with a straw.
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