Hello again, I hope y’all had a great week and are ready sink back into escape.

I’ve recently been upgrading my rum selection based off of the recommendations in Martin & Rebecca Cate’s Smuggler’s Cove and Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s Beachbum Berry Remixed. I highly recommend both of these books if you’ve stuck with me thus far, but it’s been really interesting and a lot of fun to taste the difference the island varietals bring. Have you ever had rhum agricole? It’s made from sugar cane juice instead of molasses, smells way funky, and tastes like weirdly delicious. . .grass? It’s wild, but I’ll go into more detail on rum varieties further down the line. In the meantime, I can’t recommend El Dorado 3 Year Demerara Rum to you enough. Go buy a bottle as soon as you can, it’s fantastic.

Speaking of noted exotic cocktail chronicler Jeff Berry, today’s cocktail is an original of his from the same book I referenced earlier. Was I a more savvy blogger, I would have chosen a drink that you could tie into Mother’s Day. As it has been well documented on this website that I am indeed not a savvy blogger (or anything else for that matter), I forgot that Mother’s Day was this weekend when I chose the drink initially. Rest assured, I did however buy a Mother’s Day gift in the meantime (love you, Mom). This drink isn’t totally unrelated, however, as I believe it was named after a terrible mid-century aftershave brand, a genus of scents that mother’s have had to suffer from their teenage boys since time immemorial.

The Hai Karate is pretty straight forward and can be made with a few different rums. An aged or gold rum is recommended, but if you use anything other than a white rum I think you won’t be disappointed. The one curveball ingredient is maple syrup, which I’m sure you all have readily on hand and have never once put it in a drink. As it’s essentially just a Canadian simple syrup, it makes more sense than you’d think.

HAI KARATE

Adapted from the essential Cocktail Party

2 ounces Gold Rum
1 ounce Lime Juice
1 ounce Orange Juice
1 ounce Pineapple Juice
1 tsp Maple Syrup
1 dash Angostura Bitters

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake until frost forms on the outside of the container, about 10 seconds. Pour ice & all into the glass of your choice.

NEXT WEEK:

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