Blood, sweat, & Tears
This month’s @homebarawards is stirred tiki. It’s really a great challenge and brings up at least one important issue: how do you bring bright tropical flavors if you can’t shake up fresh juice? For this drink, my answer to this puzzle is one of my favorite tools to bring bright flavors and acidity to a cocktail: the shrub.
Typically falernum is a syrup or a rum-based cordial that brings a ton of tiki flavor, perhaps best illustrated by the classic corn n’ oil (rum, falernum, lime juice). Here, I made my own clarified falernum shrub— the result is an incredibly flavorful, bright, and balanced concoction. Details below. In this riff of a corn ‘n oil, I also added another layer to bring in flavors of pineapple and banana that are balanced nicely by Campari’s bitterness. It’s seriously a delicious and balanced drink very true to the tiki spirit with notes of tropical fruit, classic tiki spices, rum funk, ginger, and lime, no shakes required.
Recipe
0.5oz pineapple-infused campari (@campariusa)
0.25oz banana liqueur (@giffardusa)
0.75oz falernum shrub
1.5oz aged rum (@bacoorum)
0.75oz Jamaican rum
3 dashes tiki bitters (@bittermens)
Fill glass halfway with crushed ice. Add campari/banana liqueur (blood) and stir 5-6 times. Add additional ice until mostly full. Stir shrub + aged rum (sweat) 10-12 times with ice and carefully strain over bottom layer. Top with ice and float mix of Jamaican rum/bitters (tears if you have mascara on) over top. Garnish with dehydrated lime. Cheers, and hopefully there were no actual blood, sweat, and tears in the making of your drink!!
