Phew.
It’s been crazy around here. Work and home have hit a fever pitch so I haven’t had much time to keep up with posting, for which I apologize. But I’m back with a big monster of a drink to make up for it. This one came out because the week started out rocky, so I turned to Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log and the handy diagrams of drink strength—I needed a very drunk little caricature to smooth out the edges. I settled on Colonel Beach’s Plantation Punch, a Don the Beachcomber concoction that delivers some island-style relaxation.
1 oz fresh lime juice
2 oz unsweetened pineapple juice
½ oz Falernum
2 oz ginger beer
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1/8 teaspoon Pernod
2 oz dark Jamaican rum
1 oz gold Puerto Rican rum
½ oz Barbados rumShake ingredients with one cup of crushed ice. Pour into a tall glass with three or four ice cubes. Garnish with pineapple and a sprig of mint.
Sadly, I was out of both pineapple and mint, so my drink had to go garnish-less. Alas! This is strong and savory, with the flavors of the ginger, cloves, bitters and anise, which is the perfect tiki mix for a chilly fall evening. It certainly fortified me for a long night at The Echo enduring the stylings of Castledoor.
October 10th, 2007at 8:36 am(#)
Huh. This is way different from the plantation punch I down by the gallon any time I’m in Sea Island…and come to think of it, sounds similar to the “wrong” version I encountered any time I ordered it in Santa Barbara. Maybe the Georgians had the recipe wrong, since my much-beloved version seems more similar to a mai tai (dark, light, pineapple, orange, grenadine, dash of 151).
October 10th, 2007at 9:34 am(#)
From the sound of the ingredients, it would seem that your beloved beverage is in the Trader Vic style. Don the Beachcomber’s drinks tended toward more classic cocktail ingredients, as they usually involved bitters and anisette flavors, while the Trader skewed often to the sweet with grenadine and orgeat.
October 10th, 2007at 1:50 pm(#)
That’s one mighty, and really quite geometric, ice cube in that photo Marleigh! How do you make them?
October 10th, 2007at 3:50 pm(#)
The old fashioned boring way—hand-filling an ice cube tray. Some days I feel like I spend more time in the kitchen making ice than doing anything else.
October 12th, 2007at 9:11 am(#)
Amazing that I write a weekly drink column and I wasn’t aware of this Trader Vic/Don the Beachcomer disparity. I learn something new every time I read this blog. :)
And that must be a ginormous ice cube tray. Look at the size of that thing!
October 12th, 2007at 11:03 am(#)
I like to think of them as cyclopean in the Lovecraftian sense.
October 15th, 2007at 9:15 am(#)
This is why I love the drinkblogging community- I stop by to geek out on drinks and get a Lovecraft reference!
And speaking of Lovecraft, this ancient drink must be calling to us from across the dimensions, clawing it’s way slowly from the fetid depths of our forgotten consciousness, imploring us to…blog about it:
http://drbamboo.blogspot.com/2007/09/colonel-beachs-plantation-punch-1-oz.html
October 15th, 2007at 10:54 am(#)
“It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self — not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep — the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike.”
October 15th, 2007at 11:31 am(#)
“Ia cocktail f’tagn”?