Recipe: The Zombie

Nowadays, there are almost as many different Zombie recipes as there are zombies in most low budget horror films. The reason for that is that while this cocktail has a long established name (1939), Don the Beachcomber, was very guarded with the recipes to his inventions, even keeping secret ingredients from his own staff at his bars. Our variant is a take off of the close-to-original brought back to “life” by Jeff “Beachbum” Berry.

Recipe: Hemingway Daiquiri

Once upon a time the Daiquiri was not the gloppy sweet, faux fruit beverage dispensed from a slushee-machine at your French Quarter/Las Vegas/insert-other-home-of-debauchery-here tourist trap. It was once a fine sweet but tart drink, savored in pre-revolution Cuba, Florida, and elsewhere.

Don Q Cristal Rum

Don Q Cristal Rum tastes of cane sugar, light molasses, banana cream pie, papaya, pineapple and vanilla.

Don Q Gran Añejo

This is a nice añejo rum. I prefer sipping it, personally. It would add some nice character to some typical Tiki and other drinks with dark rum, and it’s off-dry finish might take a bit of the sweet off of some too often sugary Tiki concoctions.

Flor de Caña Grand Reserve (7 year)

The taste is of banana, nutmeg, brown sugar, light molasses, caramel, allspice, vanilla bean, pear, Szechuan pepper and coconut.

Deco Silver Rum

The nose has some light, but noticeable alcohol, with a touch of molasses, and hints of raspberry. The scent is somewhat jammy, with hints of mango.

Deco Coffee Rum

If there’s anything Portlanders love, along with beer and spirits, it’s coffee. Capitalizing on that love affair, Deco have taken their Silver Rum and flavored it with coffee from local favorite Stumptown Coffee Roasters. The result is an interesting spirit with more presence than most flavored spirits, but with far less sweetness than most flavored liqueurs.

Balcones Rumble

On the taste, there’s a more than a bit of a burn at the tip of the tongue and back of the palate, and then you can almost taste the flowers that the bees made the honey from. After that, it opens up and you a get a lot fruit from the figs and also what seems like a trace of citrus.

Treaty Oak Platinum Rum

As an interesting aside, the rum begins with molasses from the last operating sugar mill in Texas. I assume that’s the Imperial Sugar Company in Sugar Land, Texas, which still refines sugar imported from Hawaii, Louisiana, and Puerto Rico.