Falernum

Make or Buy: Falernum

February 15, 2019 by elana 5 Comments

Make or Buy: Falernum // stirandstrain.com What is this crazy word you ask?! Well, if your drinks don’t tend to end up in the Tiki spectrum, then you might not be familiar with this cocktail ingredient. OH! But don’t leave us yet! Falernum is a sweet, spicy, and delicious liqueur (or syrup if made nonalcoholic) that can pep up your drinks this winter and we’re going to jump right in and let you decide… drum roll please… whether you should MAKE OR BUY Falernum!

Make or Buy: Falernum // stirandstrain.com Our monthly series brings us to the island of Barbados, where our “buy” suggestion, Velvet Falernum, the ubiquitous bottle associated with this particular cocktail ingredient is from. This has been the only alcoholic version available to purchase that I have seen. If you’ve come across another, please let us know! I was first introduced to Velvet Falernum when I started making drinks from Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log. While used in many a tiki drink, this ingredient is actuallyÂ much older, and exact dates as to when people started making this are unclear (because it was made by, like, your mom at home). If you’d like to know more about the ingredient and its history, go visit Darcy O’Neil over at Art of Drink for his research. Although this bottle dominates the market, it’s a great buy with a pleasant flavor: lime, cloves, almond, ginger and a light sweetness. The pro to obtaining a bottle is that you don’t need to fill a shopping basket with ingredients to make this, and the flavor is consistent. And as it is distributed by Haus-Alpenz, you can probably find it in a major liquor store. It also will keep after being opened for at a minimum 6 months or longer. The con is that the the flavor is not as zingy or as bright as something freshly made. You also cannot control the sweetness or the flavors. And lastly, if you don’t want the extra alcohol, then Velvet Falernum is out for you.

Make or Buy: Falernum // stirandstrain.com On the other hand, making Falernum, whether as a lightly alcoholic liqueur or as just a syrup, is fairly easy to do and you might just have most of the ingredients on hand to do so (although I buy whole spices in bulk and often tend to have ingredients like whole cloves available). Besides being easy to make, another pro for a homemade version is that you can make it to your specifications (change out the base rum, more or less clove or ginger, etc…). The con is that it does take a few days to make, will only last refrigerated for about a month, and that from one batch to another it’s not going to necessarily taste the same. Also, you need to invest in some ingredients first to make this. Lastly, as with all the DIY versions,Â you have to make it. And if that’s a chore, the DIY version is not for you.

Make or Buy: Falernum // stirandstrain.com And how do they compare in a cocktail? The quintessential Bajan cocktail is the Corn ‘n’ Oil so of course I tested out the two in this drink. Recipe is below if you’d like to try your own. With the Velvet Falernum version, the drink was lighter in body with a lime heavy flavor. The black strap rum was also more prominent. For the homemade falernum cocktail, the taste was more complex and slightly sweeter with fresh lime and zingy ginger being dominate. The color on each of the cocktails was the same, probably to do with the darkness of the rum overpowering any differences in the color of the falernums.

Make or Buy: Falernum // stirandstrain.com A few notes:

The way you toast your almonds and cloves is up to you. The easiest route is to put them on a baking sheet and stick them in the oven. I do not do this for two reasons. One, it means turning on my oven and making my kitchen unnecessarily hot. And two, it take awhile. I prefer getting out a frying pan and toasting them on the stove. It’s quick and done in a matter of minutes. However, if you are someone who turns a stove on and walks away and forgets about things… go the oven route.
Invest in a nut bag if you enjoy doing these projects at home. Gone are the days where I would buy rolls and rolls of cheesecloth. I have one of these bags and I just wash it by hand immediately after using it and sure, it’s not pristinely white anymore, but it does a much better job of catching all the teeny tiny pieces of things while straining out liquids.

I hope I’ve gotten you mildly excited about Falernum and whether you decide to buy or go DIY, you’ve got two great places to start. If you do use one of these, please tag us so we can see your recipe! Cheers!

Falernum

1 scant cup blanched almonds, roughly chopped and toasted
1 tablespoon whole cloves, toasted
1 piece of ginger, approximately 3″ long, roughly chopped with skin on
3 medium limes, zested and juiced
1-3/4 cup of overproof rum (110 proof used here)
1-1/2 cup sugar
1 cup water

In an airtight, nonreactive container, combine almonds, cloves, ginger, lime zest and juice, and rum. Seal, shake and let rest in a cool, dry place for 24 hours. After 24 hours, strain contents with a nut bag, squeezing the almonds to get as much liquid out as you can. Discard solids.
Make the rich syrup by combining the sugar and water in a medium sized sauce pan over medium-high heat. Stir until all the sugar is dissolved and let syrup come to just a boil and then remove from heat. Let the syrup cool to room temperature and add the strained liquid to it. Stir to combine, seal, and let stand, refrigerated, for 24 hours. Falernum is ready to use after this second rest. Keep refrigerated for up to one month.

Corn ‘n’ Oil Cocktail

2 ounces of black strap rum
1/2 ounce of falernum
2 dashes of Angostura bitters
lime wedge for garnish

In a rocks glass, build your drink by pouring in black strap rum, falernum and bitters over ice. Squeeze your lime wedge over the top and optionally add to the drink. Stir gently to combine.

Cherry Sumac Swizzle

June 14, 2014 by elana Leave a Comment

I’m realizing that since it’s gotten warmer around these parts, I’ve been prone to make a lot of crushed ice recipes. Apologies if you do not own an ice crusher and have had to resort to a bag and rolling pin method. Unless that’s your de-stress time which concludes with a cocktail. Actually, that doesn’t sound half bad.

Before we get to today’s drink, I just wanted to let you guys know that I’ve been hopping all over the internet this week invading other people’s websites, like I sometimes do. Please check out the links for some drink recipes not found on this site! Especially tasty for summer!

Now, onto the drink.

Cherries are just blowing up right now at the farmer’s market, so I keep using them. And also apparently crushed ice. But what I’m seriously, stupidly, into right now is spices. That might sound weird, so let me explain. In the same way that I will read cocktail books and make lists of all the ingredients I don’t have so that I can purchase at some point in time, I tend to read cookbooks and do the same with ingredients I’m unfamiliar with. After getting the Jerusalem Cookbook I started making lists of spices that I’d never heard of, or had seen before and hadn’t a clue as to what I should do with them. So now I have packs of za’atar, urfa pepper, ras el hanout and sumac crowding the shelves with 3 different kinds of cinnamon, pounds of multicolored peppercorns, and so much star anise I’m considering turning it into a wreath for Christmas this year (I’m never going to use it all). Clearly, I like to hoard spices (at least it’s not cats).

So I decided to use one of these unique spices to come up with a drink for the Serious Eats team: sumac. Sumac is awesome by the way. It has so much going on that it’s a pretty versatile spice to have on hand. Both sweet and savory, a little bitter, a bit more sour… it really can be used in place of lemon in a lot of dishes. But, since we’re talking cocktails here, I decided that those sweet summer cherries could use a little sourness to them. That and tons of ice.

Swizzles are serious drinks with a not so serious name. They can pack a punch on the booze side, and should be treated as a sipper, not a big gulp. Also, they require special tools. To make a proper swizzle one must use a swizzle stick that comes from the swizzlestick tree. Seriously, that’s its name. You can get by with a bar spoon too, so don’t feel like you need to go buy any special equipment. Although, if you’re already planning on doing that, I’ve picked out a couple things at the end of this post.

Now, some of you are probably properly trained in the ingredients of a swizzle, so allow me some liberties here as I tell you I left out the traditional lime juice so that the tartness from the sumac shines through. There’s some falernum added to justify that though too.

For the cherry-sumac syrup:

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 1/2 cups sweet cherries, pitted and quartered
1 1/2 teaspoons dried sumac

For the cocktail:

2 ounces demerara rum (such as El Dorado 15 year)
1 1/4 ounces cherry-sumac syrup
1/2 ounce Velvet Falernum
Crushed ice
Dried sumac, for garnish

For the syrup: Combine sugar, water, cherries, and sumac in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Let stand, covered, for 2 hours. Strain into an airtight container, reserving cherries for garnish. The syrup can be refrigerated for up to 1 week.
For the cocktail: In the bottom of a highball or pilsner glass, add rum, cherry-sumac syrup, and falernum, and fill glass with crushed ice. Throw in a couple of those reserved cherries left over from the syrup too. Using a swizzle stick or bar spoon, rapidly spin back and forth between your hands while also moving it up and down. Add more ice to fill the glass. Garnish with a sprinkle of sumac and several of the reserved cherry quarters from the syrup.

First, this is a pretty satisfying drink.Â The tangy sumac and cherry syrup balances the heady vanilla and spice flavors of the rum and falernum. Second, it’s not super boozy, but the rum is very much present.

Will you be seeing more crushed ice recipes on here in the coming months? Yeah, probably, so be prepared to whack that hammer.

Tiki Month is over but here’s a Planter’s Punch

February 28, 2013 by elana 4 Comments

Did you know that this month was Tiki month? According to the Pegu Blog it was. My last Tiki post went up at the end of January- close enough, and I thought I’d squeeze one more in since my other drink recipe that was going to be sitting here went south real quick when I caught the garnishes on fire and burnt the syrup. Here’s a tip: when dealing with boiling sugar, try not to get distracted and walk away for even a minute. As soon as you leave the stove all holy hell will be up in your kitchen.

There are names of cocktails in the Canon of Tiki drinks that everyone is aware of, albeit they probably don’t know what goes in it or what it’s supposed to taste like. One such drink that IÂ know I’ve had before but couldn’t remember anything at all about it was the Planter’s Punch cocktail. To be honest, grenadine is one of the ingredients and I wanted something I could use the syrup in as well.

Planter’s Punch, in my memory, was on the menu of every Polynesian restaurant that my family went to growing up back east. Polynesian also subbing in as a Chinese restaurant; I lived in Rhode Island, it’s a small state and had to be as compact as possible. This drink should also come with no less than 5 pieces of fruit as a garnish and at least one flower. Today we’ll have to suffice with a Tiki mug and my attempts at using a zester to make a lime peel garnish (still needs some work).

Drink Recipe adapted slightly via Beach Bum Berry Remixed
1/2 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 oz simple syrup
1/2 oz Appleton Estates gold Jamaican rum
1/2 oz Trader Vic’s Dark rum
1 oz Mt. Gay Eclipse gold rum
1/2 tsp homemade grenadine
1/2 tsp falernum
2 dashes of Angostura bitters
6 oz crushed ice

1 carved lime leaf for garnish*

Put everything in the blender and blend for 5 seconds. Pour unstrained into a tiki mug and garnish with carved lime ‘leaf’.

*To make a carved lime ‘leaf’, use a zester to carve lines into the outside of a lime. Use a pairing knife to cut out a lime shape from the peel, pull the segment out, peeling off the inside of the flesh. Voila! (For this garnish, my limes are a bit yellow. A darker green might have helped this pop more.)

Planter’s Punch is a sweet and strong drink. A tad too sweet for my tastes, but a nice spiciness from the dark rum and the bitters. The amount of syrups added in would account for the sweet nature of the punch (sugar, grenadine, falernum). However, if you eat something along with this that is very savory, say a steak sandwich, that savoriness cuts right through the sweet making it a pleasing combo. Next time around I’d cut the syrups back and add more juice. Maybe get a little better with the zester too before throwing it out to the public.

Hawaiian Black Eye

November 12, 2012 by elana Leave a Comment

Sometimes I really want to mix up a tiki drink but realize that I’m missing a good deal of the ingredients to put into one. I usually have limes and lemons around the house, but rarely do I have oranges or grapefruit, or, seriously, passion fruit? Perhaps this means I’m missing variety in my diet? What I end up doing is just deciding to go out to my nearest tiki bar, which on my side of L.A. isn’t too difficult.

Today however I ended up with some very late in the season blackberries from the farmers market and was full determined to use them up. In a drink. A tiki drink.

Scrounging through the Beach Bum Berry Remixed book, throwing some Martin Denny on the turntable (trying to get into the mood, don’t laugh), I finally came across something I could adapt to what I had on hand- the Hawaiian Eye (created for the 1960’s show of the same name). I had some rum, falernum, limes… I just needed the “black eye” part, and those blackberries could fit in nicely.

Adapted from Beach Bum Berry Remixed

5 Blackberries (reserve one for garnish)*
1/2 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 oz Fee Brother’s Falernum
1/2 oz simple syrup (1:1)
1/2 oz Kraken Black Spiced Rum
1 oz Mount Gay Eclipse Rum
3 dashes of Miracle Mile Forbidden Bitters
8 oz ice (about a cup, I use my kitchen scale when it comes to ice)

To make the garnish, take your spent lime shell and cut small triangles around the edge. I attempted this with a paring knife first but found that kitchen shears worked much, much better. Pierce the center of the lime with a stainless or bamboo skewer. Thread a blackberry onto the skewer and then the lime shell. Set aside.

Blend all ingredients and pour into your favorite tiki mug, or a goblet if you have one on hand. Garnish with the blackberry hat.

*A note on blackberries. These guys have lots of SEEDS. First attempt at making this meant spitting out seeds with every sip. To avoid this, mash the blackberries through a fine mesh strainer catching the juice, but leaving the seeds behind. Pour into the blender and follow directions as above.

The drink becomes more of a ruby color than black. It’s not too sweet with a sharp tang from the lime and blackberries. The spice from the Kraken and the bitters is more in the finish than in the forward flavor. Oh, and careful, it goes down quick.

A Biting Strawberry

July 12, 2012 by elana Leave a Comment

Warning. You’re going to see several, if not plenty, of drinks containing Shrubs in them coming up in the next few weeks. What’s a Shrub? A Shrub is a vinegar based fruit concentrate that dates back to Colonial Times. Sounds kind of gnarly huh? Vinegar? Gross. Well, actually, if combined with other appealing mixers and liquors it is quite pleasant. Really.

Why the onslaught of Shrub recipes? I recently became a slashie at work. Actually, I have no idea if I’m even using that correctly, but the long and short of it is that I was christened with the title of in-house Mixologist /slash/ creative director (slash a bunch of other titles. It’s a small company). I may have (completely) had something to do with this. But, we re-brought back in a line of Shrubs due to some popularity of them in cocktails and local bars and needed desperately to come up with some recipes so customers knew what to do with them. (That’s right, we had them for sale 4 years ago when no one gave a shit. Although, people are apparently still confused.)

So now I’m doing research, and taking notes, and really using this blog as a scratch pad for ideas. I think I’ve had some hits, and some misses. Here’s a hit. Mainly for people who either want a lighter cocktail, or just don’t want their cocktail tasting so much like alcohol (I need to hit a range of tastes here…).

3 strawberries quartered
1 lime wheel cut in half
1-1/2 oz white rum (I used Oronoco, a favorite for someone who is as confused about rum as someone reading smoke signals who doesn’t, understand.. smoke signals. You get myÂ analogy.)
3/4 oz Strawberry Shrub (Tait Farms)
1/2 oz Falernum

1 strawberry for garnish

Muddle the strawberries and lime wheels together in the bottom of a mixing glass. Add 4-5 ice cubes.Â Pour in the rest of the ingredients and shake well. Pour un-strained into a rocks glass. Garnish with strawberry.

It’s a very summery drink. A bit on the sweet side, but not fake sugary sweetness. No sugar is needed as long as you are using strawberries that are in season and very ripe . There is a sharp note of ginger in the back, and the subtle touch of lime cuts the sweet strawberry taste back a notch. The rum takes a back seat here flavor-wise, which was why I noted that you can make and give this to someone who wants a cocktail but doesn’t like it to taste too strong.

Side note; this tastes amazing with milk chocolate FYI.