Fetch the lawn clippings, we're making Tiki drinks!

In the past I have gone on record as subscribing to the Alton Brown school of mixology, namely that, a good drink is sort of like a musical chord. There is a base note or spirit, a modifier or mixer, and then maybe an accent (bitters, twist, perhaps and olive). A chord should have at least three notes, strictly musically speaking, but I believe there are probably two note drinks that work just fine. The point of the Alton Brown analogy is to point out what happens if you keep adding more and more notes to a musical chord….eventually you have a dissonant cacophony of noise.

From this point of view most Tiki drinks are like listening to an orchestra warm up; perhaps the Rhesus and Langur Philharmonic. To my mind, usually more ingredients does not equal better drink. However, I was intrigued by the Tiki drink article I highlighted yesterday and decided perhaps I owe Tiki drinks another chance. I selected one of the recipes included with the article and decided to give it a try. I selected Hot Coffee Grog, being the cold-ish weather put me in a warm drink kind of mood. I’ll include the recipe here for you non-hyperlink clickers:

Hot Coffee Grog
1 sugar cube or 1 heaping teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
Pinch of grated nutmeg
Pinch of ground clove
Pinch of powdered cinnamon
3 strips orange peel, about 1/2-inch wide
1 strip grapefruit peel, about 1/2-inch wide
6 ounces steaming hot coffee
1 ounce dark Jamaican rum, such as Appleton Estate V/X
2 drops vanilla extract
Cinnamon stick.

Place all ingredients in a heatproof glass or mug and stir until butter melts and sugar dissolves.
Yield: One drink.

First off this is not a drink to make if you want a quick cup of coffee. In fact this is probably the slowest cup of coffee you’ll ever prepare in your life. Look at all the ingredients that go into it. Jeeze. The time to make the drink is probably only exacerbated by the fact that it was me making the drink. Anyone who has watched me (and tapped their foot anxiously) while I mix drinks knows what I’m talking about. I like to take my time.

Still I was intrigued by this drink because the coffee is not diluted down with milk or cream or some other ingredient that tries to turn black coffee into something else. The drink is essentially black coffee. There is a pat of butter in it, sure, but there is probably a reason coffee drinkers that require cream don’t reach for Land-o-Lakes when the half-and-half runs out.

I had to make a few substitutions since I didn’t schedule a special shopping trip to make the drink. I ended up replacing all the citrus peel with lemon peel. It was the only citrus we had in the house. I also ended up having to substitute lighter rum for the dark Jamaican rum. I figured if the drink was appealing with light rum the darker rum could only make it better.

Looking at order of assembly, I decided to add the coffee last. I wanted the coffee to be as hot as possible when I added it so it could better dissolve the honey and sugar and I was afraid the drink might cool down too much while I was digging around in my pantry for all of the spices and “measuring” them. As I went about adding all the spices to empty coffee cups I got the strange feeling that I was trying to turn my coffee into an apple pie (cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, etc).

Presentation-wise these drinks were a hit. There something special about see a mug with a cinnamon stick sticking out of it and a little pillow of fat melting away. Stirring the drink with the cinnamon stick to thoroughly incorporate the butter is a fun little interactive game you get to play with your drink before you drink it.

As far as taste goes, I liked it. It tasted like festive black coffee. There was a lot going on, but it was still coffee. I don’t know how different it is than buying a flavored coffee…. I suppose the grog is automatically superior because it has alcohol in it and you get to make sure none of the flavorings are wretched. I think I liked it better than Dawn did, but it’s probably because it’s hard to be weaned of off Starbuck coffee drinks we’re they successfully hide the taste of coffee with milk and sugar. I’d probably make it again while entertaining because the drink just feels special…. Of course I’m also interested in trying to strip it down to a proper three note chord. I’m thinking black coffee, Irish whiskey, and cloves.