Sorrel Rider

We are calling this the Sorrel Rider.  There are a few bourbon drinks out there using the name red rider. That's what I wanted.

This drink is a variant on the classic Jamaican Christmas drink.  You can find the original recipe at Epicurious.

What got this drink started was our visit to Agrifest on the West End of St Thomas.  A few of the vendors were selling whole sorrel flowers.  I also make plenty of sun tea with sorrel tea packets.  Finding the whole flowers was really fun.

The recipe in the link I provided is basically what we did.  We threw in 2 liters of water, part of a ginger root and a whole pound of sorrel.  I brought it all to a boil and then let simmer for 30 minutes. From there it went into the fridge to cool.  24 hours later I out it all through a strainer leaving just the sorrel tea.

Now that one has the tea one can do a few things with it.  Add a cinnamon stick, add a whole bunch of sugar or simple syrup or just drink it as is.  We left it sit till the weekend and then proceeded to make a refreshing drink out of it.

Our ingredients to put with the brewed tea:

• Lemon
• Lime
• Orange
• White rum
• Flavored rum (we used black cherry in one drink and mango in another)
• Sugar

Now you can use raw sugar, white sugar or even simple syrup.  It all depends on how sweet you want it.  Your simple syrup will be the sweetest while the raw sugar will be the least as it doesn't dissolve quickly.

As far as measurements are concerned it was a slice of each fruit, 1 shot of white rum and 1 shot of flavored rum for each glass.  We made it with two teaspoons of raw sugar in each glass.  Add some ice and you are set!

I would also like to mention that you don't have to use fresh sorrel flowers.  That could be hard to come by outside your sub tropical or tropical areas.  Brewing some tea and letting it cool will work as well.  I use a Carlo Rossi 1.5 liter jar, 2 packets of sorrel tea and a slice of orange.  I just leave it sit outside for a few hours and then refrigerate it when I'm done.

I hope others find this as refreshing as we do.

Low Calorie Mix Drinks

Low Calorie Mix Drinks..I keep hearing about these and now I am finally going to try and make these.

Recently, my beer intake began to spike in relation to my usual alcohol intake.  This isn't a good thing when you consider how many calories one has with 1 beer.  Normally I mix in a few cocktails and a few fine rums on the rocks.

My wife wanted us to cut down on soda and me beer and soda.  She doesn't drink beer.  I'm still scratching my head on the soda part as we've allowed soda to expire before just because we barely drink it.  She went to the nutrients and she suggested to use more sparking water.  This was actually fine with me because I like sparkling water and I don't even need flavoring for it.

At the grocery store we bought some pomegranate and some black cherry seltzer water.  I started with the pomegranate first.  With some help of google I wanted to see what most people mixed with pompegranate juice.  I didn't actually look for seltzer but figured it would be close enough.  I saw some similar patterns with most drinks having some type of orange..usually an orange peal, some simple syrup and a few even had rum. Mixing rum is good.  I love rum.

With these suggestions in mind I have come up with a few drink ideas that are very low in calories, taste good and can be sweet or unsweetened depending on your tastebuds.

First, white rum.  We use Cruzan because Cruzan is made on St Croix and we live on the US Virgin Islands.  To put another way, we have a very high quality white rum for a very cheap price.  Second, I was looking for something that wasn't too sweet.  This first attempt hit the spot right away and my wife loved it (with half the rum I used in my drink).

Like I mentioned earlier one can use a variety of different mixtures.  Here is the one the wife liked:

• 1 shot of rum
• 1/3 shot of Triple Sec
• spoonful of grenadine
• 1 large ice cube in a high ball glass
• squeeze some lime juice in it
• just a touch of guava Rum
• fill to the top with pomegranate seltzer water

The guava rum sweetens the drink up just enough where a person doesn't have to add sugar.

I really wanted to try some different variations especially one that wasn't as sweet. This is what I tried the next night:

• 1 shot of white rum
• 1/3 shot of Grand Marnier
• spoonful of grenadine
• 1 large ice cube in a high ball glass
• little bit of raw sugar but simple syrup would work just the same.
• squeeze some lime juice in it.
• fill to the top with pomegranate seltzer water

I wanted to do this without the grenadine but I needed the grenadine to cut the strength of the Grand Marnier.

I made another one after this with Cointreau instead and you really can tell the difference between cheap triple sec and Cointreau.  Again, there appears to be many ways to go about making this depending on how sweet you want it to be and how many calories you want to max out at.  I purchased a black cherry seltzer and some lime seltzer water to play with next.  Obviously gin and tonic variations are similar in nature.

Mojito with simple syrup instead of just sugar

Mojito made with simple syrup instead of just sugar

We had some Mint Juleps the other day and needed to make some simple syrup for them.  We only use natural sugar as the stuff is cheaper than white granulated sugar. The side effect of this is the sugar seems stronger.  Same goes for simple syrup.  Now, the syrup will come out a very dark brown but don't let that brown color fool you.  It tastes better to.

I decided to make Mojitos instead of Mint Juleps today to use up the simple syrup and we have tons of mint growing in the garden.  It might have been one of the best mojitos I've ever made.

It was just your normal Mojito recipe except I swapped out the sugar for a shot of simple syrup.  I muddled the lime, mint, rum and simple syrup before I added the sprite.

We use green colored goblet cups so it's not like you can see the color of the drink.

Ginger Fresh

Ingredients:

• 1/2 can or bottle of some good Ginger Beer
• 2 shots of white rum
• 1 lime wedge

Combine ice and 2 shots of white rum into a glass.  Top off with Ginger Beer and squeeze some lime into it.  Serves 1

You won't be able to taste the rum and it will come off as an amazingly refreshing drink due to the ginger beer.

Drink at your own pace!

Passion Mimosa

Ingredients:

• 1 passion fruit 
• Sprig of mint 
• Half an orange 
• Slice of lime 
• Champagne
• Just put it all in a wine glass and serve.

Strawberry Crush with Tequila, lime juice, and Triple Sec

2 strawberries
half a cup of triple sec
half a cup of Tequila
half a cup of lime juice
4 ice cubes
splash of peach nectar


Mix in a blender and pour into a glass.  We used sea salt on the rims of the class.  I like it because it is more sour than sweet.  Very Margarita-ish.

Brinley Gold Rums

I wrote the post about the Christmas Eve drinks and I forgot about the drinks the day before.


I almost forgot that we did some experimentation the previous night.  A quick background to start off with: A few months ago we bought some Brinley Gold Shipwreck coffee Rum.  The company is based in St. Kitts.  The bottles have more of a sophisticated look to them and certainly cost more than our regular rum selections ($17).

We decided to try the coffee rum first. It was very smooth and creamy.  Drinking it on the rocks was perfect.  I can assure you the bottle didn't last long.

For our 2nd bottle we picked Mango Rum.  Personally, the key to the mango being good is smooth yet not overpowering.  Unfortunately it made half the requirments.  It is smooth but very strong in terms of the mango flavor.  Due to this I will not be drinking it on the rocks.  However, my wife loves it.  She does love everything mango but that is another story.

Mango Rum
Coke
Lime

That's it.  Those three ingredients make it taste great.  It still has a touch of sweetness but it is still very smooth.  I had wanted my wife to mix it with Sprite but we had an open can of coke zero.  You have to love that kind of logic.