Spices, Rhum, Cider

To wrap up winter and to go with Katja’s hazelnut cake, I wanted something that would take the English Autumn and nicely bring it in the winter cocktails department.

First, out with the gin, hello dark rhum. As Katja put’s it “A gentle rhum, like your grandmother’s pastries” for this I chose the Plantation Original Dark, a molasse rhum that’s exactly that. A rhum pastry in a bottle.

To mix it, I used sweet cider to stay within the pastry registry, and give a hint of drinking a hot apple pie when sipping the drink.

Next step was to “cook” the cider. In the mule wine tradition, we’re just going to add a spice mix to the cider while and heat it far away from boiling, at around 100°F just to get rid of the cider carbonation without reducing it to avoid getting a sirupy spice mix.

Of course this is where imagination comes in, as the dose and origins of spice can be whatever you’d like, just like with mulled wine, but here’s mine, for one bottle of cider (70cl) :

• 1 cinnamon stick or 1 barspoon of ground cinnamon
• 1 piece of star anise
• 3-4 cloves
• 3 bar spoon of acacia honey

That will yield about 6-7 drinks, depending how hard you go on the rhum and the glass you’re using

My recommendation would be 1 parts rhum, two parts cider (50ml/100ml), but it can totally be remade as a short drink with more strength with a 1:1 ratio, and shaken (so yes, cold).

This is a very good drink to experiment on winter tastes & spices, and to riff on between a strong late afternoon kick or a nice after dinner, lighter, before bed hot drink.

Enjoy!