November Drink of the Month - The Beachbum

November seems like a weird time to feature a tiki drink as my drink of the month (especially right now, with 6 inches of snow on the ground), but just last week I was still enjoying tropical climate down near Cancun, Mexico, so I hope you'll forgive me for being in the tiki mood. Two things led to our drink today: 1) I picked up some good Nicaraguan rum from the local grocery store while I was on my honeymoon, so it seemed only fair that I build something tropical. 2) Ann and I also had excellent shrimp tacos al pastor, so I decided to recreate those this week, which necessitated that I buy a whole pineapple. Rum plus pineapple always means tiki, and this month I was drawn to a recipe from the excellent PDT Cocktail Book named "the Beachbum." The drink is named in honor of Jeff "Beachbum" Berry, the man who is responsible for the modern revival of tiki culture, and it does everything you want out of a tiki cocktail - it has multiple types of rum, multiple fresh juices, and a couple of extra ingredients to add complexity (want an intro to tiki? I found this article helpful!)

Speaking of Jeff Berry and tiki bars, Ann and I had the good fortune of visiting Three Dots and a Dash in Chicago last weekend while in town to celebrate a friend's wedding. If I wasn't already inspired to make tiki drinks before this weekend, that trip would have surely done the trick. The bar is tucked back down an alley near some other excellent Chicago restaurants off Clark Street, and the underground bar is guarded by an impressive collection of blue-lit skulls as you enter. Ann was a little sketched out as we entered, but once you are inside, the Hawaiian-shirt clad bartenders and festively garnished drinks quickly put you at ease. The bartenders are artists (I sat and watched one work for 15 minutes - they took so much care in all of their drinks, and the fellow I watched spent 5 minutes garnishing the collection of cocktails he was mixing up - so much fun!), and the drinks were excellent. In true tiki fashion, there is a different, dedicated mug for each beverage, as well as copious fresh flowers, fruit, and swizzle sticks. I'm already planning my next trip (and shopping for tiki mugs - just don't tell Ann, since she thinks we have too many different types of bar glasses already).

While I currently lack the necessary tiki mugs to make an authentic cocktail on the level of Three Dots and a Dash, you can still make the Beachbum cocktail at home and serve it in a boring glass, just like I did. The recipe is below:

In a mixing glass, combine:
1 oz Amber (aged) rum
1 oz silver (unaged) rum*
1 oz fresh pineapple juice (if you don't want to break out your commercial juicer, a handheld citrus squeezer works well here if you don't mind a little mess)
0.75 oz fresh lime juice
0.5 oz Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot**
0.5 oz Orgeat

Add a heaping scoop of crushed ice and shake for 10 seconds. Strain into a class filled with crush ice, garnish with your favorite tiki accompaniments - pineapple leaf, cherry/orange flag, fineapple skewer, hibiscus flower, etc.

*It is really important that you use two different types of rum here. I used aged Hatian Rhum Barbancort (which is a rhum agricole, made from fresh squeezed sugarcane juice instead of molasses) to get some of the "funk" or "hogo" that you find with good rums and Nicaraugan Flor De Cana Extra Seco 4 year for my silver rum. Getting the flavors from two different rums is the hallmark of a good tiki drink

**You can find all sorts of different apricot liqueurs if you look hard enough, but I really like the Rothman & Winter. They also make the Creme de Violet that I use for my Aviations, so I trust the brand.

Enjoy your Beachbum!