The Higgins
Recipe:
- 60ml Smith & Cross rum
- 7.5ml Grade B maple syrup
- 2 dashes Bittercube Blackstrap bitters (or 1/2bsp blackstrap rum)
- pinch of salt
Build the drink in your rocks glass over one large ice cube and stir or do it in a stirring glass over large ice cubes and then strain it, garnish with an orange zest, twist it over the drink beforehand.
The source text (see below): "Between the funky S&C Jamaican pot still rum, the maple syrup, and the molasses-tinged blackstrap bitters, this drink might have proved too heady by half, but it is raised and lifted by that edge-providing pinch of salt. Higgins is not a bartender, but a DJ who works under the matching name Dieselboy."
Someone really unlocked a perfect combination for a specific spirit (S&C in this case) and it says something when you as an amateur get into a really good bar book. And then it is even named after you, would be the question whether he decided it so himself or Mr. Simonson...
The essence of Jamaica lives in the nose, guava, papaya, banana, pineapple, the fresh orange zest, fresh sugar cane and honey, carries through in the taste, here with accents of allspice, cinnamon, clove and licorice, lingers forever with dried tropical fruit in the mouth.
I stirred it in a stirring glass first because I somehow have a natural reflex against build-in-glass, besides the S&C Rum can survive discreet dilution. Should you not have the special and here in Germany rather rare to find Blackstrap Bitters, you can take 1/2 bsp or 10-12 drops blackstrap (style) rum (e.g. Cruzan Blackstrap, Plantation OFTD, etc.) and 1 dash aromatic style bitters.
Another brilliant drink that ranks high in the price-for-value category at the same time, an approx. 23-25€ rum, nothing else and you get a rum OF that can rival numerous 15-20€ signature Rum Old Fashioneds from top bars. The magic that a little salt or saline solution can make.
Source: "The Old Fashioned" by Robert Simonson, p. 156, Drink by Damian Higgins, 2012
