DIY

Issue No. 3 —

Falernum #9

Falernum #9

Mak­ing hand­made Faler­num is a real treat and is eas­i­er than one might think. House made Faler­num smells and taste won­der­ful. With a fresh Faler­num you can taste all the com­plex­i­ties and it’ll add a deep fla­vor com­po­nent to your cock­tails. Com­mer­cial grade Faler­num can­not com­pare as it is flat and dull. Go the extra mile and your cock­tails and taste buds will thank you. You’ll have your guest “Wow­ing” your cre­ations.

Recipe

from Jeff Berry’s Beach­bum Berry Remixed

  • 6oz Wray & Nephew Over­proof White Rum
  • Zest of 9 limes with no white pith
  • 40 whole cloves, toast­ed
  • 1 ½ oz (by weight) peeled and chopped fresh gin­ger
  • 2 table­spoons blanched, sliv­ered almonds (dry toast­ed until gold­en brown)
  • 14 oz cold processed sim­ple syrup.* I use 1:1
  • ¼ tea­spoon almond extract
  • 4 ½ oz fresh lime juice, strained

* How to cold process sim­ple syrup: Use warm water just warm enough to melt the sug­ar. Com­bine the warm water and sug­ar in a jar and shake until sug­ar dis­solves. Doing this will give you a crisper sim­ple syrup with a lighter den­si­ty.

Instructions

Step one

Com­bine the rum, lime zest, cloves, almonds and gin­ger in a sealed mason jar, let­ting mix­ture soak for 24 hours.

Falernum Ingredients

Step two

Strain through moist­ened cheese­cloth, squeeze out all the liq­uids.

Step three

Add the almond extract, sug­ar syrup, and lime juice. Bot­tle up and shake to incor­po­rate. This should keep in the fridge for one month.

Cocktails

Here are a cou­ple cock­tails that incor­po­rate my Faler­num. I will be fea­tur­ing these cock­tails at my event at the Wharf Rat Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 9th 2010.

Don the Beachcomber’s Mai Tai

  • 1 oz gold rum
  • 1 1/2 oz Meyers’s Plan­ta­tion rum
  • 1 oz grape­fruit juice
  • 3/4 oz lime juice
  • 1/2 oz Coin­treau
  • 1/4 oz faler­num
  • 6 drops Pern­od or Herb­saint
  • Dash of Angos­tu­ra bit­ters

Bitter End

  • 2 oz white rum
  • 1 oz grape­fruit juice
  • 1/2 oz lime juice
  • 1/2 oz faler­num
  • 2 dash­es Bit­ter­cube Jamaican #2 bit­ters
  • 2 dash­es of Angos­tu­ra for a float

Adapt­ed from Left Coast Liba­tions by Yan­ni Keha­gia­ras.

Posted in DIY

16 Notes on Falernum #9

  1. I had both the Bit­ter End and Don The Beach­comber’s Mai Tai at your Wharf Rat night. Both were fan­tas­tic.

  2. I made a batch of this and it is my new favorite ingre­di­ent. It was so quick and easy also! I have been mix­ing 1 oz faler­num, 1/2 oz pimen­to dram, 1/4 oz lime juice, 2 oz ton­ic water, and 2–4 dash­es bit­ters and serv­ing over ice. Very pop­u­lar at our house right now.

  3. Awe­some! That’s what I like to hear! Your drink sound deli­cious. Have you checked out the Orgeat recipe yet?

  4. Just won­der­ing why on earth this (excel­lent) recipe only keeps for ‘a month’. With 6 oz of over­proof rum in it sure­ly it would last con­sid­er­ably longer?

  5. Michael- This should last a month and a half, two months would be push­ing it. Try and use a wine vac­u­um pump will help store longer and pump the air every­day. After time you will notice the lime juice will get funky.

  6. Touch­ing on Michael’s com­ment, could you keep the rum/extract/simple syrup and add the lime just pri­or to serv­ing? I mix at home so I try and lim­it my per­ish­ables to small batch­es or bet­ter, alter so they will keep. I’ve found adding a bit of vod­ka will keep grena­dine longer with min­i­mal change to the pro­file… Its a trade off but with out the vol­ume, its my best option.

  7. I’ve actu­al­ly start­ed doing this with my faler­num. I’ve noticed the lime juice would start chang­ing col­or after a week and the fla­vor would drop off. This is a smart idea to stretch the life of faler­num. I like to add a shot of vod­ka to all my syrups. The more vod­ka you add you will start to turn your syrup into a liqueur. I do not like to waste these tasty hand craft­ed syrup & liqueurs also. I think the best solu­tion is to just drink more.

  8. I did a tast­ing of 4 cock­tails. I squeezed limes for 2 days, on the 3rd day I squeezed one batch in the morn­ing and then again right before the tast­ing. I was shocked at how much bet­ter the juice was when it was fresh, the juice squeezed a few hours pri­or was not as good but it was­n’t that notice­able, but the juice that was just 24 hours old was very dif­fer­ent and not near­ly as good and the 48 hour old juice was unac­cept­able. I was sur­prised how quick­ly it oxi­dized. In the home bar set­ting, there is no excuse to fresh squeeze every­thing. In the bar, squeez­ing before a shift may be the only option. I guess the point of my ram­bling is that adding cit­rus before you have to seems like a mis­take. I will take you up on your drink­ing more advice! 🙂 its the only way I can try more recipes… how­ev­er I may need to open a bar just so I can try new things.

  9. Made my first bot­tle of Falerum and Last week made the Orgeat syrup look­ing for­ward to com­pare the two Mai Tai Veri­ons

  10. Josh,

    Great recipe, I have adapt­ed from this for our house faler­num at work. I beefed up the gin­ger a lit­tle bit and am also adding toast­ed all­spice.

    When you strain out this soaked hi-proof rum do you add more Wray & Nephew if your yield is below 6oz? I have found that I lose some booze dur­ing the soak­ing process and adjust my lime juice and sim­ple accord­ing­ly.

    Great recipe and web­site!

    Cheers,

    Ryan

  11. Ryan,
    Have you seen my Aper­ol Faler­num? Late­ly I have been doing my faler­num with­out lime juice. The lime juice gets a lit­tle funky after a week on me. In my Aper­ol Faler­num I have 10 oz of booze. I don’t see why you could­n’t add more Wray & Nephew or a light rum, or a vod­ka, to thin it out a bit. Let me know what you come up with.

  12. Josh,
    I’m def­i­nite­ly going to try mak­ing that aper­ol faler­num. I dis­cov­ered recent­ly how use­ful an aero­press cof­fee mak­er can be for mak­ing my faler­num. I have found good results with infus­ing each ingre­di­ent one at a time(using the same rum base to infuse each). Each ingre­di­ent infus­es at a dif­fer­ent rate, so I mon­i­tor each phase by smell and test until I reach my desired aroma/taste. The order of infu­sion that makes sense to me is: almond, gin­ger, spices, zest. this also helps with the final col­or because because you are infus­ing the bright­est ingre­di­ent last. Using the aero­press each time real­ly helps with sep­a­rat­ing the impu­ri­ties in the rum. Corn & Oils are my favorite with this. Anoth­er fun thing to do is to make cock­tails with the rum base before adding in the sim­ple. Dilute it down with some cheap white rum and make daquiris all day! if you are ever in Seat­tle check out The Whale Wins bar!

  13. Great recipe, and thanks for shar­ing all the knowl­edge. A slight change to process made this go quite a bit faster. I put all the aro­mats and alco­hol into a 1 liter whip­ping siphon, gave it 3 nitro charges and in two hours we had a batch of bril­liant stuff. I know not every­one has a siphon, but if you do it’s great tool. We make tons of foams for cock­tails with the siphons as well, and inter­est­ing things like car­bon­at­ed negroni’s. The siphon can add a whole new dimen­sion to a well stocked bar set up.

    Thank again for all the great knowl­edge!

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