Sunday, July 28, 2019

here's how zombie

3/4 oz Heavy Bodied Rum (RL Seale 10 Year)
3/4 oz Dark Puerto Rican Rum (Don Q Añejo)
3/4 oz Light Puerto Rican Rum (Privateer Silver)
3/4 oz Red Rum (Appleton Select)
1/2 oz Apricot Liqueur (Combier)
3/4 oz Pineapple Juice
Juice of 1 Lime (1 oz)
1 tsp Brown Sugar

Shake with ice, pour into a Zombie glass (Tiki mug), and top with ice. Float 151 proof rum (1/4 oz Plantation OFTD), and garnish with mint, pineapple (omit), and cherries (omit).

My freshman year of college, I was invited to Halloween party one Saturday night at a nearby fraternity. One of the best drinks of the event was a Zombie that I vividly recall being rather potent with pineapple and apricot being the most noteworthy flavors. By potent, I mean that I had four and then I stopped, but my roommate who arrived on his own had at least double that in less time and was a mess. We tried to get him to walk home with us, but he kept with his troublesome antics and darted. He did make it back to the room and later woke up with a black marker line down his face for his efforts (disclaimer: he was not the nicest of roommates). So with the teenage high jinks aside, my memory of the Zombie from 30 years ago was very specific and nothing like the mysterious spice hints of the 1934 classic Zombie. The Zombie that came closest to it was first published in 1941 in W.C. Whitfield's wood-covered Here's How that I mentioned in the Bath Salts post. While the Don the Beachcomber offering had a limitation of two per customer, this recipe was subtitled "one to a customer" despite being somewhat weaker in strength.
Whitfield's Zombie welcomed the senses with mint, funky overproof rum, and a fruity nose. Next, lime and the rums' caramel on the sip lumbered into rich rums, brown sugar-pineapple, and apricot flavors on the swallow. While made with better ingredients than the party one and not served in a plastic Solo cup, it was definitely less sweet and more citrus defined but rather similar in flavor.

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