Hot Buttered Rum

Christmas came down Friday.  Saturday we awoke to snow and freezing rain.  Thus begins the dreary slide that is Chicago between New Year's and  Memorial Day.  So we are definitely in need of something to cozify.  Having a new bar text specifically dedicated to winter cocktails is just what we need to warm our happy hour cockles!

Hot Buttered Rum.  It sounds so rich and comforting, doesn't it?  Honestly, it's just this side of gruel.   The specs for this was a starting place.  Tweaking was done.  

This bev is an exercise in delayed gratification.  It gets better as you get closer to the bottom and in the end, it's all about the last mouthful -- rich, fatty, and full of winter flavors. The trick is to get each sip to taste this way.




Hot Buttered Rum

The Butter
4 T. butter
1 vanilla bean
1.5 T. dark brown sugar

Using a knife tip, slice the vanilla bean open and scrape the seeds from the pod into the butter.  Add the sugar.  Stir it all together until the vanilla seeds and sugar are well mixed throughout the butter.

The Rum

Hot Buttered Rum is all about the butter.
Additions like vanilla bean and brown sugar make it special.

6 oz. dark rum
3 cups hot water

Divide (room temperature) butter mixture between 4 toddy glasses.  Add the rum mixture.  Enjoy*

* : Ok, so here's the tweaking.  To start, give the drink a few swirls with a spoon to break up  and dissolve the butter mixture throughout the drink.  It's not a bad idea to keep one handy and do it a couple times as you sip, as the butter fat will both float to the surface and settle to the bottom of glass.  In this state, the drink will be more gruel-like when first sipping and become richer as you get to the bottom of the glass.  

The first round I made with Mount Gay rum.  It's dark, but not as dark as Myers -- which I used in the second round.  Additionally, I only used about 2.5 cups of hot water to the 6 ounces of rum.  In the future, I'd try only 2 cups, all in an effort to get a richer experience from each sip and not just towards the bottom.