The Old Fashioned Cocktail. Whether you hate them or love them, drinking an Old Fashioned is a cocktail must have experience. Traditionally. An Old Fashioned cocktail is made with Bourbon. However, swapping out that Bourbon for Rum makes a delicious twist that is the Rum Old Fashioned

Spiced Rum Old Fashioned cocktail recipe video

Which Rum to use for a Rum Old Fashioned

Picking the perfect rum for your rum old fashioned is down to personal preference. It’s not about what other people deem to be the best spiced rum but what you like to drink. Spice rums differ vastly on flavours. From vanilla to ginger, Mandarin to pineapple. With the rum making up the majority of this cocktail, it’s important to pick the right one. That being, the right one for you.

Spiced Rum Recommendations:

Kraken black spiced rum. Kraken has a heavy caramel, almost toffee like flavour that works perfectly in rum old fashioned. It also happens to be quite cheap to buy which is always a plus.

Plantation Pineapple. Plantation pineapple is a popular choice for bartenders. Created by the company's cellar master Alexandre Gabriel and drinks historian David Wondrich for Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans in 2015.

To make it, they infuse the rinds of Queen Victoria pineapples in their white rum for a week then distil it, and infuse the fruit of the pineapples in dark rum for three months. These are married together and left to age in casks for three months.

This rum will work perfectly in a Old fashioned

Chairman’s reserve spiced rum. Hailing from Saint Lucia, this spiced rum works perfectly as a base to many tropical cocktails. For example, it works wonders in a Mai Tai. However, don’t get it wrong. It still works great in spirit forward cocktails such as this rum old fashioned.

Red Leg. This rum is infused with ginger and vanilla. Within an old fashioned, those flavours in Red Leg shine perfectly.

Dead Man’s Finger This unconventional rum has a range of flavours, each bringing its own character to a rum old fashioned. There black bottled spice rum, has sweet flavours similar to that of a Pedro Ximenez sherry.

There coffee rum would make for an unconventional twist on a classic rum old fashioned.

*Spiced Rum Old Fashioned cocktail photo*

Which sugar to use for your Rum Old Fashioned

Caster sugar

Caster sugar is the most popular sugar for mixing with cocktails. Its easy dissolve-ability makes it the perfect sweetener for your drink. Especially in an Old fashioned when it can be quite difficult to dissolve all the sugar.

Brown Sugar

On one side of the scale you have white sugars such as caster sugar, with little to know taste other then sweetness. On the other end is demerara sugar, which although still has the sweetness, also has a malty, molasses flavour. In the middle of that scale is brown sugar. Often the favourite choice of many bartenders for classic bourbon Old fashioned’s.

Demerara sugar

Demerara sugar is a sugar made from reduced, crystallised cane juice. Giving it a heavy molasses taste. With Rum being made from molasses. Demerara sugar makes the perfect sweet match. The problem is, demerara sugar has larger granules making it difficult to mix with alcohol. Making a demerara sugar syrup will fix that issue and work wonders.

Sugar syrups

Sugar syrups are going to the best way to infuse your cocktails with sweetness. Not only is it going to lengthen your cocktail. But, liquid sugar is easier to mix then sugar granules.

However, adding sugar syrup to Old Fashioned’s has some what of a stigma around it. The Old Fashioned is a very old cocktail, it’s traditional to mix them with sugar granules. Nevertheless, Sugar granules have a difficult time dissolving in alcohol. Which 80% of this drink is. So, opting for a sugar syrup will make the process easier, quicker and most importantly, more consistent.

Recipe for sugar syrup

Making your own sugar syrup couldn’t be easier. It’s just a case of dissolving sugar in boiling water and letting it cool. The standard ratio is 1:1.

1:1 simply means that you need to mix equal parts sugar to water. So if you’re using 1 cup of sugar, mix in 1 cup of water. Heat that mix up on a hob whilst stirring. Once the mixture reaches a boil and the sugar has dissolved, allow the mixture to cool.

1:2. 1:2 is a mix of 1 part sugar to 2 parts water. Perfect for lengthening drinks without adding to much sweetness.

2:1. 2:1 as you’ve probably guessed by now is a mix of 2 parts sugar and 1 part water. This gives you the closest texture and sweetness as most store bought sugar syrups such as Monin.

Rum Old Fashioned Tips

The thing to take most from this recipe isn’t just my spiced rum old fashioned recipe. As you may of noticed. The recipe is quite vague when it comes to which rum to use and which sugar. I’ve added the recommendations to help, but what i really want is for you to get creative.

As well as being one of the oldest cocktails in history, the old fashioned also makes a great base for creativity. So, bending the recipe to suit your needs is easy. Especially now whilst we are in lockdown. Now more then ever you’re creating cocktails for yourself and not other people. So change the recipe to suit you.

So what if you want 5ml of sugar in your Old Fashioned or 30ml of sugar in your Old Fashioned. Who has the right to tell you how to drink your own drink? No one. So get creative.

I would love to know how your Rum Old Fashioned turned out. So if you’ve made one please comment below and let me know how you got on. And if you’d like to share this recipe, you can do by using the below buttons.

Thank you.

Rum Old Fashioned Recipe