Grog is the original rum cocktail: rum, water, lime and sugar. It was the Royal Navy's daily ration for more than two hundred years, and made properly with good rum it is still one of the best long drinks there is.
Ingredients:
- 2 oz Bombarda Falconet
- 1 oz fresh lime juice
- 1 oz turbinado syrup (2 parts turbinado sugar to 1 part hot water, stirred until dissolved)
- 2 dashes Angostura bitters
- Chilled water, to top
- Lime wheel and grated nutmeg, to garnish
Method of Attack:
- Combine the rum, lime juice and turbinado syrup in a rocks glass with ice.
- Top with chilled water and stir.
- Add the bitters over the top.
- Garnish with a lime wheel and a grating of fresh nutmeg.
About This Recipe:
In 1740, Admiral Edward Vernon ordered that the Royal Navy's daily half-pint of rum be cut with water before issue. Men were drinking it neat and the results were predictable. Vernon wore a coat of grogram cloth and the lower deck called him Old Grog — so the watered ration became grog, and the name stuck for nearly three centuries.
Lime and sugar came later, and the lime turned out to matter enormously: citrus in the daily ration did more against scurvy than any medical order of the period. The ration was finally abolished on 31 July 1970, a day the fleet still calls Black Tot Day.
Why this rum:
Grog is four ingredients and two of them are water and sugar. That leaves nowhere for the rum to hide — this is a drink that exposes a spirit as thoroughly as a Daiquiri does.
The Navy's ration was Caribbean rum, unsweetened and undisguised, and that is what this wants. Falconet is aged 8 to 15 years with no added sugar, no caramel colorant and no chill filtration. You are adding the sugar yourself, in the syrup, where you can measure it.
Battle Notes:
Turbinado rather than white sugar. The molasses left in raw sugar is what makes the syrup taste of something, and it is closer to what would actually have been aboard.
More on the ration in The Royal Navy Rum Ration.
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