Cold Rum Flip – Jerry Thomas

One teaspoon of powdered sugar dissolved in a little water

One wineglass of Jamaica rum

One fresh egg

Two or three lumps of ice

Shake up thoroughly, strain in a medium glass, and grate a little nutmeg on top

One of our favourite guests here at Goat is the lovely Harrie, a musician who dabbles in hospitality. Her family make a point of heading to Grenada every January for some winter sun, and winter rum. She never came back without a bottle of Jack Iron rum for us, which at 69% is just a completely different type of drunk. Its this wonderfully warm enveloping inebriation, that hits you a little like stepping out of a airplane door into that humid tropical heat of the Caribbean, in case you can’t tell, I’m a fan. Hurricane season wiped out her winter sojourn, but I was lucky enough to bump into the distributor for the rum at a charity dinner, and so today, starting with a shot of Jack Iron we had a rum tasting from the rest of their range. There were some great rums, but none with quite the same charm as Jack.

I decided that todays drink should use Jack Iron, and wanted to use Jerry Thomas, which I quickly discovered is a little light on rum drinks. When it was first published in 1862 the US was dabbling in prohibition (Maine 1851), and rum after its colonial hay day had obviously waned in popularity. America was a long way from being the United States, still halfway through an exhausting civil war. Its people had better things to spend there money on than imported booze, whiskey became spirit of choice.

We made the flip up in the main bar while waiting for our Prohibition themed cocktail class to filter in, the recipe calls for Jamaica rum, which Jack Iron is not, so we made it 50/50 with Wray n Nephews to get all that punchy flavour, and I was all filled up with Grenadian courage so anything seemed like a good idea.

Making the drink was a little scary, the rum seems to cook the egg when your poured it over, I had flashbacks from those old ‘this is your brain on drugs’ posters from the 80’s.

The drink is stupidly easy to drink, even with all of that insanely strong rum inside, there is no alcohol burn, just the flavour, the egg is magic. And it has nutmeg, which I love, and appears on Grenada’s flag.

Jack would approve.