Three rums in one! [Navy Grog Blend]

It's the big announcement. We're breaking it here. Aloha. Welcome back to Spike's Breezeway Cocktail Hour. There are some guests that we have on the show that just kind of feel like they're part of the Breezeway family now, like our buddy McBiff and of course, Pinup Palmer. And then there's also Ed Hamilton of Hamilton Rums has been on the show a few times now. He has a new solution for the three rums that go into the Navy Grog. I'd love to bring back onto the show, my buddy, Ed Hamilton. Thank you so much for being back on the show. Oh, I guess the foliage. This'll work. Sure. Ed's shockingly tall. We did bring a Whitcoe stool back here for him because the Breezeway has low ceiling. So we put a Whitcoe stool up here for him to sit down because this is obviously not going to work out. Wow. And even sitting, we're about the same height. It's hot in the Breezeway today. It's warm, but man, it's not that bad. So you were on the show, what, a couple of times? Yes. Oh my God. How's your life changed since you're on the show? Oh, it's been remarkable. It will come up to me in supermarkets. Didn't I see you on Spike's Breezeway Cocktail Hour? That's what I hear. We're making celebrities here. So you came up with a solution for the three rums that you would normally use to make a Navy Grog. Well, I was asked to Jeff Barry and I've been talking after at the time we started with the zombie blend and he says, you know, uh, the other one that we really need is a Navy Grog. And there's another one that, uh, I can't remember what it is. I'm not gonna, I shouldn't tell you anyway, cause it's not done. Oh, another blend. Yeah. Another blend. And the zombie was, uh, we were happy with that. The Navy Grog blend is a different blend. Took a little longer, basically based on the Navy strength rum that I'd already done. Right. With 114 proof, which is a blend of Demerara and Jamaican rums. The recipe for the Navy Grog required an additional Puerto Rican rum or a light rum. Right. Highly distilled and aged. We went back to the drawing board and, um, I look at this like an artist. I'm not an artist, but I think of it like the primary colors, the primary flavors, the heavier Demerara, the flavors of the Jamaican, and then the Puerto Ricans, much lighter flavors. And then blend those together. It took a couple of years. We tried to do them simultaneously, but it took longer to do the Navy Grog blend for some reason. Just to get it right. To get it right. And, uh, we had many, many samples, different proofs. And finally we recognized it's a Navy Grog. It's gotta be 114 proof. It does. Navy Grogs will get you. I'll tell you. Well, they will, they will. But this actually has less alcohol in it than the Navy Grog, which was three ounces of rum. So our idea was let's get it down to two. A little higher proof and 114 proof is the traditional Navy strength rum. But you did that with the zombie too. The zombie blend. Right. So the zombie is 119 proof. Right. A little higher proof. Uh, we worked with some things that were up, uh, 126, 129, 131. We loved it. Yeah. Maybe a little too much. The whole objective there was to get a really good drink in two ounces of rum. Right. That you could have a couple of. That we could have a couple of. And at 130 proof, it was just too much. It still needed to be over proof. And we got it down 118 proof. So this one I finally accepted. It's gotta be 114 proof. We did different blends and we finally came up with one that we liked. One of the things that we recognized a long time ago is the first thing, what do you, what's the first thing you do when somebody hands you a bottle of rum? Usually I examine it for a cork, but then I don't know. I'll look at the label, I guess. Right. And then you taste it. Oh, then you taste it. Yeah. Am I supposed to taste this? No, you can, if you want to, it's up to you. But, uh, the thing was people were going to try it before they make a cocktail. They're going to drink it straight. But this is what the Navy strength was. It's a very good, easy, easy sipping rum. I mean, there's, there's heat. Whoa. Kind of gets you on the back end there. It's 114 proof. Yeah. It's 114 proof. It doesn't get you somewhere. Yeah. Put it back on the shelf. But it, no, it catches up after. Sure. But this is the Navy strength that we started with. It was 114, which is only two rumps, but take a sip of that. You know, as you're the, uh, resident rum taster here. Let's see. That's not quite as inviting. I mean, it's. No, that's fiery. Man. Wow. That's a, yeah. You can immediately. It's got more character. Definitely more character. Yeah. Recognizing that people are going to taste it straight away, right out of the bottle. We ended up with something a little softer, but we still wanted to maintain a lot of the character. And we feel like we accomplished that when we ended up with us. So you have to put a Navy anchor on a bottle of Navy grog. You do. There was actually a picture of Jeff Barry hiding behind that anchor, but you can't see him because he's hiding. Oh, if you look real close, maybe you can find him. If you drink enough rum, he's like a man of hooney. And then on the back is the Navy grog recipe, right? Which is a recipe that Jeff discovered back in the nineties. There was a lot of mystique about the Navy grog. Everybody knew it was a strong drink and the big tiki bars, but people didn't really know how to make it. I believe it was a Don the Beachcomber cocktail, right? I think so. Yeah. But there was a honey syrup that was used to sweeten it. And it was a little bit of a trick to not or squeeze honey into a cocktail and not have it coagulate or harden when you hit it with the ice. Sure. And Jeff finally discovered that what they were doing was using water and honey, making a honey mix, one-to-one honey mix. And that wouldn't solidify when the ice hits the honey. That was one of the tricks of it. And then just getting the balance right. I don't think people give Beach Bum Berry enough credit in not only discovering a lot of the old recipes, but also the methods for creating those cocktails like you're talking about. Anybody can put three ingredients together. You got to get them in the right proportions. You got to do it over a period of time. There's a lot of little innuendos just like baking. Baking. A good baker. Yeah. You do a lot of baking. I used to, I used to bake all my own bread and cookies, cookies, not so much cookies, pancakes, pound cake, living on a boat. You just didn't go to the grocery store and buy bread because there wasn't a grocery store. But if you give somebody a recipe and say, here's the ingredients. If you don't put them together the right way, knead the flour, let it rise. If you don't grease the pan, all the little details that you don't think about, you end up with something that's basically inedible. Just like if you don't double strain a daiquiri and things like that. It ends up in your teeth. That's right. Wait, the daiquiri does? Whatever's left in the glass, in the shaker. Totally. There's a lot of little details. You know one of the reasons the mojito fell out of fashion? Because it's a pain in the ass? Well, the mint would get stuck in people's teeth. Oh, right. And people would go, I don't want that on me. Yeah. It's delicious though. Well, if it's made right. Anyway, Jeff did an amazing amount of research. And when he was doing it, he never dreamed that there would be any of this tiki culture today. He was doing it for the archives. He believed, and I believe him, that by 2001 it was all going to be gone. Wow. Yeah. There was a slow demise of tiki bars and, uh, you know, in Ohio and different places and the brews are falling in slowly, slowly, slowly. And the drinks were sucking more and more and more. And people were going to them less and less and less. It was less of a, uh, tradition than it used to be. Oh, in 97, there weren't a lot of rumps. There weren't a lot of good rumps available. Okay. It was Bacardi and Mount Gay and some Appleton. And that was about all you could get where years before there had been a much bigger, uh, availability of rumps. Sure. But Jeff spent his time and he did it for the archives. He studied these things and he wanted to preserve it because he believed that it was all going to go away. And, uh, he'd done a couple of books, but he had no idea that he'd be doing reprints of books and then go on to own a bar and do drinks and much less work with me on blending rumps. Very, very talented, but like a lot of really good artists. He's incredibly humble. I don't know anybody that doesn't like him. He's a nice guy. Seems like a nice guy to me. Yeah. It's a nice guy. It's hot in the breezeway. Man, I'm sweating up here. So typically this cocktail we made with a Demerara rum, the Navy strength rum, and you said a light Puerto Rican rum, but your one bottle solves that whole problem, right? So the idea here is instead of having three rums on your bar, cause you're always going to be out of one of them or one of them, you know, something's going to happen. Put all three of them together. Then you've got them in the right proportion and it doesn't suck as much. Also the people always complain about the cost of entry into like tiki cocktails, especially with a zombie, you know, there's like 14 ingredients or whatever, 12 ingredients. Same thing with a Navy grog. There's a lot of ingredients. So this is an affordable and probably superior way to make a Navy grog, but we'll find out now. It is the same price actually right now as the zombie blend. This will be bottled in seven fifties and one liters. This is a seven 50. This is the first bottle that I got. This will be available around the country soon from distributors. And so for this cocktail we'll be using white grapefruit, lime, honey syrup and Ed Hamilton's beach bum berries Navy grog blend. I'm so excited to try it. Wait, we've tasted this, but I haven't, we haven't made a Navy grog yet. You want to cut this thing in half? Sure. Okay. So we're going to use three quarters ounce each of the grapefruit. So one and a half ounces for two. Yes. And this is the last grapefruit on my tree. Oh wow. That takes us right to one and a half ounces. Nothing like a good sharp knife. Okay. So how much lime juice? Three quarters of an ounce. Oh, same thing. Yeah. Okay. So easy to remember. Oh man. Okay. There's three quarters of an ounce there. And then one more of those. Look at that. And three quarters of an ounce of lime juice per cocktail. And then one ounce of honey syrup. Okay. Which is one to one. Okay. So that'd be two ounces of this. And you see that viscosity is quite low. So that is syrup. It's been made one to one. Very nice. Now the booze. So how much of this do we need? One and a half ounces per cocktail. Okay. And you're saying that that equals about two ounces of rum? Yeah. Oh my God. I'm spilling your brand new product. Sorry. Yeah. This is a 34 proof more than usual. So it's a little less than 50%. Um, so an ounce and a half to like two and a quarter ounces of normal 80 proof rum. But I have not bottled any Hamilton products at 80 proof. Bartenders have told me when they asked for these products, they said don't, don't bring us anything at 80 proof. Okay. So what we're going to do now is throw some ice in the tin, give this thing a shake and then strain it into some, uh, double buckets. Pour some ice in here. You want to shake it? Go ahead. Oh, okay. I don't know how real bartenders do this. It's exhausting. Okay. So we are going to be pouring these into some Spikes Breezeway Cocktail Hour glasses, but there's something very special for the Navy Grog in a garnish. It's the ice cone garnish. Good job on the cone. So these might be the best ice cones I've ever made. And if you're interested in finding out how to make them, there's a tutorial in the link here. So what do we do? Do we put the ice cone in and then strain on top of it? I would do that. Go ahead and do, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Okay. Oh, okay. Such a good ice cone that it doesn't even fit. All right. Yeah. Let me try this thing. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Do this. Just chip it. Because otherwise you're going to break something. Oh, like you? Okay. A little surgery on this one too. Oh, probably. Better. And then a little bit there. So the important thing is to put the straw or a hole in before you make the ice cone. Yes. I'm hoping that it's, it goes all the way through. Before we do this, I want to garnish with one more thing. Okay. And a beautiful flower for beautiful Ed Hamilton. And so by way of Don the Beachcomber, this is Beach Bum Berry's Navy Grog blend. Navy Grog blend. Thank you. Forgot what we were talking about. Cheers. You just squished your flower. I'm not getting anything. Are you? And there was a little bit of water in the straw when it froze. But the straw went all the way through. Oh no. Oh no. I have a backup plan. There you go. This is not exactly how it's supposed to go, but you get the idea. All right. That's a great Navy Grog. That's gotta be one of the best Navy Grogs I've had. It's so good. Wow. So back in the 1650s, when the sailors started coming to the Caribbean, they ran out of beer and wine from England and they started buying rum from the plantations. Once they start producing sugar, making a little bit of rum and serving it to the, serving it, giving it to the sailors of the deck. And that became known as Navy rum. Oh, right. Admiral Vernon saw the sailors getting quite drunk. They were given a pint a day. A pint of rum a day? A pint of rum a day. And he said, this much? Yeah, like a pint of rum a day. And he said, you know, we got to cut this out. We got to cut this down. That's way too much rum. Well, you know, these were hard times. They were hard times. These guys are sweating in the tropics. Sweating in the breezeway right now, man. It's hot in the breezeway. So we're going to cut this in half. And then for good behavior, and most of the people were on good behavior, they would give them a little bit of sugar and some lime to make the rum more palatable. Okay. Which is essentially what we have here is some citrus and some sugar and rum, strong rum. By 1687, that was adopted by the Parliament, by the Royal Navy Parliament. The sailors were so enamored with Admiral Vernon that they called it Old Grog because he wore his finest grogum coat to battle. Now I could not imagine wearing a wool coat to battle in the tropics. No, that sounds horrible. The good news was he didn't fight in a lot of battles because they didn't have a lot of them. But when they did, he got on his grogum coat, which served another purpose as well, kept shrapnel out of him. And you can imagine when you're shooting cannonballs onto a ship, there's all kinds of pieces of splinters and other debris floating around. And having grogum coat was the best body armor you could get back then. So that's where the grog came from? That's where the name grog came from. Grogan. From grogum coat. Wow. So do you know what went wrong here? There was a little bit of water in the container and it filled up the bottom of the straw and froze. I've even talked about that in the tutorial for making these things. I didn't listen to myself. Do as I say, not as I do. Yeah, it's tricky. You really should like make the straw go further through and then just make sure it's dry inside and then try to freeze it on its side or something. Otherwise you have this thing where we're drinking out of another straw. Wax plug or a wood plug in the bottom of the straw. A wood plug? Yeah. When you're working on it. You mean like a cork? Yeah, like a cork. Bottom of the plug and then take a little wire. Don't break that thing. Oh, you're not. This is a great idea. What? These Pyrex straws. These are fantastic. The guy hand blows each one of these. Isn't that insane? Yeah. I met Kelsey at the little meet and greet that we did a few weeks ago and she gave me a couple of them and I just absolutely love them. I can't live without them now. It takes a little bit of getting used to at first because it's a weird mouth feel. Yeah. It kind of wants to slip out of your mouth and then it'll spit all over your shirt or your chest. But I like it so much more than a metal straw. Yeah. I hate metal straws. I feel like I'm going to break my teeth on a metal straw. The worst are paper straws. Yeah. You got to use them quick. You got to suck them up. Suck them up. Speaking of being good for something at the meetup that we had for the Breezeway Cocktail Hour at Stowaway, right? Stowaway. You were there and you're like, I didn't know you created a cocktail. And I said, yes sir, I did. The Breezeway Cocktail Hour. Actually I'd seen it on your show. Cocktail. And I want to make sure that I use the white stash in that because I love the white stash. But I also love Dr. Bird. And you went, oh man, Dr. Bird. And I said, Mr. Ed Hamilton, why don't we make a Breezeway blend? Breezeway blend. Okay. Oh, really? No, we can do that. Can we market it? Can we sell it and not go broke? Totally. I don't know. I don't know. There's so many people watching right now. There's at least 400. Oh, why can't I see them? We drank a lot of rum before this. I'd be happy to work with you on a blend. The challenge once you've done a blend is getting it into distribution because you have to have a distributor. For example, we know stores around here that would say, yeah, I'll buy that. But the store can't buy it unless they get a distributor. Oh, has to go through. It's part of the three tier system to keep all the hanky panky out of liquor distribution. So you couldn't just send me a bunch of bottles and I can just put a stamp on them and mail them out like a. Well, you could for a while. So the feds get me. Till they catch up with you. Right. Yeah. And it's a real pain in the butt. It's a challenge. A distribution is a challenge. I'm looking for a distributor right now in a couple of States and the biggest distributor basically wants to own your brand when they, oh, right. You know, they want a big chunk of their brand. We could do a whole show on why you can't get the rums you want to get for any spirit. Why is it so difficult in the freest country in the world? It sounds very disappointing, but a bit of booze, very disappointing episode. If you out there would love to have a breezeway blend of Hamilton rum, leave a message in the comments below. I'm so curious to see if we could like sell some of these bottles and create a cool product that supports Hamilton rum and the breezeway cocktail hour. And you guys get a rad bottle. Yeah. Well we come up with something. I love the Navy grog and I love the zombie. My favorite thing about these blends that you and Jeff Barry are making is that you can have a couple of these things and not be super wasted right away. It was always a thing on the Don the Beachcomber menus, you know, limit two per customer because well, first of all, it was a marketing ploy, but it was also like if you drank two zombies, somebody else needed to drive you home. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm serious. I mean I'm 250 pounds. I got a lot of ballast. It's a nautical thing. You drink three, four ounces of rum in a cocktail. Do two of those. That's a third of a bottle of rum, normal rum and just in volume. And we're talking about 114 or 118 proof. Well, this is a lot of alcohol. Moderation is the key to success. And obviously Beach Bum Barry is carrying this, this blend at his bar, right? Latitude 29. Yeah. Latitude 29. This just came out. We haven't gotten the order. I haven't gotten the order through the distributor yet. It's going to come any day. These bottles literally came off the bottling line last week. Folks, if you enjoyed this, please be sure to like comment, hit the subscribe button. If you aren't already, you can follow Mr. Ed Hamilton on Instagram at Ed Rum Guy. Ed Rum Guy. And you do, you do like a, you just did the thing again, the crazy owl thing. And you do like a Friday night cocktail hour, right? I do a happy hour. Is it Zoom? Yeah. Zoom, free to join, Pacific time, 5 PM. Let's talk about rum. If you've got a question about rum, come on out and ask me and go from there. And where do they find the address for the Zoom thing? Typically post the Zoom address on Instagram, but if you go through any of the old Zooms, it's all the old Instagram posts. Yeah. I don't change it every week. It's not a trick. There's no password. You just have to show up and be admitted to the room. Yeah. And, uh, you know, it's, it's informal when it's just before the breezeway cocktail hour, uh, airs on YouTube. Yeah. It's pretty amazing to be able to talk to such a luminary in the rum world. Uh, just casually like that. Yeah. I'm, it's amazing to me that I'm still in business. That's the amazing part. You make a hell of a product and I'll, I'll tell you, I did. I'm, I'm not paid by any rum companies. And, uh, he's not, he's not, I've offered him a hundred thousand dollars and he said, nope, I'm not doing it. You can't do it. I just, I won't, I'm not going to do that. You offered me what? Yeah. You said no. I don't feel like I would have said no to that. You weren't listening to get all the little into you and you went into window and no, I can do that. And you went in. I don't think you can. I can't. And you end up, but he, uh, you're going to use that, aren't you? My ice cone exploded. Exploded. Yours looks like a, like an illustration though. It's a good one. It does. Except the straw is still full of ice. What is your favorite Tiki cocktail? Or do you have one? Is that, is it the Navy grog? Do you like the Navy grog? Yeah, I like it. I love the Navy grog. I do love it, but I don't have four ingredients at home and I typically have a tea punch. It's my first drink of the day. And then I'll pour some rum and some orange juice and sometimes a little pimento dram if the orange juice is going a little sour or if I'm using grapefruit juice and it's a little sour. Uh, but you know, I'm, I'm a simple guy. I love to let other people make Tiki drinks. It's a lot of work. Show me how good they are. Yes. But your one bottle solves that whole solution or solves that whole problem. Well, did I ever show you my knife swallowing act? Okay. So what we're going to do now is we're going to throw some ice in the tin. Okay. So what we're going to do now. What are we going to do now? Because it's 96 degrees here. Warmest day of the year in Costa Mesa in the breezeway studio. And there is no breeze. The fake candles and the lights don't even flicker. There's not enough breeze. That's hot in the breezeway, man. I appreciate you doing this. It's nice to talk to journalists or media, whatever you want to call yourself that really care about the product. Oh, right. And aren't just looking for the next thing to hype because there's plenty of crap out there that you can hide. Yeah. I think I could have a cocktail show where I just do recipes one back to back to back to back and be endorsed by Schmirnoff or whatever. And not to say that that's bad. If there are cocktail guys out there, they're doing that. That's just a different show. Right. It's a different show. I think the tiki thing has to come from a place of passion. Otherwise it looks inauthentic very quickly. It is inauthentic. Touche. But the amazing thing to me is all this tiki stuff. The whole premise is not authentic. When you go to Polynesia and ask for a Mai Tai, well now, maybe in a club you would or in a resort, but you go into a local bar in Polynesia and ask for a Mai Tai, they're going to look at you like you got two heads. Sure. And don't even think about asking for something. One of those that I can't even remember. I know. I'm trying to think of a cocktail too. I'm like, I don't know any cocktails. Do you want to cut that thing? Whoops. Scary. This will be the 96th episodes. Can you believe that? I missed the 100th episode. Wait, no, it's coming. Then this is the 96th one. Right. Well, you're not going to invite me back four shows from now. Four weeks from now. No, you're not. Oh, yeah. You're going to miss it. Yeah. But I mean, you'll watch it. Who's going to be on that? I don't know. Who would be like the top celebrity that you would want to have on the 100th show? I could get Seinfeld. Think you could? No, no, I don't. We've got to aim lower. Yeah. Like Lou Ferrigno, maybe. Maybe I could get Leno. Leno's sat in my truck before. Really? Yeah. I go, I go, hey, hey, Jay. We were at the Peterson Auto Museum. Yeah, well, what do you need? I want to see if you know what my dash is in my truck because it's all custom, you know? And Jay knows every car. And he goes and he sits down in my truck. He goes, all right, cool. It's like a Connell line pickup. Kind of rare, you know, and sits down there. And he looks at the dash and he goes, uh, Edsel. 58. And I was like, yes, sir. He goes, you're doing kind of like a big daddy Roth thing here, huh? I was like, try and made made my day. Yeah, he's a pretty cool guy. See, look, a nice guy running into him a couple of times here and there. And he's a nice guy. Doesn't drink. No, he doesn't. But that's why he's intelligent, intelligent and able to do all the things he, you know, and he's got an almost photographic or photographing memory. You know, one of those guys. Well, he doesn't drink. No, son of a bitch. That's how you do that. Imagine where you're going to be on your thousandth show. Oh, my God. All right. With that, you want to make another one of these things? Well, I want you I want to watch you make another one. OK, well, I think we're done here. Boho, it's hot in the breezeway. I got it.