A Raspberry Rum Old Fashioned

Plus! The best all-around rum.

Before we move on from the world of raspberry cocktails, let’s make one more.

This one is extremely easy to make, and despite, or perhaps because of, its simplicity, it just might be my favorite of the raspberry cocktails we’ve looked at this month.

It’s a Raspberry Rum Old Fashioned.

There’s almost nothing to it—it’s just a Rum Old Fashioned, with raspberry.

But what a difference the addition of raspberry makes.

Okay…make that two raspberries.

Rum is underutilized in stirred drinks, and Rum Old Fashioneds are underrated members of the Old Fashioned family.

The depth, richness, and complexity of aged rum goes exceptionally well in the classic spirit-sugar-bitters format. And the sheer variety of high-quality, interesting rums available these days means there’s a Rum Old Fashioned for just about everyone, from diehard rum geeks to wary rum skeptics and even whiskey geeks.

If you have a decent bottle of aged rum, you should try it in an Old Fashioned.

Comfortably Rum

For this particular berry-ized Rum Old Fashioned, we’re going to use Appleton Estate Signature, a mellow, golden, gently fruity rum that is quite affordable and easy to find.

The world of rum is vast and varied, and hardcore tiki geeks sometimes insist that you need dozens of bottles in order to really make those drinks correctly. I am obviously sympathetic to the rum-head, buy-every-bottle mindset, and I have similar maximalist tendencies myself when it comes to categories like amaro, bitters, and vermouth.

But I think that most home bartenders who are not deep-in-the-weeds tiki nerds can make do with just a few bottles—five is generally enough, and you can do a lot with just three.¹

If you’re a true home bar minimalist who only wants to stock a single bottle of rum, however, Appleton Estate Signature—or if you’re feeling premium, possibly the slightly pricier Appleton Estate 8 year—is the one I recommend.

Appleton’s basic offering won’t meet every hyperspecific tiki nerd demand, but it satisfies the main requirement for an all-around bottle: It goes well in just about every major rum-drink category, from Mai Tais to Daiquiris to Rum Negronis and Old Fashioneds.

It also pairs well with just about everything, including raspberries.²

There’s no obscure trick or technique here—you’re just making a Rum Old Fashioned, plus two smushed raspberries stirred into the mix. (You’ll need to double strain the mix into your serving glass to remove the fruit solids.)

It’s a small but significant change that adds a distinctive razzy flavor to the drink’s flavor arc, brightening and sharpening the Old Fashioned structure with a zippy, fruity, acidic tang.

It’s so good, when I first tried this I found myself wondering: Why haven’t I been making these for years?

Like all of us, I am probably not using enough raspberries in my cocktails.

Raspberry Rum Old Fashioned

• 2 raspberries, smushed into the mix

• 2 dashes Angostura Aromatic bitters

• 1 fat (slightly overfull) teaspoon rich (2:1) demerara syrup*, or demerara gum syrup

• 2 ounces rum, preferably Appleton Estate Signature

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Using a barspoon, gently smush two raspberries at the bottom of a cocktail mixing vessel.

2. Add bitters, syrup, and rum, then stir briefly to integrate.

3. Add ice, then stir for about 10 seconds to chill and dilute.

4. Double strain, using a cocktail strainer plus a small handheld conical strainer to remove the raspberry solids, into a rocks glass over a single large piece of ice.

5. Garnish with an orange peel and an un-smushed raspberry or two.

*Rich (2:1) demerara syrup: Combine two parts demerara sugar with one part water, by weight, so for example 400 grams sugar and 200 grams water, in a blender. Blend on high for 2-3 minutes, until fully integrated. Bottle and store in the fridge. Keeps for at least a month.

Two Large Dogs Who Have Had Positively It With the Raspberry Puns

1. For what it’s worth, I typically keep about 30 bottles of rum in my home bar collection, which puts me in the strange position of having many more bottles of rum than most people, but a fairly modest collection by tiki-fanatic standards.

2. You can, of course, make this with other rums, though I’d shy away from anything too light or too dry.