1 oz El Dorado 15 yr Rum
marc rizzuto spring/summer 2022
0.5 oz Lemon Hart 151 Rhum
0.5 oz Batavia Arrack
0.75 oz Durian Syrup*
0.5 oz Pineapple Juice
0.25 oz Giffard Banane du Bresil Liqueur
0.25 oz Lime Juice
method: whip shake/ dump
ice: pebbles
glassware: footed pilsner
garnish: pineapple fronds
All the years I have bartended, and all the bars I have worked for, I have only come to one conclusion with Tropical cocktails: they are fun. There seems to be no set structure to these style of drinks, except tropical ingredients (Tropical enthusiasts don’t get all pissy about this). There are templates that have worked in the past and these are the drinks that are canon: Fog Cutter, Zombie, Singapore Sling, Painkiller, Mai Tai, Cobra’s Fang, etc… From these templates, just like the old fashioned or martini, the world of variations is as infinite as your imagination. I have always loved durian and have wanted to use it in a cocktail, but was always met with chagrin at the instant durian was brought up as an ingredient. The same thing happened at Death & Co. during our Spring/ Summer 2022 R&D meeting.
In NYC you can find any ingredient you need, you just need to know where to look. In just about any Asian market you will be able to find frozen durian meat (the fleshy inside with the pits removed). To get to the final flying fortress cocktail was a long, smelly and somewhat frustrating process. I went through trying different applications and exhausting all possibilities of how the durian would be used in the cocktail. Durian white tea syrup, durian infused Rum Fire (this was delicious just too many esters for the cocktail), trying different rums to see if they mimicked the savory long lasting flavor of the durian (a year later a regular brought in some Rum from Reunion that had a full bouquet of durian and had that slick long finish), durian powder that was rehydrated into a syrup with some coco lopez to tame down the sulfur. None of these worked so I went to the obvious, which I hardly like to do with cocktails, and made a durian puree that I lengthened by adding some water and sugar.
Now that the durian was figured out, the blend of R(h)um’s was still an issue. I wanted to go higher proof ester forward, but that amplified the durian to the point where it tasted literally like gasoline, not figuratively like how people use it to describe strong spirits, it tasted like straight unleaded from the pump. Durian is sweet, sour and savory and pairs really well with things that grow around it. Pineapple juice, banana liqueur and lime juice was a trio that not only made sense when tasting it with the durian, but also made sense for the tropical template.
Back to the R(h)um; do I go super vegetal with an Agricole or is it going to be barrel and caramelized sugar notes with Demerara? After running through 90% of the R(h)um on the backbar, I again went with the safe bet of El Dorado 15yr (banana, pineapple and brown sugar), combined with Lemonhart 151 (vanilla, caramel and tons of baking spices). Both Guyanese R(h)um’s share similar flavor profiles. The higher proof of the 151 really draws out all the subtle flavors in the Eldo 15yr. This drink was interesting enough with these ingredients (both R(h)um, durian, pineapple, banana and lime) to present for a tasting panel with our beverage director and head bartender. The one suggestion at tasting was to add one more distillate to the base of R(h)um. Immediately after tasting the durian the suggestion was to use something sour and complex like a durian, but keep it in the R(h)um family. Batavia Arrack van Oosten (a combination of sugarcane and Javanese red rice) was the only thing on our backbar that stood up to the other bold flavors.
Durian’s spiked skin remind me of Bowser’s spiked shell from Super Mario. Bowser’s castle in Super Mario 64 is a flying fortress surrounded by lava, so I went with Flying Fortress as the name for this cocktail. Sometimes the naming of cocktails has a direct reference to the drink ingredients or type, but in this case it was a cheeky down the rabbit hole type of name that only makes sense to the creator, or you now.
When preparing the Flying Fortress you want to whip shake all the ingredients hard and fast with 3-5 pieces of pebbled ice. Pebbled ice is tiny dense ice that chills the drink rapidly and helps push air into the ingredients when used in a “whip shake.” This allows for minimal dilution before packing on more pebbled ice. Make sure to pack the ice in the drink because you want the cocktail to dilute slowly. The tighter the pebbled ice is the colder the cocktail will stay for longer. Packing the ice in pebbled ice cocktails is essential and too often people loosely put ice in a vessel, then after 5 minutes you have an over-diluted glass full of slop. Pack that ice like you are packing out the 6 train during rush hour.
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