If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. Yes, there are numerous benefits to restraint, but there is also a sublime satisfaction in taking things as far as you possibly can. This was the guiding principle behind how I arrived at this recipe.
People have been drinking hot cocktails for a long time. After all, until the advent of refrigeration, ice was hard to keep and store year-round, and was generally regarded as a luxury. Heat, on the other hand, has been humankind’s constant companion for millennia. One of the most primordial of the hot drinks is hot buttered rum, which at its core is a mixture of hot water, rum, butter, and sugar.
The main idea behind this drink is the harmony of the butter and rum, cushioned by brown sugar, with hot water providing the space to expand. You’ll notice that the overall percentage of rum to total volume is much lower than you would find in an ice-based cocktail like a margarita or old fashioned. This is because alcohol has a lower boiling point than water. This means that when warmed, alcohol vapors are much more volatile, dialing up the perception of alcoholic strength in a drink. (Think about the difference between room-temperature vodka versus how it tastes if you’ve kept it in the freezer.)
Of course, I couldn’t just mix butter, rum, sugar, and water and call it a day. In addition to tossing in some warming spices, I wanted to maximize the butter as much as I could. I used a technique known as “fat washing” to infuse butter into the rum itself, giving the drink a richer dimension of buttery goodness. If you don’t feel like it, you can use plain rum—but you’re already going through the trouble of making yourself a hot drink on a cold winter’s day, so why not take it as far as you can? —John deBary
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