The six spiced rum cocktails worth knowing are a dark and stormy, a spiced rum old fashioned, a rum sour, a spiced daiquiri, a long apple and rum highball and a warm mulled rum for cold evenings. Between them they cover every occasion a bottle of homemade spiced rum is likely to meet, from a Friday in front of the television to a table full of people who want to know what you have been up to.
Homemade spiced rum is unusually well suited to cocktails, because you already know exactly what is in it. Shop-bought spiced rums keep their recipes vague and often carry a good deal of sugar, which quietly sweetens everything you mix them into. Yours is your own dark rum plus a spice sachet and 72 hours of patience, so when a drink needs sweetening, you decide how much and with what.
What does homemade spiced rum bring to a cocktail?
Control, mostly. Our Spiced Rum Making Kit works by infusing a bottle of inexpensive dark rum with a spice sachet for around 72 hours, tasting as you go with the pipette, then filtering the spices out. Leave it longer for a bolder, spicier rum, or filter it sooner for a gentler one. That single decision, made by you rather than by a distillery, changes how every cocktail below tastes.
The filtering matters for cocktails more than you might expect. The kit has you filter twice, once to remove the spices and then again after two or three days of settling, when the fine sediment has dropped to the bottom. A clear rum makes a clear drink, and in a short, spirit-forward cocktail served over a single large cube, clarity is half the pleasure.
The kit makes two 700ml batches in two different flavours: the Captain's blend, which is the classic pirate spice, and a Jamaican ginger with a proper ginger zing. Having both on the shelf at once is what makes cocktail-making interesting, because they are genuinely different spirits.
Which blend suits which drink?
As a rough guide, the Captain's blend behaves like a traditional spiced rum: warm, rounded and happiest in stirred drinks and anything served over ice with citrus. The Jamaican ginger leans bright and sharp, which makes it the one to reach for when a drink already has ginger, apple or lime in it and you want to double down.
The useful trick is to taste them side by side before you start mixing. Half a measure of each in two small glasses, neat, and one sniff will tell you more than any tasting note. Then build the same cocktail twice, once with each, and decide which version is yours. This is the whole reason for making your own: you get to have opinions about it.
Six cocktails to make with your own spiced rum
The dark and stormy
The easiest great rum drink there is. Fill a tall glass with ice, pour over 50ml of spiced rum, top with fiery ginger beer and squeeze in half a lime. The Jamaican ginger blend makes this sing. If you like it darker and more dramatic, hold back a splash of the rum and float it on top so it sinks slowly through the glass.
The spiced rum old fashioned
Spiced rum stands in for whisky beautifully here, because the spice is doing the work that the oak usually does. Stir 60ml of rum with a teaspoon of sugar syrup and a couple of dashes of bitters over plenty of ice, strain onto one big cube, then twist a strip of orange peel over the surface and drop it in. This is the drink for the Captain's blend, and the one to make when you want to prove a point.
The rum sour
Shake 50ml of spiced rum, 25ml of fresh lemon juice and 15ml of sugar syrup hard with ice, then strain into a chilled glass. The sourness sets off the warm spices in a way that sweet mixers never quite manage. Add a small egg white before shaking if you want the silky foam top, and shake it twice as long as feels reasonable.
The spiced daiquiri
The daiquiri is a simple three-part drink, and a spiced rum turns it from crisp into cosy. Shake 50ml of rum, 25ml of fresh lime juice and 15ml of sugar syrup with ice until the outside of the shaker is painfully cold, then strain into a coupe. No garnish needed, though a lime wheel does no harm.
Apple and spiced rum
Autumn in a tall glass, and the drink most likely to convert people who say they do not like rum. Ice, 50ml of spiced rum, cloudy apple juice to the top, a squeeze of lemon and a cinnamon stick if you are feeling theatrical. Cloudy apple juice makes far better company than clear.
Warm mulled rum
For a cold night: warm 500ml of cloudy apple juice or orange juice gently in a pan with a cinnamon stick, a few cloves and a strip of orange peel, never letting it boil, then take it off the heat and stir in 150ml of spiced rum. Heating the rum with the pan just boils the good parts away, so it always goes in at the end.
What should you keep in the cupboard?
Six drinks, and almost nothing specialist between them. A short list covers the lot:
- Fiery ginger beer, not ginger ale, which is a much milder animal.
- Limes and lemons, fresh. Bottled juice is the one shortcut a cocktail always notices.
- Sugar syrup, which is just equal parts sugar and hot water stirred until clear, cooled and kept in a bottle in the fridge.
- Bitters, one small bottle, which will outlive several rums.
- Cloudy apple juice, cinnamon sticks and cloves for the autumn end of the list.
- Ice, more than you think, and ideally big cubes for the stirred drinks so they dilute slowly.
Store the rum itself sealed and out of direct sunlight, and drink it within a year of bottling. If a batch comes out spicier than you meant it to, top it up with a splash of plain rum to soften it. If it is not spicy enough, leave the spices in longer on your next batch, because the kit gives you two batches to get your house style exactly right.
Spiced rum cocktail FAQs
What rum should I use to make my spiced rum?
An inexpensive dark rum that is not already spiced. The spicing is the kit's job, so a plain, cheap dark rum is the right starting point and there is no benefit in spending more.
How long does homemade spiced rum keep?
Drink it within one year of bottling, kept sealed and out of direct sunlight. In practice a good batch rarely sees out the season.
My rum is cloudy in the glass, what went wrong?
It probably needs its full settling time. Leave it two to three days, then filter again gently through the cleaned cotton filter, taking care not to disturb the sediment at the bottom.
Can I use spiced rum in cocktails that call for white rum?
Often, yes, though it changes the character. A daiquiri made with spiced rum is a warmer, rounder drink than the classic, and none the worse for it.
Which blend should I make first?
The Captain's blend if you want a classic spiced rum for stirred drinks, or the Jamaican ginger if you already know a dark and stormy is your regular order.
Fancy a bottle with your name on it? Browse our drink making kits, hand-packed in Britain.
