Why? What? and How?

Why

One of the biggest hurdles I had to making tiki or anything out of the Death & Co. book at home was the "extras." I was very happy for many years sipping on rum, bourbon and scotch at home. And letting a professional mix. The step I needed to accept in order to make great cocktails at home was making before making. Buying bottles for your home bar takes money - good bottles take even more currency. I needed to make sure the drink I made was quality, the time I spent learning counted, the money I spend counted, and .the spirit was respected. So, I invested in more research to make quality cocktail components. I made swedisch punch, allspice dram, and syruped every fruit I could find. One tiki mainstay - Falernum - never made it to the Kapu Test Kitchen. I bought Velvet and moved on. That was okay with me. Until Nathan Hazard commented on a recipe of his I tried to reverse engineer, "P.S. Used Bitter Truth Golden Falernum which is much more gingery -and proofed- than Velvet." More ginger...I'm not sure Velvet has any ginger? What else am I missing by limiting myself to Velvet? I mean, how many bottles of rum do I have? How many do I put into one cocktail? And I never even looked into other Falernums!