Kevin: I do too, but that's a very polarizing rum I've found. In fact, that's why I think I made a drink the other day, like a swizzle with Wray & Nephew, I don't remember what I called it, but there was a reference to it being "an acquired taste." That's what it was. Just because some people are like "too much" and don't really care for it. I'm perfectly happy, on a hot day, with some Wray & Nephew and Ting soda. Sublime.

Brian: Maybe on the edge of "not enough."

Neil: Sometimes I run out of aged agricole rum to make my 1944 Trader Vic's Mai Tai and I'll use a Jamaican blend with Wray & Nephew. I know it's a little bit too funky, and a little overproof, but it provides a certain element that other rums wouldn't.

Kevin: I think it brings some character to it, because if you're going to pour in like ... When I did the Mai TaIPA with the El Dorado 3, it was fine. The El Dorado 3 is not contributing a whole lot. It's not making it worse, but it's not really bringing anything to the party, other than maybe a little bit of ABV. Other than that it's [not present]. That’s an interesting experiment. I haven't really done a lot of Wray & Nephew in a Mai Tai. I've found that ever since Denizen Merchant’s Reserve came out, I've dialed way back on the agricole Mai Tai's. I still like them a lot, but the Denizen Mai Tai has kind of just taken over as the house standard.

Neil: I was going to ask about domestic rums. You made an episode recently about Santeria. You've given us a glimpse of domestic rums, even though a lot of products aren't distributed in California. How would see domestic rums fitting into the world of tiki drinks?

Kevin: I think based on the way that some of them are made, they fit in very well. My only concern with, what do we want to call them, "local rums?", is distribution, because this becomes the challenge, right? I kind of have two minds of this. One is I think that some distillers' rum is just a way for them to get value out of the distilling equipment until they can start.

Brian: Along with gin and vodkas.

Kevin: Yeah, because you can't sit on capital for seven years. I understand why they do it, but there's other folks that are making rum, I feel, just for the sake of making rum. I like what they're doing, because there's some roots in the US's rum past. I think a lot of people don't know that pre-Prohibition, if you think about colonial America, rum was very important and very heavily drunk. Privateer Rum, I think they were based in Massachusetts, they make probably what would be considered a pretty close approximation to some of that old New England style rum, so I think it's great. I think you can absolutely mix that in, because there wouldn't be tiki drinks [without that history]. There is sort of a foundation that tiki drinks are sort of built upon, having sort of that punch element to them, like old colonial flips, aside from having like egg in them or something like that, there's spice, there's beer. It's a pretty hardy drink.

Actually, I would like to find more smaller distribution U.S.-based rums that we can talk about on the show. The other advantage of those rums, aside from using the product and finding ways to popularize themselves, I find they're much more willing to talk about their process. They're very proud of what they're producing. They're very open about how they're doing things, by and large, the ones that I spoke to the before. Which is super helpful because some of the big brands, I may like, but it's next to impossible to find information because all they want to do is market. They don't actually want to talk about how they make their rum, for better or worse.

Neil: It's interesting. I think we could talk about this a lot longer, but you're right. Rum has its history in the Americas and unlike a lot of spirits that have high regulation and even stringent geographic definitions ... rum is very American in its free nature. I like that. I'm always reminded of this song from a musical called 1776, about the founding of the United States. There's a dark song called "Molasses to Rum" about the early economic system of the [American] colonies.

Kevin: If you talk about rum, you end up talking about the history of the sugar trade and becomes a very touchy subject for reasons...

Brian: You're [discussing] one of the legs on the most dubious triangles in history.

Kevin: For sure. You want to be cognizant to how it got its start, but it is inexorably tied to American history. I just think sometimes, people don't understand it, because sometimes people don't realize how many distillers there were in Colonial America before it all sort of imploded.

Brian: And punch.

Kevin: Yeah.

Brian: Punch was king. Tiki drinks are all generally some version of punch.

Kevin: Absolutely.

Brian: You have called out a fair number of sites, like A Mountain of Crushed Ice, the Ministry of Rum. You've even mentioned more esoteric sites, like Chemistry of the Cocktail. As a nerd, would you share any other highly detailed obscure research sites?

Kevin: Obscure is kind of a funny term. My usual go-to for anything is to start with the Ministry of Rum, just because that's kind of like a database. They're a good starter point. Somebody who wants to get really geeky and really technical, a gentlemen by a name of Matt Pietrek, and he runs the site Cocktail Wonk. He really nerds on rum, as evinced by his name. He doesn't have a wide repertoire, but he writes very detailed. You know if see something on his site, you're going to get a lot of good information on it. Other than that, I kind of just Google around and see what comes to mind. My normal go to is Ministry of Rum, then I branch out from there. What would be another good one? I'm going to slight somebody without intending. He doesn't publish as many reviews now as he used to but, Inu a Kena. He does rum reviews, his site is a pretty good resource.

Then somebody else who also doesn't write as much anymore, but was a very good resource was Rumdood. He was very well versed, and I think he just recently had a child as well. I think his blogging sort of tailed off before that, but I don't think that's going to help his blogging efforts at all. He wrote extensively kind of in the late 2000s and early 2010s, if I could use that period. His site is still a really good resource for a lot of tiki and rum recipes.

Brain: One of the great things about 5 Minutes of Rum are all the little details that are between the lines. In Episode 30, Denizen Merchant’s Reserve, you describe the background banana aspects that you reminded you of a Panamanian rum. I had never had a Panamanian rum, but that made me think that I was missing something for the cocktails that I like to make. It's the little moments that take the show beyond a dry review. How does each episode come together?

Kevin: That's a whole Pandora's Box.

Brian: Are they really scripted? Do you have an outline and notes or...

Kevin: I start with what rum I want to talk to, and what cocktail I can fit to it. Generally speaking, I'll get some sort of middle thing that goes along with it. Once I know what I want to talk about and I do the research, I do work from the outline. I try to not script everything. I may script the intro, I may script some parts of it, but for better or worse, I want those mistakes to be in there. I was really self conscious about how it sounded the first couple of episodes I did, but some of them really truly are asides that I think of while I'm talking about the recipe or rum. Just some offhanded comment. It's a mixture. I always work from an outline, and one of the things that I don't know if it's observable or not, is that, as I work my way through, because I record in order I don't record the recipe and then go back. It's not a movie.

Brian: It's almost like one take.

Kevin: Yeah. I'll break it in between sometimes because I want to make the cocktail before I talk about the cocktail. If I make a blatant misstep, where I just sort of lose the whole plot completely, I'll pause it and re-record. I try to leave the little stuff in there, because I think that's where -

Brian: And it's character so.

Kevin: That's the way I talk.

Brian: I think it adds to handmade aspect of it as well. It's a hobby. It makes it much more approachable as well.

Kevin: There is an outline that I follow per show.

Kevin: I don't really have a dog in this hunt when it comes to added sugar. I agree with some of the big guns in the industry like Richard Seale from Foursquare. I agree with him that there should be some disclosure, and that's one of the things that you mentioned, Plantation, that I like about is that they are very specifically adding sugar as a reference to dosage, which is a style that they use for making cognac. I think that's great. I don't really like it as much, although I know it happens. When somebody wants to blend and round out a spirit. I don't mind when they do it, I would just like there to be some sort of disclosure. I don't think it ruins the rum necessarily, so I'm not that dogmatic about it. I wouldn't say I'm ambivalent about it, but I just wish there were a little more truth in advertising. I certainly don't mind when it's done for a purpose, as long as that purpose as long as that purpose isn't to mix something just sweet.

Kevin: This would be considered a bit of re-education on my part, but one of the things that is in the new Smuggler's Cove book, one of the things that again, Richard Seale is advocating for, is sort of a change in rum palatalizations from more traditional island based or base based - Spanish, English, or French, and a move towards production methods and the level of aging. What I would think about is not so much, this is something I'm trying to get my head around as well, but not thinking so much as this is a Spanish style rum, but what is it that I'm going to do with this rum and what are it's particular strengths. How do I want to combine this with something else? A lot of time when I think of dry rums or column still rums is that they're not going to be noticeable in a very layered, complex cocktail.

I want to think of something maybe with a little more nuance. Something that has a little bit more subtle flavors, and maybe build around that. I don't know if that addresses the question. Your question was more around how do I approach it.

Kevin: Right, you want to find a recipe where you going to pick up something more subtle. You don't want to bombard it with strong flavors, and that might be a way in. A lot of times, frankly, when a recipe calls gold Puerto Rican rum or silver Puerto Rican Rum, what they're calling for is to add some more fuel to this fire. Your flavor is coming from the other. I find if you find something like a Cãna Brava Anejo, which is a column still lightly ... well, not so lightly, because I think it's aged up to seven years, but you want to find something relatively straightforward that's going to play to that rum's strengths. I'm not going to put that in a rum barrel, because that's a waste of that rum. That rum is good on its own, and another thing I would say is if you find a good column, just do a drier rum. They're not as frequently a good sipping rum, but when you find one that is, they are really really flavorful, and you can. They just take a little bit more work.