Spindrift

A citrus juice used in many cocktails, both for its sweet and tart taste and its color. Orange juice, unlike lemon and lime, can be kept fresh for days. In a blind taste test, most people liked day-old orange juice.

The most common fruit juice used in cocktails. This citrus juice is about 6% acid; pure citric acid. Lemon juice should be used the day it is squeezed, some like it freshly squeezed and others like it a few hours old.

A concentrated fruit syrup made from the pulp or 'juice' of passion fruits. You can make it by combining equal parts (by mass) pasison fruit purée to simple syrup. We always use 1:1 syrup unless otherwise noted in the recipe itself.

A syrup made from dissolving granulated sugar (sucrose) in water. Regular simple is made by combining 1:1 sugar:water by mass, rich simple is 2:1 sugar:water by mass although only 1.5 times as sweet as regular. We always use 1:1 syrup unless otherwise noted in the recipe itself.

A liquid produced from macerating vanilla pods in ethanol. To be considered 'pure' the solution must contain a minimum of 35% alcohol and 100g of vanilla beans per litre. One drop goes a long way.

These rich rums get their dark color from added caramel, not necessarily aging. Flavors are caramel and brown-sugar forward. Common examples are Meyers's and Coruba (Jamaican) or Gosling's Black Seal (Bermuda). A key ingredient in many classic tiki-era cocktails.

A molasses-based rum distilled in Guyana. Most often blended from the historic wooden pot and column stills of the Diamond Distillery (DDL) and aged for up to 15 years in the tropical climate. This process produces rich, flavorful rums that are major components of 'Navy' style blends.

Often referred to as silver or white, these rums are actually lightly aged (1-3 years), but have had their color removed by charcoal filtering. They are molasses based (as opposed to the cane juice-based rhum agricole, clairin, or cachaça). Flavors range from light (Bacardi, Caña Brava, Plantation 3 Star, El Dorado 3) to more flavorful (Probitas, Ten-To-One).