Here we go. Daily blogging isn’t always sun and mai tais with your feet in the searing hot sand. Sometimes our still bare white asses have to share our well kept secrets in order to find grist for the mill (and keep the readers happy) or in this case, gist for the swill. Yes, yes, I realize this so-so blog has lost some of its charm. Hey what do you want? I’m barely awake in the morning. I realize I had some good posts and this shit isn’t funny all the time like it was in the beginning. Informative, yes, sometimes. Life changing wisdom? Not really. Well written journalism like the more professional cocktail rags out there? Sorry, no time for that nonsense. I’ve got about an hour and a half in the early morning to try and pump something decent out and correct all the spelling and grammatical errors. My one saving grace is being able to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat every so often and thus keep the carrot dangling in front of you.

A little advice for those budding home bartenders out there, get yourself some banana liquor. Don’t skimp, get the good shit. While you’re there, buy a nice bottle of John D. Taylor’s Falernum. Yeah, the weird looking, cheap as hell, green and white bottle. That’s the stuff.

If you’re not a big tiki fan you can still use the two of them for various other types of more mainstream cocktails. Falernum and mezcal go well enough together like cheese and crackers. Banana and bourbon are a match made in liquid heaven (what would that look like anyway? Tonic water and gin hanging out together, shunning everyone?). But yeah, if you’re into rum, you’ll have a much better time not only making drinks for yourself and your companions but with life in general. Yes, I just said drinking rum will enhance your life.

A quick aside for those people who still think rum is “too sweet” because they got wasted with their buddies in college off a budget bottle of Bacardi (wait, I think I did that). Try, try again. I’ve been serving a number of people lately and changing their minds.

Back to falernum. I’m sure you’ve seen this ingredient on a drink list somewhere and just refused to ask about it because you didn’t want to look dumb. Ok, ok, so what is it? I’ll describe it first in my own words, then google it. Let’s see, it’s a famous tiki ingredient from Barbados, basically an alcoholic syrup. Low ABV, I want to say 20 proof? And the infusions are lime, allspice, almond, clove.

Ok, let’s google it and see how I did. 11% alcohol, so 22 proof. Pretty damn close there. The flavors are ginger, lime, almond, clove, allspice. I did ok. Wikipedia tells us it originated in the late 1800s.

There’s a couple of types of falernum out there, but go with my man Johnny D. Tasting it on its own might be a bad idea. It’s real sweet. It’s one of those ingredients, like fish sauce (bad reference) that transforms once it goes with something else.

And now that I have you here, making bananum is quite easy. It’s two parts falernum and one part banana liquor. So, two cups falernum, one cup banana. Mix, pour into an empty, clean bottle. Here’s a cocktail for you to try.

Donahue’s Quaffer

1 1/2 oz. White Rum (stronger is better)

1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

1/2 oz. Bananum

1/2 oz. Cherimoya Syrup (guava or an equivalent works fine)

1/4 oz. Rhum Agricole

4 Drops Saline

Shake, strain into a coupe. Sip, swig, or swill.