Sailing with the Captain is quite easy if you’ve got just a few spices kicking around. Have we all gone through a Captain Morgan phase early in our life? Captain and coke seemed to be the big one back in the day. The highball of choice for my youth, at least until I discovered the cream soda. What? You’ve never had a cream soda? Combine spiced rum and sprite or something similar. Yeah, mind blown. I learned this one from my old buddy Ryan LaRoux back in my hometown of Burlington, VT. He, my friend Sean, and I would partake in drunken hijinks on Wednesday nights in our late teens. Ryan was old enough to purchase booze and did so for us and we’d all go back to his place in Winooski and get loaded and annoy the shit out of our other friend, Broski, who had an early morning big boy job.

LaRoux was influential in my life for several reasons aside from the cream soda. He introduced me to the writer Charles Bukowski. He also introduced me to late night oven baked potato wedges. A good friend. Sort of a weird mentor pertaining to the more debaucherous side of life. One of the upper classmen from high school. He was a bit of a beatnik. Long haired, circular John Lennon style glasses. Disheveled. We all went to his wedding long ago and after that, he moved and we all sort of lost touch as the years went by. I have no idea where he is but I’d love to have a conversation with him. It’s been a couple of decades now since I’ve been that pool cue toting long haired version of myself. That was my life for a while. Some laughs, some beers, and lots of billiards. I think of the song One of These Days by Neil Young on Harvest Moon in introspections like this. If you haven’t listened to it in a while or ever, you should.

My friend Sean owned this old shitty three speed VW Beetle back in the day and during a Wednesday night cream soda session we gave LaRoux a ride somewhere while LaRoux held onto the side mirror while riding a bike. Probably not the smartest thing to do while inebriated. We ended up getting pulled over and the cop seemed to not notice how drunk we all were. He wrote LaRoux a ticket for “Clinging to a vehicle” and sent us on our merry way.

In remembrance of those old times, let’s not buy the Captain or Sailor Jerry’s or whatever else is out there. It’s pretty freaking easy to make your own spiced rum.

This is all you need:

1 bottle dark rum

1 vanilla bean

1 finger of ginger

.5 star anise

8 Allspice berries

1 stick of cinnamon

6 cloves

.5 nub of grated nutmeg

handful of dried orange

Throw it all in a jar, dump the rum in and wait. After about a week, you’re good to go. Strain it through a chinois, then strain it again through a coffee filter and you’re ready. Put it back in the bottle. Go to the store and buy some Sprite or 7up. When you get home, pour yourself a cream soda.