The Big Rig Craft Distillery opened their doors on October 17, 2015 and they already have an impressive line-up of spirits for sale at their boutique store within the facility. These spirits include their Premium and their Saskatoon Vodka, Wildrose Gin; their selections of White Dog Distillate (not whisky for three years yet); and their intriguing Sugar Beet Brum. As well, they are experimenting with an array of new flavoured Vodkas some of which are bottled and ready for sale, and others which are in development.
Sugar Beet Brum is produced from raw (brown) sugar manufactured from Alberta Sugar Beets on the company’s main still (Mighty Morley). This is a versatile still consisting of a large wash still, two columns, and a condenser. Chemically, sugar manufactured from sugar beets has the same composition as sugar derived from sugar cane, and in fact if this product was manufactured from cane sugar it could legally be called rum. As Sugar Beets rather than Cane is the source of the raw material for distillation, the folks at Big Rig decided that Brum was a suitable name.
Here is a simple recipe based upon the Commodore (which is a whisky cocktail I happen to enjoy). I am using Brum rather than whisky which of course means that the cocktail deserves its own name. I thought it would be fun to keep with the Commodore theme, and so I named this cocktail after a Commodores’ song called Easy.
Easy
2 oz Big Rig Sugar Beet Brum
1/4 oz Lime Juice
1/4 oz Lemon Juice
dash of Orange Bitters
Sugar Syrup to taste
Mix a metal cocktail shaker with ice
Shake it up until the shaker frosts over
Strain into a fancy glass of your choice
To keep things easy, no garnish required
(By the way, I realize that the whisky cocktail was not named for the music group, the Commodores, but their song, Easy, sure fits the mood of this cocktail, especially on a Sunday morning.)
Enjoy Responsibly!
If you are interested in more cocktail recipes, please click this link (Cocktails and Recipes) for more of my mixed drink servings!
Note: I will be reviewing Big Rig’s Sugar Beet Brum in the coming weeks, Stay tuned!
I chose to call my new libation The Asylum, which is not only a reference to a place which might contain a section called Ward 8 (the original cocktail of inspiration), it also pays homage to another of my favourite writers (and a Canadian to boot), A.E. Van Vogt. His short story Asylum (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1942) was written during the Golden Aged of Science Fiction (which A.E. Van Vogt is often credited with ushering into existence with his short story Black Destroyer).
The August meteor shower is a result of the periodic comet named Swift-Tuttle (discovered independently by Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle in 1862) which last made an appearance in our night sky in 1992. The left over debris from its comet-tail crosses the earth’s orbit, and it is the earth’s atmosphere crashing into this debris (bits of ice and space dust) which provides the fuel for streaks of meteoric light in the dark night sky.
The Rum Howler Blog 