I enjoy watching the night sky on my back deck after sunset, and one of the highlights of the evening sky this August was the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. Watching for a meteor flash, and trying to make a wish before it winks out of existence is one of the best ways to enjoy a cool August evening, and the Perseid Meteor Shower gave me a great excuse to make a summer’s evening cocktail and do just that.
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.
A slip of the finger on my keyboard turning one ‘t’ into an ‘r’ provides the name of today’s cocktail which celebrates the Swift-Tuttle Comet, but is not quite named after it.
The Swift-Turtle
2 oz Plantation Barbados (Grande Reserve) Rum
1/2 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz Grapefruit Juice
3/8 oz sugar syrup (1:1 ratio)
dash Fees cocktail Bitters
ice
orange peel
Add the first four ingredients into a metal shaker with ice
Shake until the outside of the shaker begins to frost
Strain into a cocktail glass
Garnish with a strip of orange peel
If you are interested in more of my original cocktail recipes, please click this link (Cocktails and Recipes) for more of my mixed drink recipes!
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