Drinks editor Maggie whipped up a lot of Cinco de Mayo coverage recently, which led her to write what is both the kindest and cruelest email I've ever received: "I would give you so much good tequila if you were here right now." The kindness is obvious and the cruelty comes in the implied follow-up: "But since you're outside of hand-delivery range and there's no such thing as UPS, how about if I just forward you a press release about a new mayonnaise-flavored vodka?" But though I'm sometimes frustrated by my inability to extract decent booze from Serious Eats, for the most part I've made peace with the fact that all I can expect from this gig are fame, fortune, and corned beef schnapps. More

Coconut rum always makes me a little sad, because it never lives up to its promise. I want it to taste like a real coconut spiked with rum. But what you usually get is a syrupy mess. It smells good, so I psych myself up with visions of a big, fat coconut filled with rum—only to taste a viscous mouthful of sugar and artificial flavors. I had just about given up on coconut rum when I tried to make it myself. Yes! It turns out that it is possible to have a coconut rum that just tastes like rum and real coconut. More

Before I knew anything about liquor, I thought all rum was alike and used the Captain whenever a recipe called for rum. Even though I quickly figured out my mistake, I held a grudge against spiced rum and remembered it as "that gross stuff." Then, one freezing night, I was out of whiskey and desperate for a hot toddy. I had a dusty bottle of spiced rum leftover from the bad old days and figured, what the heck, it's better than going outside... More

When was the last time anyone invented a new category of spirit? There's that very nice St. Germain elderflower liqueur that's in everything these days, but for the most part, the new stuff I see on the shelves is just reflavored versions of the old stuff. Vodka was the first, but it seems that now they've come for our rum. In the case of Malibu, they've now come for our rum thrice: First we had the original coconut Malibu, then we had all sorts of cranberry-cherry perversions of that, and now we've got imitators of these adulterations. More

January 15, 1919. North End of Boston. A large tank holding 2,300,000 gallons of molasses bursts, flooding the streets at 35 mph. The sticky wave plows through men, women, children, and horses. The molasses flow is strong and swift enough to knock down buildings and even buckle an elevated railroad, knocking a train off its tracks. The great Boston Molasses Disaster claims 21 lives, not including horses and dogs, and injures 150. And yet, when rum was dubbed kill-devil, I don't think this is what its critics had in mind. More

Rompope, the Mexican version of eggnog, and coquito, the coconut-enhanced Puerto Rican version, are poured and shared on nochebuena (Christmas Eve) and given out as gifts in festively wrapped bottles, but they'll fit in at any holiday celebration. More

On Monday night Bottom Shelf research coordinator Emily took me to dinner at one of those deluxe places with clean bathrooms and terrines of things and no televisions at the bar. I ate lamb and eggplant and fifty other things and I've rarely been happier. The televisionlessness certainly added a touch of class to the proceedings and made me glad I wore my special date pants (the ones that aren't denim or dirty). More

This week, we cover the favorite tipple of sailors and tiki geeks alike: rum. Now, rum is a tricky category to limit to five essentials; first, there are simply a whole damn lot of rum cocktails around. More importantly, though, the rum category is broad and deep, and the word rum refers to such a mixed bag of spirits. More

One of my favorite neighborhood brunch joints here in Portland, Oregon is Toast. It's a cozy, boozy place—they give you the option of ordering your mimosa by the pint(!)—and they have a great breakfast cocktail menu. This drink is a slightly modified version of Toast's Apricot Fizz. More

We've already tried a whiskey that tastes like a tequila and an aged tequila that tries to taste unaged, so you'd think we would be used to the idea that the category doesn't necessarily define the spirit. But we were taken by surprise when we first sipped today's bottle: Brugal 1888 (full name: 1888 Ron Gran Reserva Familiar)—a new rum that thinks it's a scotch. More