Caribbean · Cocktail
Dark and Stormy
Dark rum poured over ginger beer, with lime. Two ounces of rum, five ounces of ginger beer, half an ounce of lime. It takes ten seconds and it's one of the few cocktails that genuinely can't be got wrong.
Photo: Serg Alesenko / Pexels
Ingredients
- 2 oz Bacardi Gold rum
- 5 oz Goslings ginger beer
- 0.5 oz fresh lime juice
- Lime wedge, to garnish
Method
- Fill a tall glass with ice and pour in the ginger beer first.
- Add the lime juice.
- Float the dark rum on top by pouring it slowly over the back of a spoon. That is where the name comes from, and it looks like weather.
- Hand it over without stirring, and let whoever is drinking it do that.
The one thing that matters
The ginger beer does most of the work, so use real ginger beer and not ginger ale. Ale is sweet fizz with a suggestion of ginger; beer is spicy and cloudy and actually tastes of the root. Get that one thing right and the drink makes itself.
About this drink
Build it in the glass. Ginger beer first over ice, then the lime, then float the rum on top by pouring it slowly over the back of a spoon. It sits there in a dark layer above the pale ginger beer, which is where the name comes from, and it genuinely does look like weather coming in.
Hand it over without stirring and let whoever's drinking it do that themselves. Half the appeal is watching it mix.
A darker, richer rum makes a better one. The molasses in it stands up to the ginger; a light white rum disappears completely and you've made a ginger beer with a rumor of rum in it.
Swap the rum for vodka and it's a Moscow mule. Swap it for bourbon and it's a Kentucky mule. The ginger beer is doing the same job in all three.
It goes with barbecue, jerk chicken, grilled pineapple, anything charred and sweet.
