Rum Cocktails – They Never Fail

What better way to soak up the last rays of summer than by conjuring tropical islands by stepping up your exotic cocktails game? And how do you do that? By knowing a little bit more about rum, of course.

From perfecting the amazingly refreshing and simple rum mule to being able to make a classic rum daiquiri for your date, there are a few key drinks you should know how to make in order to transform any ordinary summer drinking event into a tropical island-inducing experience.

And the magic component in all of them? You guessed it. It’s rum.

Let’s start with The Old Fashioned. Created in the early 1800s, this drink embodies the original use of the word “cocktail,” also referred to at the time as a “bittered sling”: muddling sugar with bitters, then adding alcohol.

Whether you’re offering it to your more sophisticated friends as a night cap or making yourself a stiff drink when you’ve ended the date at your place, this guy distinguishes the men from the boys.

Next up, it’s everyone’s all-time favorite, The Daiquiri.

So much more simple than you’d imagined, the classic daiquiri was supposedly invented by an American mining engineer in Cuba at the time of the Spanish-American War. Sounds like he needed a good, stiff drink.

Last, but not least, we have The Mai Tai. This delicious cocktail became increasingly popular in the 1950s and ’60s; today, it’s synonymous with Tiki culture both past and present.

That’s because it was supposedly invented when a bartender created it one afternoon for some friends who were visiting from Tahiti; one of those friends tasted it and cried out: “Maita’i roa ae!” which means “very good!” in Tahitian. We couldn’t agree more.