The Long Watch: a Rum Old Fashioned on BoneFrog Cold Brew

Rum is the Navy's drink. An old fashioned built on our original roast, four ingredients, stirred, one large cube.

Coffee Cocktails

Rum is the Navy's drink. It was issued aboard ship for the better part of three centuries, and the order to break it out is still the oldest way a fleet says well done. So when we built a drink to sit alongside the Bone Frog, we did not reach for whiskey. We reached for aged rum, and put our original roast underneath it.

The BoneFrog roast is medium, low in acidity, and runs to chocolate and caramel. Those are the same notes aged rum already has, which is why this works with almost nothing added. The sugar is pulled back to a quarter ounce because the coffee is doing most of that job on its own.

One thing makes this easier than most coffee cocktails. Our Cold Brew packs are the original BoneFrog roast, so unlike The Debrief, you do not have to steep your own. You only have to stop one step early, and the second recipe below explains that.

Cocktail

The Long Watch

  • Serves 1
  • Time 5 min
  • Base Cold Brew, undiluted

Ingredients

  • 2 oz aged dark rum, something with age on it rather than spiced
  • 1 oz cold brew concentrate, undiluted. Recipe below
  • 1/4 oz demerara syrup, 2 parts sugar to 1 part water
  • 2 dashes aromatic bitters
  • 1 wide strip of orange peel
  • 1 large ice cube

Method

  1. Chill a rocks glass and set one large cube in it.
  2. Combine the rum, cold brew concentrate, demerara syrup, and bitters in a mixing glass.
  3. Fill with ice and stir 25 to 30 seconds. You want it cold and slightly opened up, not watery.
  4. Strain over the large cube.
  5. Express the orange peel over the surface, wipe the rim, and drop it in.

Stir, do not shake. Shaking aerates the coffee and puts a pale foam on top that belongs on an espresso martini and not here. Zero-proof variation: 2 oz of concentrate cut with 1 oz of water in place of the rum, keep the syrup and bitters, build it exactly the same way.

Base

Concentrate From the Pack, Without the Last Step

  • Makes About 30 drinks
  • Time 20 to 24 hr
  • Grind Pre-portioned

Ingredients

  • 2 Cold Brew pouches
  • 4 cups cold filtered water

Method

  1. Drop two pouches into a 48 oz pitcher.
  2. Add four cups of cold filtered water. Do not stir.
  3. Steep 20 to 24 hours in the fridge.
  4. Remove and discard the pouches.
  5. Stop here. The pack instructions have you add two to three more cups of water at this point to make it drinkable over ice. For cocktails, skip that. What is in the pitcher now is your concentrate.

Keep it in a sealed bottle in the fridge and use it within ten days. If you want it as a regular cold brew as well, pour off what you need for drinks first, then dilute the rest.

Take it to the store. A one-page shopping list for this drink, in the sizes you actually buy them in, with room to add the rest of your shop.

Download the shopping list, PDF

Why an old fashioned and not something sweeter. A drink that sits next to a symbol of sacrifice should not arrive with whipped cream on it. This one is four ingredients, stirred, served over a single cube, and it tastes of coffee and rum rather than dessert. It is the sort of thing you make one of, slowly, at the end of a day.

If you want to know what the Bone Frog stands for and why anyone is welcome to wear it, that is written down in full: What the Bone Frog Means, and Who Can Wear It.

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