Essentially a rum old fashioned with an apple juice float, this cocktail is one of
those combinations of flavors which manages to be much more than the sum of its parts.
It's certainly sweet, I'm not denying that,
but in a really unctuous and moreish way, just like its namesake.
While Dick Bradsell's crowning achievement, at least in my opinion, will always be the
espresso martini, the man sure fired out some bangers in the course of his career.
One of the first that I was introduced to was the Treacle.
I couldn't find much of a history on this one in particular, I think it was just a
drink that he had on his list, but in the 1980s when people were drinking more Slippery Nipples
and Fuzzy Navels than anything else, it is pretty impressive that Bradsell
managed to bring more sophisticated drinks into the public consciousness.
He trained many of today's top bartenders and worked behind the bar right up until
his death in 2016, and crucially his drinks are easy to replicate,
they're stunningly simple and yet no one else had put the flavors together in the same way before.
So mix yourself one of these and raise a glass to one of a handful of people that
we have to thank for the amazing cocktail renaissance that we're experiencing today.
As many of you already know we did launch a Patreon channel a while ago.
We've had a great response and we just quickly like to thank Christine,
Jan, John, Jeffrey Gregory, Adam, Arjun, Claes, Kevin and Noah for their support.
It's really helped us to continue to work on this channel despite all of the chaos of 2020.
So this is a slightly tweaked recipe. it's more similar to one that we had on the menu
at my very first bartending job. Myers was the original rum used in this
cocktail by Bradsell and of course it makes a great one, it's sort of intense and dark,
but really any thick and chewy pot still or Demerara rum will create a similar effect.
So we're going for Pusser's, but Appleton's or El Dorado, or if you're in Australia and want to
support local then something like Beenleigh or Inner Circle would be great choices.
You can absolutely just use regular sugar syrup but I like to lean into those intense flavors
and use a Demerara syrup, just one to one is fine. I always feel that, as weird as that sounds,
Demerara does have like a slight bitterness to it in the same way that good chocolate does.
And as for the bitters, Angostura definitely works but I do like the added dimension and almost quite
like dry flavor from the black walnuts. Now Bradsell apparently originally used
cheap clear apple juice and Difford's guide still maintains that cheap is best
in this drink, so feel free to use it if that's what you have on hand.
Honestly I have a bit of a personal vendetta against it, like I'm so fine using cheap
pineapple juice or even orange juice, but for some reason apple is just a bridge too far for me.
Maybe it's something in my childhood, so I try and use as close to fresh as possible and I think
that little bit of acid that it has works really well to cut through all the other dense flavors.
And then similarly you've got the kind of warmer citrus note of the orange twist which
just binds it all together and lifts it up and again makes it feel really Christmassy.
So we're going to start off with our 10ml of Demerara sugar syrup.
And then a couple of dashes of black walnut bitters or whatever kind of bitters you're using.
Okay that was four but they're not- it's a full thing so it's not coming out very much.
And then we go 60 mils of your dark rum. I do like using Pusser's in here because I
don't find it as sweet as some other kind of molasses based dark rums,
got that little bit of kind of savory funk to it that I think
works pretty well with everything else that we have going on in here.
And that's everything you need because we'll do the apple juice at the end.
I'm obviously always saying to do your garnish first but I've just forgotten to do that,
but at least I don't have any ice in my glass yet, so it's not too much of an issue.
I've caught it just in time and I'm just gonna do a nice and rustic orange peel on this one.
And then we'll pop some ice in our mixing glass
give it a little stir. So just pop the back of the
bar spoon against the inside of the mixing glass and push the ice around.
We're not actually going for heaps of dilution on this one because you're obviously adding in
the apple juice, which is gonna kind of lengthen it out a little bit and it's being served on ice.
Just get your nice big piece of ice in to your glass there and then strain over the top.
And then last but not least we just want our 15ml of apple juice.
It doesn't really float properly but I always just pour it over the top of the spoon anyway.
Just gonna give our little twist a sharp fold over the top of the drink.
I just like to pop it in there
nice and rustic. Nobody really wants to be working too hard on Christmas.
There you have the Treacle. So now you know. Let's give this one a try.
It's just really good. You've got like all of
that kind of big juicy orange and apple fruitiness up front
and then that rum just comes through like a bit of a sucker punch- in the best possible way!
And I do love that the black walnut bitters definitely kind of pin the flavor all
along and you get them right at the back. And again, it's just kind of that that way
with cocktails like this where you wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't be a bad drink without it but
with it it does just kind of bring it all together really nicely and stop it from being a bit flabby.
It is definitely on the sweeter side of cocktails that I tend to drink...
but i'm okay with it every now and again!