Amateur Mixology: Caribbean Winter

Having completed (and hopefully passed) my first real exam in medical school, I decided that a celebratory drink was in order. Tragically, I came home to find that my fridge was all out of beer. I improvised! Now I've developed a fairly tasty little cocktail to enjoy on those sad, beerless nights. No image, sadly: it's decidedly difficult to take a good picture of a beverage with a non-professional digital camera.

Ingredients:
  - 1 part dark rum
  - 2 parts root beer
  - 1 part milk (though cream would be nicer)
  - Nutmeg to garnish

Pour the dark rum and root beer into a glass over a lot of ice. Swirl it around to make sure that the liquid is good and cold. Add the milk or cream and stir. Top it off with just a trace of nutmeg.

You end up with a drink that looks suspiciously like a White Russian but doesn't taste like one in the least. The rum brings out some of the vanilla in the root beer, and the carbonation combined with creaminess of the milk gives it a unique and not at all unpleasant mouth feel. Nutmeg is potent, so a little bit goes a long way. You don't taste a ton of nutmeg, but you get a wonderful nose of it on the way up. Frankly, this is more appropriate as a winter drink. Oh well, I made do with what I had. It's tasty!

Please, please make sure that the booze is ice cold before you add the milk. Remember my previous post where I discussed the affect of acid on poaching eggs? Ethanol from the rum and acidity from the root beer will both denature the milk proteins, making it curdle. This won't have much of a negative affect on the taste, but the beverage will look and feel... chunky. I've accidentally done this with a White Russian before. Keep it cold and this won't really be an issue.