My word, I think congratulations are in order because we’ve made it to the 19th day of December! Good thing we have a celebratory dram of Discarded Banana Peel Rum to enjoy…
Less than a week to the big day. By now, you should have probably descended into Christmas decadence. Mince pies, candy canes, whatever eggnog actually is. Go nuts. Ooh, and get some nice honey-roasted nuts in. A cheeseboard on a Monday night? Absolutely. Pigs in blankets before the big day? Daring. A banana-flavoured rum? Hell yes.
Whip open the window on your Rum Advent Calendar from Drinks by the Dram and you’ll see a tasty little morsel of Discarded Banana Peel Rum. But what is it? Let’s explain, starting with Balvenie 14 Year Old Caribbean Cask. Bear with me.
From Balvenie to bananas
So you probably all know and love Balvenie’s signature rummy whisky, which the Speyside distillery makes by seasoning its own American oak casks for six months with a rum specially developed for this purpose. Cool, right? That rum is completely unique, but what happens to all that Balvenie-influenced rum they take out of the cask to make room for whisky?
Well, it used to be sold back to rum producers, which means for a time there were stocks of it floating around. Sadly, we don’t know where. The rum companies would never say where the spirit went so we have no way of knowing if any remains, and this practice has also stopped. That’s the bad news.
The good news is we know what happens to all the rum now. Balvenie owners William Grant & Sons use it as a base for Discarded Banana Peel Rum. The whole idea is to use ingredients that would otherwise go to waste, so this whisky-cask-aged rum is infused with banana peels for two weeks from a flavour house that uses the fruit, but not the peels. The result is fruity, estery, and rummy goodness. Pair it with zero-waste citrus cordial and you have a cracking Banana Daiquiri too.
It would wasteful not to enjoy a dram of this
Tasting note for Discarded Banana Peel Rum
Banana bread and treacle toffee, with notes of dried fruit, baking spice and butterscotch.
How to make a Banana Daiquiri
50ml Discarded Banana Peel Rum
25ml citrus cordial
12.5ml sugar syrup (2:1)
Shake over ice, and double strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with lime zest
We’ll be back tomorrow with another advent dram. Cheers!
