What to Mix With Spiced Rum: Mixers, Ratios and Serves

Ginger beer, cola and ginger ale suit spiced rum because each one meets the spice rather than covering it. Cola carries caramel, vanilla and baking spice, the same notes the spices put into the rum. Ginger beer adds heat and a dry bite. Ginger ale adds the flavour of ginger without the burn, so the rum stays in front.

The thing to watch is doubling up. A spiced rum heavy on ginger, poured into a hot ginger beer, tastes mostly of ginger. One heavy on vanilla, poured into a sweet cola, tastes mostly of vanilla. Choose the mixer that adds what the bottle lacks, or reinforce one note on purpose.

The full recipes are on Rum and Coke, Storm & Spice, the Spiced Rum Mule and the Spiced Rum Punch. The rows without a recipe are the plain highball: rum, ice and one mixer.

Fifty millilitres of spiced rum to 150ml of mixer is the standard highball, and it is the ratio behind the Rum and Coke. A pub in Britain pours rum in 25ml or 35ml measures by law, which is why a single in a tall glass of cola tastes weak. At home, 50ml is the measure that holds its own at three to one.

Strength matters at this ratio. Plenty of spiced rum is bottled at 35% or 37.5% ABV, and the weaker the bottle, the sooner a long drink tastes of its mixer. At 40% ABV the rum keeps its shape. If the drink tastes thin, cut the mixer before adding more rum.

Fill the glass with ice. A full glass melts more slowly than a half-empty one, because the mass of ice keeps itself cold, so more ice means less dilution, not more.

1. Chill the mixer. A warm one melts the ice faster and loses its fizz sooner.
2. Fill a highball glass to the top with cubed ice.
3. Measure 50ml of spiced rum with a jigger and pour it over the ice. The ratio is the recipe, so measure rather than guess.
4. Top with 150ml of mixer, poured gently down the inside of the glass.
5. Stir once, and only once. Every extra stir knocks out bubbles, and a flat highball tastes sweeter than a lively one.
6. Garnish only if the drink needs it: lime with ginger beer, a twist of citrus peel with ginger ale.

Buy small bottles of mixer. An opened large bottle loses its fizz within a day or two, even in the fridge.

Cola is three quarters of the glass in a rum and cola, so a sweet one sets the flavour and buries the spice under it. A drier cola lets the rum through.

Ginger beer is cloudy and hot. Ginger ale is clear and dry, with the flavour of ginger and none of the burn. They are different drinks, not two strengths of one, and they do different things to the rum.

Cloudy apple juice suits spiced rum because it is sharp as well as sweet: it carries malic acid, so it balances against the rum without extra citrus. Cloudy tastes more of apple than clear, because filtering takes out the pulp and pectin that carry the fruit.

The Spiced Rum Punch is built on it, for ten: 500ml of spiced rum, 750ml of cloudy apple juice, 500ml of orange juice, 100ml of fresh lemon juice and 100ml of honey, with cinnamon sticks, star anise and a few cloves. Serve it warm, or chill it overnight and pour it over ice.

A spiced rum at 40% ABV can be sipped. At room temperature the vanilla and spice open fully. Over a single large cube the profile tightens and the spice sharpens.

For a short drink, The Old Standard stirs 50ml of Expedition Spiced Rum with 10ml of demerara syrup, two dashes of Angostura and a dash of orange bitters over ice, then strains it onto a large cube in a rocks glass. The Rum Smash muddles three lemon wedges, eight mint leaves and 15ml of demerara syrup, then adds 60ml of spiced rum and crushed ice. The Expedition Punch builds 60ml of Expedition Spiced Rum, 20ml of lemon juice, 40ml of sugar syrup and 80ml of water or weak black tea over ice.

Most of the sugar in a spiced rum highball is in the mixer, and the figures vary more than the labels suggest. These are per 100ml, as the producers publish them.

Dry on a ginger ale describes the finish, not the sugar. Light mixers sweetened with fructose sit between the full and the diet versions. Diet mixers take the sugar to nothing but go thin against a 40% spirit, because sugar brings body as well as sweetness.

Spiced rum itself can carry added sugar, and a spirits label is not required to list it. A bottle that tastes sweet neat will make a sweet highball whatever goes into it.

Fizzy mixers do not heat: warmth drives the carbonation out and leaves them flat and thin. Hot spiced rum drinks are built on juice, tea or water instead.

The Spiced Rum Punch is the hot serve written for spiced rum. Warm the rum, apple, orange, lemon and honey with the whole spices in a pan or slow cooker, well below the boil, and serve it in punch cups. Boiling drives off the alcohol, so the rum fades before the first sip.

The Hot Buttered Rum is written for dark rum, which carries the depth and body that heat amplifies. Make it with the rum it calls for.