AperlI-Tlkl- The Best Genre of Drinks this Summer! -

There's an entire genre of drinks that I don't really see many people talking about which I genuinely believe is one of the most delicious and exciting categories in all of existence. It takes all of the best characteristics of aperitif style drinks, being crisp, bittersweet and refreshing, blends that with the amazing vibes and characteristics of tiki drinks, bridges the two together and is known as aperitif. This summer I want to really get behind aperitif drinks, really celebrate them because they can be truly fantastic and in this video I'm going to share with you three of my favourite recipes, one of which being a very well-known aperitif style drink known as the Stiggins Negroni. The second and third drinks today are going to be two of my own personal creations. We're going to go with a Scroppino Colada which I'm very proud of the name of and then after that we're going to blend together a White Negroni and a Mai Tai which I'm calling a Mai Groni. So let's make some delicious aperitif cocktails. If you've followed the channel for a while now you'll know I love this genre of drinks, in fact the first drink I ever shared on the channel was a Jungle Bird which is very much an aperitif cocktail and I've pretty much followed up on this every single year with some kind of variation on a Jungle Bird and there's more of that to come so stay tuned. Today I'm going to start with the first drink which is going to be the Stiggins Negroni. So the Stiggins Negroni is essentially a riff on a classic Negroni where we're incorporating pineapple rum in the form of Plantere Stiggins Fancy Pineapple Rum and essentially what we've got here is Plantere original dark rum infused with ripe Queen Victoria pineapples and this completely transforms the character of the drink. So I like to go for a 2 to 1 to 1 ratio here, two parts of our Plantere Stiggins Pineapple Rum or 50 ml to one part or 25 ml of Italian Red Bitter aperitif and then once again one part or 25 ml of Sweet Vermouth. So you could just stir this down and get a fantastic drink but one secret weapon I like to add is just 0.3 grams of Acid Booster and this is essentially a blend of citric and malic acid dissolved into water at 30% concentrate so it's very strong and just this really small amount really brings through those fruity flavours, allows all those kind of vibrant flavours to pop. Without the Acid Booster the drink's fantastic, you get that really nice ripe pineapple coming through but if you do add the Acid Booster I just find it really brings through those fruit flavours even more. Obviously you get a little bit more acidity which adds a little bit more freshness and vibrancy to the so it is an optional step but if you can add it I do strongly recommend trying it and if you don't know what an Acid Booster is you can check out this video which I'll also link in the description below which tells you everything you need to know about this magical little ingredient. I'm just going to stir that down to rapidly mix, chill and dilute the drink then we're just going to strain that into our frozen glass with a big block of ice in there. I'm going to express some orange over the drink like you would with a classic Negroni and then garnish with a little slice of dried pineapple and there you have the Stiggins Negroni. I love rum in a Negroni and I think this takes it to the next level again. You've got the classic kind of bittersweet notes, the herbal notes but then this is really complemented by that pineapple flavour which comes through a lot from the rum and I think just 0.3 grams of Acid Booster elevates even further and all the ingredients kind of come together to give almost like a wild strawberry flavour which is really delicious. If you don't know, pineapple shares a lot of flavour compounds with strawberry so I guess this does make sense but that's just a wonderful riff on the Negroni, one you should definitely try which is really easy to put together. So now we're going to talk about the next drink which I'm really excited by the name of but even more so the drink itself which is called a Scroppino Collada. Now categorising the Scroppino Collada as an aperitif style drink might be a stretch for some. The Scroppino is generally more of an after dinner drink, maybe more of a digestive style drink but I have seen it called an aperitif drink where it's served as more of a palate cleanser before a meal so when it tastes as good I don't even care. The Scroppino is generally made with vodka, sparkling wine and lemon sorbet. We're going to slightly change that to bring in some of the characteristics of a Pina Collada where we've got some pineapple and coconut in there. These two things together are going to be fantastic and when the name is as good as a Scroppino Collada you know this is just right. So we've subbed out the vodka, subbed in Plantere Stiggins Fancy Rum once again and then we're going to combine that with Prosecco and in the freezer I have some coconut sorbet so you know this is going to be a delicious combination, really easy to put together and this is going to make two drinks. So we're going to start with 50 grams of our Plantere Stiggins Fancy Pineapple Rum which is our core flavour bringing the pineapple notes and rum bringing much more character than vodka. We're going to go 100 grams of sparkling wine which brings texture and actually a really nice complementary flavour to the rum and then finally 200 grams of our coconut sorbet and this is instead of a lemon sorbet and a classic Scroppino, finishing off our kind of triangle of flavours from a Pina Collada, rum, pineapple, coconut, this is going to be tasty. I'm just going to whip this up for a couple of seconds, serve it up in our frozen coupe glasses or you could use champagne flutes here. Garnish with a nice sprig of mint and a Scroppino Collada which could not be more perfect for a hot sunny day. Cheers everyone. It's just so refreshing, so clean, so easy drinking, it's got an amazing texture which is a little bit fizzy, a little bit creamy, the rum really comes through, the pineapple and coconut just an amazing flavour profile and I think the mint really lifts the drink. Everything is just perfect together so I really hope you enjoy the Scroppino Collada and now we're going to blend together a White Negroni and a Mai Tai called a Mai Groni. The final drink today blends together two of my favourite aperitif and tiki cocktails, a White Negroni which is essentially gin, bitter gentian liqueur and dry vermouth and a Mai Tai which is a blend of rums, orange liqueur, lime, almond syrup and maybe a touch of salt if you like to add that and this drink kind of takes some of my favourite elements of each, bridges them together and creates something actually completely different to either a White Negroni or a Mai Tai which I think really works. So it's going to be a shaken cocktail starting with two rums actually and I do like to blend rums in a Mai Tai, both of which have a particular purpose and both come from this video's sponsor which is Plantere Rum. So first of all I'm going to go 40 ml of Plantere Three Stars Rum which is the core rum in the drink and this is a blend of rums from Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad. This brings our core flavour profile to the drink of vanilla, tropical fruit and a little bit of banana as well and we're actually complementing this with 10 ml of Jamaican rum which is Plantere Ximaka which I absolutely love and this has those really nice funky flavours in there, loads of really nice ripe tropical fruit in there, mango, ripe pineapple, even a little bit of almost tapache flavour, a fermented pineapple drink which is very delicious. These two rums obviously work really nicely together but you can experiment with the full range of rums from Plantere. They have rums from lots of different origins, really celebrating the terroir of the rum and if you want to check out Plantere's website, I'll link in the description below so you can see the full range for yourself. Big thanks to Plantere for sponsoring this video and now we can add our next ingredient. In a Mai Tai we generally use some orange liqueur in there but what we're going to do here is sub in a gentian based liqueur which is really popular in a white Negroni, quite a strong flavour which you need to stand up against something like the Ximaka and I've added 10 ml here in place of the orange liqueur you'd usually find in a Mai Tai so it's going to have quite a different flavour profile. Next up we're going to go with our lime juice, 20 ml. I'm going to go in with 10 ml of an almond syrup also known as an Orgeat syrup. I'm going with Monin here and this is our core sweetness here which is a key flavour of a Mai Tai and then I like to just add half a gram of a 1 to 5 saline solution just to bring all those really big flavours together. I'm going to shake this up nice and vigorously, fine strain into a frozen glass with a big rock of ice in there, garnish with a nice cherry, a mint sprig for aroma and a little straw and there we have a mash-up of the white Negroni and the Mai Tai known as the Migroni. So giving it a taste, cheers again everybody. It's undeniably a blend of the two things, the Sousa is quite a big flavour so you do really get that coming through but it actually ties in really nicely with the Ximaka from Plantere, those big funky kind of fruit flavours time with those more bitter sweetness of the gentian and Sousa. The almond brings a really nice nuttiness to bridge the two together, we've got that core rum flavour from the Plantere three stars, the mint brings a really nice aroma to the drink and as I said at the start of the video, this takes all the best elements of aperitif, being crisp, bittersweet and refreshing, ties in those really nice flavours and characteristics of tiki drinks, bridges the two together and that I think is a perfect example of an aperitif cocktail. So I hope you enjoyed this, I hope this has inspired you to kind of bridge together those two worlds, make sure you stay tuned for more aperitif drinks in the future. Once again a big thank you to Plantere Rum for sponsoring this video and what's your favourite aperitif cocktail or what drinks would you like to bring together to make aperitif? Let me know in the comments below and make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any future aperitif content. Make sure you check these videos out next including this one which is that full completely free 50 video essential cocktails course to really get you started on your journey and I really hope you enjoy some aperitif cocktails. There's going to be more of these coming, see you in the next video and cheers for watching!