The traditional grog mixture was for daily issue to sailors, you shouldn’t need the extra water.
Cause rum isn’t sweet enough, let’s throw some more sugar in there!
Add a sprig of lightly muddled mint (careful not to bruise the tender leaves), and Papa would have recognized this as a really bad mojito.
Leave out the water and it’s a perfectly good daiquiri.
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I see harassing a perfectly good bartender in my future. “You want rum and what now?”
I live in a non tipping culture so maybe I can make their day in a couple of ways
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Blade and Bow bourbon. Very tasty, little hot but nothing a cube didn’t fix. Reasonably priced around $50’ish iirc. Recommended by the guy in the store and he wasn’t wrong about it. Comes with a cute plastic key that my kids are guaranteed to fight over tomorrow morning.
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It’s rough here in Southern California as well. 
First bottle of Buffalo Trace Distillery’s namesake bourbon that I’ve bought. Thoroughly average. Their other brands like EH Taylor and Eagle Rare are much better.
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Buffalo Trace is my go-to house bourbon. Very good for the price. Eagle Rare is a cut above, to be sure. I recently picked up a 1.75l bottle of Kirkland Signature 12 year Blended Scotch for $27. Yes, that’s Costco’s house brand. Very drinkable, a bit peppery, and distilled in Aberdeen according to the label. Makes a nice Rob Roy.
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Are there any flavored whiskeys out there that aren’t rot gut?
NO
That was going to be the entirety of my answer but Discourse won’t allow it, so I’ll elaborate.
JUST NO.
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Actually, yes. Sheepdog Peanut Butter flavored whiskey makes a delicious Old Fashioned with this recipe:
1.5 oz Sheepdog
0.75 oz rye (I use Sazerac, but feel free to substitute your favorite rye)
4 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
1 Luxardo cherry
Orange peel garnish
Build in glass with ice and stir gently.
These are a big hit with my regular 42 foursome and the most popular drink I make with friends and family. The most widely marketed peanut butter whiskey is Skrewball, but I find the peanut butter and whiskey flavors are better balanced in Sheepdog.
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Went to a liquor expo and got a bottle of the best rum I could find.
75% ABV means it’s got a finish like nuclear fire, which is punchy enough to persevere through any mixer, but it’s still delicious and rewarding before it welds the tip of your tongue.
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I have yet to find a rum I enjoy for anything other than a mixed drink and even then I’d prefer a non-rum cocktail…
A lot of rums are spiced, and are fairly limited as a result. French style (‘agricole’) rums are more distinctive with a bright, grassy finish. Can’t stand white rum. A lot of it gets sold as cheap booze to automatically mix with coke.
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There’s an enormous variety of rums out there. There’s a wider range of flavor profiles in rum than any other type of spirit, so if you haven’t found one you like, you probably haven’t looked hard enough. (But I agree that plain white rums are often bottom-of-the-barrel stuff.) I’m fortunate enough to have a local resource with 500 different bottlings on the shelf…
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“ HIDDEN HARBOR, 1708 SHADY AVENUE” sounds like the kind of place a d&d DM made up on the fly
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I’m jealous. There must be a place like that in NYC somewhere!
FWIW, I’m jealous of your Brandy Library (for some reason that page isn’t rendering for me in Safari today, but it comes up OK in Firefox). I’ve only been there once, a few years ago, but I’d sure go back anytime I get to NYC.
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While I still have a bunch of rums and whiskies on the go, my current drink of choice is the negroni, an example seen above at the end of a game of Odin’s Ravens. Equal measures of Campari, Martini Rosso and gin make a deliciously deep and bitter drink. I tried it with an orange gin which was a slight fail as it tasted like good marmalade, so I’m sticking with Bombay London Dry, a brand for which I otherwise have no use.
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