Mixology at Home - Happy Hour with a Cuba Libre
RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - Did you know that Sunday, Nov. 12, is National Happy Hour Day?
Happy Hour is a marketing ploy to get you to belly up to the bar in the late afternoon and early evening hours, before the establishment’s peak hours. Not that anyone has to entice me to do so.
I never bothered to look up the origins of the phrase. So here it is:
The phrase “happy hour” goes back to Shakespearean times, although it had nothing to do with alcohol. The prohibition era is where the phrase became associated with drinking. People would go to a speakeasy for a drink before going to a restaurant where alcohol couldn’t be served. Cocktail lounges continued the trend of drinks before dinner, adding the financial incentive.
Happy hour, unfortunately, isn’t always happy. Some people overindulge. Because of that, 10 states ban happy hours in an attempt to cut down on public drunkenness.
So what happy hour drink are we making today? We have already done several before-dinner drinks and aperitifs. I don’t use rum much so why not throw one of those drinks out there? It was a toss-up between the Cuba libre, an easy drink to make; and a zombie. I’m lazy today so let’s go with the Cuba libre.
Ingredients
- 1 ½ oz gold rum
- 3 oz cola
- 3 lime wedges (Ione for garnish)
Directions – Fill a highball glass with ice, squeeze two lime wedges over the ice, and drop the wedges into the glass. Add the rum and coke, stir, and garnish with a third lime wedge.
Here’s another rum-based mixture that might work - use spiced rum and root beer instead of gold rum and cola. See our spicy root beer float segment.
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