Pan Am Cocktail: Flying high with a luxury rum drink
You may or may not know that alongside smoking cigars and drinking cocktails, another past time of mine is analogue gaming. That’s right my friends, I love nothing more than sitting down on a Saturday afternoon, or any afternoon for that matter, and getting lost in a good old fashioned board game. I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill ones that get dragged out on Christmas afternoon with the family. I’m talking about more modern and weightier games that need an afternoon to learn and the evening to play.
One such afternoon, I decided to get to grips with one of my new games. It was a card collecting, route building game called Pan Am, and yes it is named and inspired after the now-defunct airline. As I settled down to read through the rules, then watch a YouTube video explaining how to play, I wondered if there was a cocktail that carried the same name. Unsurprisingly a quick search of the internet revealed that indeed there was.
Taking white rum as its base spirit, the Pan Am is essentially a tiki cocktail in that it uses a good amount of fresh fruit juice and some syrup alongside a couple of other essential ingredients that set it apart from your typical tiki cocktail. Those ingredients turn what could be a rather sweet and fruity drink into the perfect aperitive cocktail reminiscent of the luxury the Pan American Airways was renowned for back in its heyday of the 1920s and 30s.
If you want to mix the Pan Am cocktail yourself, you will need some white rum, Aperol, fresh lemon juice, Orgeat syrup, an egg white and some Angostura bitters. Bearing in mind that this uses both an egg white, which is hopefully pasteurised, and lemon juice, which will “cook” the aforementioned egg white if you aren’t careful, this is a slightly trickier cocktail to make than some others that I have talked about on here. It does require quick assembly and a double shake, but the result is a delicious drink with a beautifully creamy head on top and a silky feel in the mouth.
Once again I have adjusted the measures from the original recipe to reflect my own tastes and I suggest that you taste as you go and do the same. I upped the measures of both rum and Aperol as I like the taste of those but in balance, I also reduced the amount of lemon juice I used. Also, I felt that half a measure of Orgeat syrup would make the Pan Am cocktail just a little too sweet for my taste.
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PAN AM COCKTAIL RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
1½ measures White Rum
1 measure Aperol
⅔ measure lemon juice
Orgeat syrup to taste
1 egg white
Angostura bitters
METHOD
Pour the rum, Aperol and lemon juice into an ice filled cocktail shaker and give it a quick stir. Taste for bitterness and add Orgeat syrup according to taste. When you have got the balance between sweet and sour just right, add the egg white and shake it vigorously. Remove the ice and give it another good shake. Pour into a chilled cocktail glass and add a couple of drops of Angostura bitters to garnish. Sit back and enjoy your flight.
