Post #244327 by Rum Balls on Fri, Jul 21, 2006 12:50 PM

In the 2004 book "Rum: The Epic Story of the Drink That Conquered the World" by Charles A. Coulombe (see discussion here: http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=12665&forum=10&1), I was stunned to see that the Cuba Libre recipe called for GIN as well as rum! In fact, more gin than rum. I've never seen this before, and in a search of all my bartending books, plus the Bacardi and Havana Club websites, I didn't find any Cuba Libre recipes calling for gin.

Have any of you TC ohana had a Cuba Libre w/ gin? Now that I'm home for the weekend and it's h-o-t here, I'll give it a try, and will report back!

Here's the recipe from the book:
3 oz. Coca-Cola
2 oz. gin
1 oz. rum
2 dashes bitters
Lime wedge

Rub the rim of a highball glass with the lime. Fill with ice. Add rum and fill with Coca-Cola. Drop in the lime squeeze.

(That's the verbatim instructions, which you'll notice DOES NOT include the gin and bitters. But the text of the chapter preceding this recipe DOES talk about the inclusion of gin and bitters, so I don't think the gin & bitters in the ingredients list are typos.)