Post #767237 by Hurricane Hayward on Tue, Aug 9, 2016 11:48 AM

I took the liberty of copying Mike's review from Facebook, along with my response. I hope he doesn't mind ...

Mike Hooker:

Sorry for the delay. Finally sober. I mean have a minute to sit down and share my thoughts I think the differences between new and old LH go beyond batch nuances. There is a distinctly different flavor between them when tried neat and in cocktails. Granted, we used a previously opened bottle of red label, so some evaporation or characteristic changes may have occurred over the last few months but I don't think enough to make a drastic difference. Trying them and Hamilton neat didn't prove a whole lot. I started with Hamilton, which burned and was unpleasant. Then the new label which was better and finally old label that seemed smooth and drinkable on it's own. I think that had more to do with tongue fatigue than quality of product. My friend Trey tried them in reverse order and felt the old LH the harshest and Hamilton the tastiest. In hindsight we should have diluted them a bit.

Moving on, we made three Swizzles with identical proportions of all ingredients. Blind taste testing, we both agreed the Hamilton was the best drink, followed by new label, then old label. That surprised me quite a bit. I'm not a fan of Hamilton's 86 proof but think his 151 is a quality product. I make Swizzles a lot and usually use the LH. I recently made a bunch of Swizzles at a party using the Hamilton all night and it was a hit. I also used a different falernum than normal and altered some of the other proportions for streamlining. It made a great drink but wasn't an equal challenge to the LH ones I'm used to so didn't think much of it. In the future I'l be using Hamilton for that drink.

We decided to continue the experiments in a Kapu Kai, essentially a 151 proof Daiquiri, which is probably the best test of the products as their flavors are highlighted only by lime and sugar and not mixed with 10 other ingredients that all have their own bold flavors such as pernod, falernum, cinnamon and bitters in the Swizzles. In this drink I picked red label LH as the winner, followed by new label and Hamilton in last place. Trey and others who now joined the taste testing all agreed Hamilton was the least good of the three and they differed in opinion on whether new or old label was better.

So it appears there's a need to stock all three and try them all in different drinks to see which works best in which application. We ended up moving on to Navy Grog's and Mai Tai's after all that 151 so things are a bit blurry but this is how I recall it going down the other night.

Jim Hayward:

Mike, your results sort of follow the same pattern that I've noticed in the past. The common wisdom is that Hamilton doesn't add as much sugar to his rum as Lemon Hart. It's a slightly more raw and bold rum, which makes it work well in complex cocktails. At The Mai-Kai, it seems to cut through the sweeter drinks better. However, in a simple drink like the Daiquiri (or Shrunken Skull, etc.), the sweeter Lemon Hart shines. Did you notice any significant differences between the two Lemon Hart releases? Martin Cate seemed to think that the new blend would be similar to the old. It's possible they adjusted the sugar content slightly one way or the other.