Question: The Sidewinder's Fang

I've been puzzling over the Sidewinder's Fang lately. I really like the flavor profile of this drink and always enjoy the first few sips when I make it, but I've found that by the time I've gotten to the bottom of the glass, it's turned into a weak and watery beverage that's difficult to finish. I also feel that it's a wee bit unbalanced: a little too tart and a little too light on the booze. I'm wondering if there's some way to tweak the recipe (the one I use is from Remixed, p. 86, BTW) to make it a winner from start to finish.

I'm thinking one solution would be to reduce the amount of club soda in the drink, maybe by a third or even half. I like the fizziness that the full 3 oz. gives the drink, but I suspect that it plays a role in watering it down. The problem is that the soda helps to cut the tartness of the fruit juices and passion fruit syrup, so reducing the soda will probably make the drink even more tangy than it already is. Maybe this could be countered by upping the dark rum and demerara rum by 1/2 oz. each? Or reducing the juices and syrup to 1 oz. each and keeping the rums where they are? Lastly, I wonder if using a different kind of passion fruit syrup would make a difference. I make my own by combining La Fe passion fruit pulp and simple syrup in equal proportions. I love the flavor of this homemade syrup and it works well in every other tropical drink I've tried it in, but maybe it's not the right syrup to use here.

Any thoughts? I'm not interested in making this a different drink--I just want to enjoy it more fully!

Try adjusting the juice levels.
If it's tart... then it's probably too much lime.
I find I have to adjust several of the recipes in there for my palate, so I just cut back on the lime (or the lemon in a Fog Cutter) by even half sometimes, and that usually does the trick.

Less lime, more booze and drink faster.

I've never made this one but it's 7.5oz of mixer to 2oz of booze. You've got almost 4x as much mixer as spirits, which is going to make for a very weak drink (which will get further diluted by ice as you've noted.

If I was going to make one of those I'd cut the juices to 1oz each and the club soda to 1.5oz. That would bring the spirits to the fore a bit and not have the ice kill it. From there if you find it too tart your choices would be less lime or more of something else depending on how you wanted to affect the taste from the spirits.

On 2010-06-26 07:17, swizzle wrote:
Less lime, more booze and drink faster.

Amen.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone!

So I shook up another Sidewinder's Fang tonight and I think I've got it down now. First, I reduced the orange and lime juice to 1 oz. each and the soda to 1 1/2 oz. Left the passion fruit syrup alone. It was still a bit on the thin side, so I upped the rums to 1 1/2 oz. each and that seemed to do the trick. Good to the last drop.

Oh, I also shook with crushed ice (instead of cubed) and added more to fill afterward. This got it colder and kept it colder longer I think. Less dilution.

Not sure I drank it any faster than usual--isn't tiki about taking your time? :wink:

Crushed ice is an essential necessity.