Shaker & Spoon, a DIY cocktail subscription box, has released the spoilers for their December 2023 box! Shaker & Spoon Cocktail Club is a monthly cocktail mixers, recipes, tools, and ingredients subscription box!
DEAL: Save 15% off on 1 & 3 month subscriptions! Use coupon code HELLO15. Cannot be combined with any other deal, only for first-time subscribers.
The theme is RUM FOR THE HOLIDAYS!
For all the frantic rushes that the holiday season ushers in (mall madness, travel tribulations, and the like), it only serves to make quiet time with loved ones around the glow of the hearth that much more radiant. So gather ’round and hear the story unfold of an impending visit from three benevolent visions in glass—fizzy, stiff, and steamy—that will arrive upon the bell’s toll of December to teach you an all-important lesson: how to cross cocktail-menu planning right off your to-do list!
When surveying the slate of traditional classics to serve when feelings turn festive at year’s end (including those from the pages of drink-lover Dickens himself), rum is everywhere to be found. This could be due to its strong head start as a premier spirit—at least here in the US during the Colonial era, before giving way to whisk(e)y upon independence as an in-kind gesture of prioritizing domestic crops over imported molasses. It could also be the soft and well-rounded bouquet of flavors often conveyed by aged rum—caramel, vanilla, almond, and spices—which makes it as beautifully buzzy to savor in a blizzard as it is at the beach.
So fear not these three messengers, for their tiding is a necessary one: throughout a long month of merriment and togetherness, the bounty of one’s home bar should know no bounds! Bells will be ringing, choirs will be singing, and you’ll soon be slinging plenty of creative takes on traditional favorites around the table with the Rum for the Holidays Box. Subscribe now through November 30th (while supplies last!) to get yours—it’s slated to ship the week of December 4th.
Here’s a sneak peek:
Caer Maiko’s Gingerbread Lift takes a rich and robust eggnog base and hoists it well above the snow line, making the case that creamy and carbonated could very well unseat sweet and salty as the next frontier in odd-couple dessert duetting. The inspiration came from a relatively young category of cocktails called “lifts”—comprising spirit, cream, orgeat, and soda—started by Jennifer Colliau and Erik Adkins a decade ago in San Francisco.
Foam-topped in a towering fashion, Caer’s sorta soda float starts with the snow day–standby combo of rum, nutpods dairy-free creamer, and egg white, to which a cinnamon-and-clove-spiced molasses syrup is added for even more holiday heroics. And then, with the help of some savvy shaker work and bubbly ginger beer, the real fun begins—a fizzy topping taking flight into the colorfully lit night sky!
Caer is the general manager for DrinkWell in Austin, TX, and the co-creator of Daijoubu Pop Up: Super Asian Cocktails, a traveling cocktail experience that pushes culinary boundaries in cocktails by incorporating surprising, unusual, and authentic Asian flavors while creating a space for Asian people in front of and behind the bar. She was also a top-4 finalist (!!!) for US Bartender of the Year at the 2023 Tales of the Cocktail Foundation’s Spirited Awards and has been a veteran S&S alum with many great cocktails to her credit, including all the drinks of the dazzling Daijoubu 2 Box and the fall favorite Wagtails sing.
Last we saw the “Big Belly Bartender” Randeen Thomas, he was grooving behind the grill and serving up the summer smash hit Jerk Daiquiri. Now, which other culinary-treasure-turned-cocktail has he tied a bow onto and gifted us this time? ’Tis the season for basking in dessert dreams, after all (not yet, resolutions!). Accordingly, his strapping Pinch Me Round old fashioned masquerades as the traditional Jamaican tartlets of the same name, magically mimicking their glowing flavors of coconut, ginger, and spices after a quick stir of aged rum, spiced coconut syrup, and aromatic bitters.
Randeen is an award-winning mixologist and bar supervisor. Hailing from Kingston, Jamaica, he fell in love with the skill at a young age after watching the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail.
From the famous flaming Café Brulot to toddies, Tom and Jerrys, and more, the city of New Orleans is one of the best places to sample hot and steamy cocktails, despite its balmy winter temps. And now a new rendition soars onto the scene from longtime French Quarter bar legend Chris Hannah. Take a sip and snuggle up to his Cajun Butter-fly, a blend of piping hot water, aged rum, and Cajun hot butter batter, which comes together by mixing softened butter with a Big Easy–inspired dry spice blend consisting of sugars, baking spices, and cayenne pepper. Festive, soul-warming, and a fair share indulgent . . . just like the best holiday nights should be!
Chris has bartended in the French Quarter for more than 19 years—and for 14 of those, he ran Arnaud’s French 75 Bar, which won the James Beard Award for outstanding bar program in 2017. He now oversees the bar program at Jewel of the South, which won Tales of the Cocktail Foundation’s Best US Restaurant Bar in 2022 and recently made the World’s 50 Best Bars list.
Each month you’ll get 3 unique recipes by top bartenders + everything you need to make 12 drinks (4 from each recipe) other than the liquor—syrups, bitters, mixers, garnishes & more. You’ll be exposed to new flavors & combos, and look at your liquor cabinet in a whole new way. Subscribe today & be your own bartender + the tastemaker in your circle!
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