The bars and cocktail lounges of New York City ushered in the craft cocktail renaissance in the mid aughts. Many of the vanguard establishments central to this movement have had books published detailing not only their ethos to mixology, but showcasing many of their recipes as well. Death & Co. has their Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails (2014), Apotheke has Apotheke: Modern Medicinal Cocktails (2020), Cienfuegos has Cuban Cocktails: 100 Classic and Modern Drinks (2015), and so on. The folks at iconic and influential NYC speakeasy Please Don’t Tell (PDT) have, of course, their own book, The PDT Cocktail Book: The Complete Bartender’s Guide from the Celebrated Speakeasy (2011).
Flipping through the pages one will see a plethora of inventive, intoxicating libations accompanied with pop-art style illustrations.
However, one might do a double take of the recipe on page 90 for the Cinema Highball: a rum and Coke variant made with movie theater buttered popcorn infused rum.
A cocktail that captures the theater-going experience of grabbing a handful of popcorn, stuffing it all into one’s mouth and then chasing it down with a titanic cup of Coke (Hey! Free refills) all while the previews are still going on? It HAS to be made.
The recipe is fairly simple, with most of the effort going into making the popcorn rum. Per the directions the ingredients are:
- 1 750 ML bottle of Flor de Caña Silver Dry Rum
- 1 oz fresh popcorn
- 1 oz clarified buttered
If the Flor de Caña sounds a little pricy to be used in this fashion go with a Bacardi Silver, that way if the end result isn’t successful a nice bottle of rum wasn’t squandered.
Though this cocktail uses a fairly nice rum, for the popcorn the opposite is needed. Unless a movie theater is super close by and a bag of popcorn can be easily obtained, the best route to go instead is the most unhealthy, syntheticy, buttery, popcorn imaginable. This isn’t a place for organic, artisan popcorn – it’s trying to re-create a movie theater experience afterall. The popcorn used here is from Dollar General and is probably as bottom of the barrel as one can get (note the “gluten free” in air quotes),
The final component is the ghee. More so than the popcorn, this is what is going to give the rum the movie theater butter popcorn flavour. Smelling ghee is just like smelling the butter squirter at the concession stand.
Get a glass pitcher and pour the rum into it. Follow this by an ounce of popcorn. The best way to determine an ounce of popcorn is to look at the bag it came in. The popcorn used here comes in an eight-ounce bag, so eye-ball an eighth of the bag. This doesn’t have to be exact though, error on the side of more popcorn. As stated above, the ghee is what is going to provide most of the flavour.
The popcorn is going to get soggy and float to the top.
Give it a stir once or twice over the next hour. Little globules of synthetic butter will swirl around in the rum.
Close to an hour grab a sieve. A big one. Put a bowl under it to capture all the rum that will be pressed through.
After an hour a few popcorns will have sunk. There will be a nice “healthy” hue to the rum.
The butter will be concentrated on the top.
Dump the pitcher of popcorn rum into the sieve and use the sieve-stick to press as much rum out from the popcorn. Don’t press too hard though or the popcorn will actually smoosh through the sieve holes.
The popcorn leftover will be highly rum soaked. It’s not really salvageable for anything else and kinda gross if consumed.
Pour the rum through another strainer back into the (cleaned) glass pitcher. The extra strain will grab any small popcorn atoms that made it through the sieve.
Add the ounce of ghee, stir, and let it set for twenty four hours.
After a day all the ghee will have floated to the top. The rum will have a cloudy, yellow-ish colour.
Pour the pitcher into a glass bowl. The ghee will stay floating and congregate into little, buttery islands. Place into the freezer for four hours which will cause the ghee to harden.
After four hours the ghee will have frozen into manageable clumps that can be easily removed. Strain the rum into a bottle.
Apply a homemade label.
Once bottled, the popcorn-infused rum is ready to go!
Grab a high ball glass, add ice cubes, two ounces of rum and four to five ounces of Coke (or Pepsi, RC Cola, etc.) to taste. Use a bar spoon and give it a once or twice stir. Don’t over stir because it will release the carbonation from the soda.
The end result is, well, a popcorn tasting rum and Coke! It does legit taste like having a sip of soda after eating a handful of popcorn. There is definitely a popcorn odor to the rum which certainly adds a nice component. The popcorn texture is missing, which is part of the filmgoing experience, but can’t be helped. Infusing the rum with popcorn was probably unnecessary and the step could possibly be skipped and instead go straight to infusing with ghee. However, “ghee-infused” rum doesn’t have the same ring to it, so the popcorn has to remain. Actually eating popcorn while drinking a Cinema Highball, now that is a pleasant way to consume this cocktail.
Overall, not bad! The Cinema Highball doesn’t replace a traditional rum and coke and definitely doesn’t replace a Cuba Libre, but it does take minimal effort to make the popcorn infused rum. It would be a nice practice cocktail for mixologist beginners who have not dived into the realm of spirit infusions. The Cinema Highball is a novelty drink, but a fun and tasty one that definitely goes with watching a movie in the comfort of your own home.