Rum and Coke is a classic for a reason. It’s one of the best and easiest rum cocktails — just two ingredients and you have yourself a special tipple. Plus, the flavors work exceedingly well together, with cola bringing effervescence, spice, and acidity to rum’s own profile of fruit sweetness and brightness. Even expert mixologists love this staple, which is thought to have originated in Cuba and spread across the United States from Florida and the South. While there are plenty of ways to upgrade this simple beverage — hello, all your favorite garnishes — the tastiest is simply to use specific rums that are perfect for rum and Cokes. Many aficionados believe the best kind of rum for this is a spiced rum. Of all the different types of rum, spiced rum will bring the most complex flavors to your cocktail. It’s infused with everything from vanilla to cinnamon to nutmeg to citrus and dried fruit. That said, when you want to branch out from the ubiquitous rum and Coke, how else can you highlight spiced rum’s notes?
Considering just how rich in flavor spiced rum is, surely there are other ways to make it shine, right? And we’re not talking tiki drinks — which are delicious but inherently more complicated — instead, we mean great rum mixers for simpler, two-ingredient cocktails. If you’re wondering what other interesting pairings you can create, you might be excited to learn you can choose everything from spicy to sweet to roasty. Here are three spiced rum game-changers.
Spiced rum with ginger beer
One of the best cocktails to drink if you like ginger beer is a dark and stormy – ginger beer and black rum. However, by swapping out black rum for spiced rum, you can double the impact of complex spices, ranging from warm baking spices to herbaceous and earthy notes. The difference between ginger beer and ginger ale is that the former is actually a fermented brew of ginger with water, sugar, and yeast, whereas the latter is a soft drink with ginger flavor. All this means that ginger beer has a more intense ginger experience. If you prefer something less bold, you can technically opt for ginger ale, but ginger beer with spiced rum really delivers a satisfying sip of spice, acidity, and sweetness — with a touch of heat. This drink also brings in a nice carbonation if that’s something you particularly like about a rum and Coke.
To mix with spiced rum, you can follow the same specs of a classic dark and stormy: Pour about 4 ounces of ginger beer into a tumbler with ice, then top with 3 ounces of spiced rum. To bring in some extra brightness, squeeze fresh lime juice into the ginger beer as well — or another citrus like lemon, grapefruit, or even orange for a sweeter take. Since this base is so simple, you can get creative with your additions. Add a few dashes of Angostura or orange bitters, or even a homemade simple syrup flavored with lime.
Spiced rum with fruit juices
If you do love those aforementioned must-try tiki cocktails, meet your new favorite hack: Simply add spiced rum to your favorite fruit juice for a dreamy, tropical experience. Even without other ingredients, you can achieve a blend of sweet fruit, sunny acidity and tartness, layered spices, and the subtlest hint of heat from the alcohol. For this reason, pineapple juice is a natural go-to — with spiced rum and pineapple being core ingredients in plenty of tiki drinks. In fact, this is already an established cocktail on its own: Just pour 3 ounces of pineapple juice into a glass over crushed ice, topped with 1.5 ounces of spiced rum, and garnish with a pineapple wedge.
For similarly island-inspired results, you can turn to mango juice, guava juice, or passionfruit juice. Keep in mind that for whatever you can’t find in the store, you can always learn the best methods for making your own juice at home. That way you always have it on hand for everything from smoothies to rum cocktails. Since spiced rum already has some sweetness, it’s best to avoid any super-sweet fruits like raspberries. But you could get creative and split the juice portion of the tipple between, say, kiwi juice and mango juice, or grapefruit and guava. A splash of coconut water, too, could really emphasize the tiki appeal. The sky’s the limit on garnishes, since you can mix and match flavors with fresh fruit.
Spiced rum with coffee
This is one of those “why didn’t I think of that before?” combinations. Simply pour 2 ounces of spiced rum into a cup of coffee — add a splash of cream for extra sweetness and a silky texture — and you have a breakfast pick-me-up. Much like a classic Irish coffee, you can get everything you love about your cup of joe with that boozy kick. Together, these ingredients are roasty, chocolatey, bittersweet, and spicy. The spiced rum’s own fruit notes will also help pull those flavors out of your coffee, creating interesting and delicious bright pops against the coffee’s darker, warmer profile.
You can, of course, make this with an iced coffee or cold brew as well — even using your favorite coffee creamer for added twists. For example, Vanilla, Caramel, Coconut Crème (which would underline spiced rum’s tropical quality), Hazelnut, or even Italian Sweet Crème flavors would work well because they’re all in step with both the coffee and the spiced rum’s own notes. You could also make the popular espresso martini with spiced rum instead of vodka for added, complex flavor, or simply swap out half the vodka for rum. To keep things simpler and closer to the two-ingredient rum-and-Coke formula, consider mimicking the cocktail some prefer over the espresso martini, the carajillo — by combining espresso and spiced rum, which is already similar in profile to the drink’s traditional Licor 43. Garnish with an orange peel and enjoy spiced rum in a whole new way.
