Mixing Cocktails and Setting Them on Fire With Sailor Jerry

A few weeks ago I was invited to spend the weekend with Sailor Jerry Rum to celebrate the birthday of Norman Collins “AKA Sailor Jerry.”

Collins was born on January 14, 1911. Before his name was stamped on every bottle of Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, Collins was putting his stamp on members of the navy. During WWII, Collins earned a name for himself in the world of tattooing. He’s responsible for sanitation standards that are used in today’s tattoo parlors, and the color purple being available in tattoo ink, amongst other things.

As part of the weekend, we got to check out “House of Machines” a new bar and motorcycle shop in Los Angeles, California and spend some time making cocktails with bartender Amanda Colom that highlighted Sailor Jerry.

We kicked things off making a Sailor Jerry Old Fashioned, which is what I recommend you start off with because boy, is it fantastic. Then we learned how to smoke a cocktail and played a little bit with fire, creating a “flamed absinthe rinse” that almost ended in me setting one of my neighboring journalists on fire.

To do an absinthe rinse you essentially spray the inside of the glass with absinthe and then set it on fire. That part isn’t hard. The difficulty came when we also tried to spray the absinthe directly through the flame, blow torch style. That… didn’t go as well for me.

Below are the three cocktails we made with Colom. Give them a whirl yourself at home. You won’t be disappointed.

Sailor Jerry Old Fashioned
Created by Amanda Colom of House of Machines LA