Review: Cane&Abe Rum

Rating: ★★★½☆
madisondistillery.com/Rum.html

Cane&Abe is a rum that just dares to be different. Its bottle, what with the loop on its neck, looks more appropriate to moonshine than rum. The native-american style eagle on the label, again, doesn’t exactly screech of high seas adventure. And being made in Madison, Wisconsin; arguably the LEAST piratey city in the entire US of A? Now my mind is blown.

But let’s not rush to judgement – it is, after all, the rum that matters. At a glance it’s a deep amber, although in the glass it’s significantly lighter. The nose is prominently butterscotch and sugarcane – one of which is a common element in rum, the other less so (I’ll leave it to you to figure which is which.)

On the tongue, Cane&Abe is again like hot butterscotch – liquid candy for adults. Light and sweet, this isn’t exactly fit for putting a kraken into a half-nelson while making out with a mermaid and kicking a spanish corpse. But while it’s not the stuff of pirate legend, it IS pretty decent in its own right, and might be worth checking out if you’d like a break from charred gunpowder and molasses.

Review: Fortuna 8 Year

Rating: ★★★★☆

rum reviews, ron fortunawww.ronfortuna.com

Wine bottles should stand tall and proud, but I’m happiest when my rum bottles sit short and squat. It just seems right that a rum stay true to its maritime heritage by maintaining a low center of gravity and wide footprint so to better brave the rolling seas. Or if ashore, to better survive the accidental bumpings that so often occur in the immediate viscinity of delicious high proof spirits.

Fortuna, Ron Reserva Exclusiva is an eight year aged rum in a classy, lovely squat bottle. The green glass disguises the hue of the rum within, but this is soon remedied by breaking the foil and removing the cork. Upon doing so, the nose is immediately met with a combined sweetness and muskiness – caramel intermingled with subtle vegetation. In the glass, this rum is a light amber much akin to honey in color.

And then, we drink… Continue reading

Review: Operation Rum App

Rating: ★★★½☆

I love pirates, and I love physics-based puzzle games. I also sort of like rum. And so an app such as “Operation Rum” comes along and it would indeed seem custom tailored for me. The concept is simple enough – one or more fairly rolly-polly shaped pirates are standing there drinking their rum, and it’s your job to get them into the pub. This is done by manipulating their enviroment – mostly by eliminating obstacles or dropping things – to roll them through the door. Reminds me of New Orleans 2009, to be perfectly honest. Continue reading

Review: Bridge the Gap

Rating: ★★★☆☆
iTunes Link

So in all my years of Bilgemunky.com, I’ve never reviewed a pirate app. I guess that’s largely because, until recently, I didn’t own a phone smart enough to handle such things. My phone was ok for making phone calls, was mil-spec rated for dust and vibration resistance, and could handle about 23 seconds of submergence in what I’d love to claim was rum, but was actually some sort of knockoff cool aid. Did I say 23 seconds? Cuz 24 seconds means it’s time to buy a new iPhone, as I recently learned. Continue reading

Review: Kahuna Kevin’s Why is the Rum Gone? Vol. 2

Rating: ★★★★★
www.kahunakevin.com
BUY NOW at Amazon.com!

Tired of drinking rum the old fashioned way (straight from the bottle with the smell of burning ships in the air)? Of course not – yer a bloody pirate! But even a bloody pirate can enjoy mixing things up once in a while – figuratively AND literal. With his first book, Kahuna Kevin introduced us to a wide assortment of original rum-based cocktails. 40 concoctions of varying complexity featuring a large number of our favorite rums. And now, with Why is the Rum Gone? Volume 2, Kahuna brings us another 52 masterpieces suited to all sorts of skill-levels and tastes.

That last point can’t be emphasized enough. There was a time that I thought rum-drinkers fell into one of only two camps – Continue reading

Review: Blackbeard Spiced Rum

Rating: ★★★½☆
www.blackbeardrum.com
Speaking strictly from the perspectives of myth and legend, Blackbeard just might be history’s perfect pirate. He was big, mean, dramatic… he fought like a demon and died like a folk (anti)hero. And what’s more, the man mixed gunpowder in his rum. I mean, seriously – this is the sort of thing that Hollywood makes up and then historians nerdily remind us that, “you know, pirates didn’t actually do this, or do that…” But Blackbeard did. He was the real deal, and this is why now and forever, there should always be a rum or two bearing his name.

Blackbeard Spiced Rum has risen to the challenge of bearing Teach’s title, but does it live up? In the bottle, its classy and striking, with a black lable and stylized artwork of the man himself. The rum inside is a basic brownish amber, and upon opening you’re instantly greeted with a surprisingly robust vanilla aroma. Continue reading

Review: Hot Pirate Babes 2012 Calendar

Rating: ★★★★☆
www.hotpiratebabes.com

True story: My 2012 Hot Pirate Babes Calendar was hand-delivered to me by Caribbean Pearl (2011 calendar girl, ongoing pirate celebrity, and associate of Tiger Lee). I took a quick look at the cover and said something along the lines of, “cute cover girl this year.” Pearl raised an eyebrow at me, covered the image’s heaving cleavage with her hand and asked, “what do you think of her now?”

I reexamined the 2012 cover girl that I’d just complimented, and my smile quickly turned to one of shock. “Oh my god,” I cried, “She looks 15*! And spiteful!”

Pearl smiled at me sympathetically. Continue reading

Review: Pirate Santa

★★★★ ½

www.piratesanta.com

Got some pirate younkers in the house that need a proper Christmas tale? The sort that has less to do with Santa, and somewhat more to do with Slappy Claus, a mermaid, and eight tiny tiger sharks?

Much like Jack Skellington before them, the inventors of Talk Like a Pirate Day have set their sights on the Yule-tide season in their quest for total holiday domination. Does it all end in comical disaster as did Nightmare Before Christmas, or are the Pirate Guys savvy enough commandeer the king of all holidays? Continue reading

Review – Treachery and a Dead Man’s Promise

Rating: ★★★☆☆
www.oderlesseye.com

In the history of pirates on the silver screen, only a handful of films have managed to capture piracy in such a manner as to transcend fact, transcend history, and cut straight to the heart of the matter. I speak of course of rum-sodden stupor. In this way, Treachery and a Dead Man’s Promise surpasses all other pirate movies as it rolls beneath the tavern bench, belching gunpowder and occasionally waking up just long enough to start a bar fight before passing out in the alley – PIRATE STYLE.

Let’s be clear, this is a fan film. 20 odd minutes of dubious acting filmed on location at renfaire, the beach, and the woods with questionable dialogue featuring pirate accents of varying skill and consistency. And ninjas, lots and lots of time-traveling ninjas. Oh, and a sea hag who I think gave the ninja sea herpes or something like that. SPOILER ALERT – that last sentence contained a spoiler. Continue reading

Review: Don Q Gran Anejo Rum

Rating: ★★★½☆

Don Q Rum, named for the windmill-slaying Don Quixote, boasts a commendable line of standard and flavored rums, with Gran Anejo being their flagship, top-of-the-shelf label. The packaging alone is a spectacle – a lovely, squarish glass bottle housed in a golden, satin-lined box that remarkably slides open from the center. But the fun doesn’t end there, as the bottle’s glass stopper is hollowed out in such a way as to measure out a shot for you –  a bit gimmicky, sure, but so spiffy that I just can’t find it in my heart to criticize. Continue reading