Yangon Days - Home Brew

One of my greatest personal discoveries of 2011 was rhum arrange. Whilst on holiday in Madagascar, at the end of dinner we would often be offered a complementary digestif of a sweetened, cloudy, rum which had been flavoured by whichever fruit or spice had been left to rot in the bottle.

My wife was amused by my enthusiasm. Apparently, everyone knows about rhum arrange in France and they are totally over it. I instead embarked on a personal mission to sample as many flavours as possible in the space of two weeks and succeeded in covering basic flavours (pineapple, banana) to the more complex (carambar, star anise). 

If only I'd  caught that snake the other week...

It looked easy enough to replicate: put some fruit and sugar in a bottle of rum. Put the lid back on and place it in a cupboard, take it out a couple of months later and drink it.

As usual, the plans for self-improvement that one makes whilst on holiday never come to fruition (I also promised myself on that trip to play a weekly game of backgammon and I haven’t played once since). Therefore it was my sister’s own homebrew batch of rhum arrange that inspired me to action, motivating me to come good on my personal promise. Last month I bought some Mandalay rum which was easy enough, though worryingly chemical and overpowering when I opened the bottle, added bananas and mangosteens together with some sugar and vanilla sticks, hid it back in a cupboard, and then told my wife. Already she is over it; I used pure sugar as opposed to preparing a caramel which is apparently the proper way to do it in French colonies.

All the products are natural, so at least it will be hard to poison myself. I’ll find out in two months anyhow.