Pegu Club Cocktail

Recently I stocked up on fresh limes and I have been trying to find new ways to use them in cocktails, like we did last week here at Keep Your Spirits Up with the Caipirinha. Usually, when I find a new ingredient that I am interested in using in a cocktail, be it a spirit, fruit or anything else, I search for recipes by ingredient in one of three places:

• The Internet Cocktail Data Base: CocktailDB
• Robert Hess' site: Drink Boy 
• "Classic Cocktails" by Salvatore Calabrese

After Plugging in lime I came across the usual suspects: The Margarita, The Daiquiri, Kamikaze, etc...   Then one of them caught my eye... The Pegu Club Cocktail.

The Pegu Club Cocktail

The reason that the Pegu stood out for me is because in addition to lime juice it contains two ingredients which I really enjoy together: Gin and Cointreau (swappable w/ Triple sec & Curacao). In the past here at keep your spirits up we have wrote about at least two other cocktails which use those two ingredients: The Corpse Reviver #2 & The Jasmine Cocktail, both of which I recommend my readers and fellow cocktail enthusiasts try.

The Pegu Club Cocktail was invented at The Pegu Club (no, really?!), a Victorian style Gentlemen's club in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar). You know, where Rambo 4 takes place and kills half the country. This club was created for British Army officers and civilians after the British annexation of Burma in 1885 and was one of the most renowned clubs in Southeast Asia mentioned by Rudyard Kipling in his novels. There are many different recipes for this cocktail but below I am providing you with Robert Hess' recipe. 

 The Pegu Club Cocktail

2 ounces of gin
3/4 ounce of orange curaçao (or Triple Sec)
1/2 ounce of lime juice
dash of Angostura Bitters
(dash of orange bitters)

Stir with Ice. Pour into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a lime twist.

According to Hess if you don't have one of the bitters you can still make this cocktail but he himself feels that it will be lacking. I only used Angostura bitters because I do not have orange bitters at the moment.

People have claimed that this cocktail's taste is reminiscent of that of grapefruit juice, I am not sure if that is how I would put it. I felt that The Jasmine Cocktail tasted a lot closer to grapefruit juice. The Pegu was sweet, sour  and bitter all at once. It is an excellent thirst quencher for hot or warm nights. Make sure to give this one a try.

Cheers!