11 Best Rums For A Hurricane

The Hurricane cocktail was developed at the legendary Pat O'Brien's bar in New Orleans, likely as a way to package cheap rum. Despite that inauspicious origin story, the drink caught on with the crowds of tourists flocking to New Orleans and it's become one of the must-try drinks for people visiting the Crescent City. The traditional way to make a Hurricane is with light rum, lime juice, orange juice, passionfruit juice, simple syrup, and grenadine. Although, you can get a powdered Hurricane mix from Pat O'Brien's that just requires water and rum. After the drink is shaken and poured into a Hurricane glass over ice, it is traditionally topped with a 1-ounce float of dark rum.

While you can go all the way to New Orleans to get a Hurricane at Pat O'Brien's (possibly made with the proprietary powdered drink mix), we think you can make a much better version of the classic cocktail at home using fresh ingredients and some choice rums. Below are our rum recommendations for the next time you make this classic New Orleans cocktail.

When it comes to spirits in the craft cocktail world, "additive" is a dirty word. These days, people want spirits that are naturally colored and flavored. Anything with artificial ingredients is seen as inferior. Coruba Jamaica Rum is the exception to the rule. For decades, this funky Jamaican rum has been made with caramel coloring, and despite that, it's been a secret weapon among some of the best bartenders in the country, and tiki bartenders in particular. Many bartenders were willing to overlook artificial coloring because, for many years, Coruba was one of the only widely-available rums with the signature Jamaican funkiness referred to as "hogo." This funkiness comes from the use of pot stills for distilling, and its increased popularity in the past couple of decades has led to Jamaican-style becoming more available in the United States.

With its signature funk, Coruba can take the Hurricane to Jamaica, completely changing the flavor profile of the cocktail. A word of warning: Hogo is a bit of an acquired taste, and some people might prefer a rum with a softer flavor profile.

Passionfruit has a strong tartness as its defining flavor, but underneath that, there's a subtle bread-like quality that pairs well with coffee. This pairing is best expressed using fresh passionfruit juice from perfectly ripe fruit. You can tell if a passionfruit is ripe based on its feel and appearance. A ripe passionfruit will feel heavy for its size. When you press it with your thumb, it should give a little bit, and it's also wrinkled on the outside. Wrinkling is the final stage of the ripening process and it occurs when the fruit is ready to release its seeds. To extract the juice, start by cutting open the fruit. Next, remove the pulp and seeds, placing them in a sieve. Use the back of a spoon to extract as much juice as possible.

Salvadoreño Coffee Flavored Rum from Ron Colon is a great coffee-infused rum with just enough coffee flavor to make for an interesting passionfruit pairing. For a point of reference, it doesn't have the bold coffee flavor of Kahlua or other coffee liqueurs. Instead, this rum has a moderate coffee aroma that blends with oaky and vanilla notes from the aging barrel. If you find the coffee flavor dominates the flavor of your Hurricane, you can always blend this rum 50/50 with any other rum on this list.

When we think of Barbados, we think of a strong, trailblazing woman who has mastered her craft and proudly represented her country on the world stage. No, we're not talking about Rihanna. We're talking about Trudiann Branker, the first female master blender at the Mount Gay distillery. After taking over from the previous master blender who held the post for more than 25 years, Branker told Chilled that she's looking forward to showing "new expressions of Mount Gay... showing something new."

In her video tasting notes for Mount Gay's Black Barrel rum, Branker said the name comes from the deeply-charred bourbon casks that are used to age this rum for six months before bottling. The result is a bold, aromatic spirit with strong dried fruit and gingerbread qualities. In a Hurricane, Black Barrel rum stands up well amidst all the other flavors in the cocktail, giving it a spicy finish. This is another rum that can easily dominate the overall flavor profile of a Hurricane. So keep that in mind if you're making cocktails for people who aren't particularly big fans of dark rum.

Made by a company that's been around since the mid-19th century, Wray & Nephew White Overproof Rum has become synonymous with its native Jamaica. This overproof rum clocks in at a muscular 63% ABV, but the potency isn't what makes this rum so unique. White rums are typically barrel aged and then filtered to both remove coloring and give them a crisp, clean flavor. But Wray & Nephew never enters a barrel. Instead, it is sent straight from the still and into the bottle. Rather than getting flavor from a barrel, this rum gets most of its flavor from a Jamaican-style pot still, which is known for imparting strong, funky flavors. The end result is a clear rum that looks crisp and clean but instead is full of flavor.

Sporting a combination of funk and flex, Wray and Nephew can take your Hurricane to stratospheric heights. Flavor notes of vanilla, banana, and coconut meld perfectly with the cocktail's other ingredients while the high alcohol content and funky flavors give the drink a unique spin. If the point of a Hurricane is to pass the time during a violent storm, this rum will do the trick.

Planas is a particularly flavorful white rum from the world-renowned Diplomatico distillery in Venezuela. This rum and others from the distillery are the product of a unique distillation setup that includes continuous column stills, copper pot stills, and a batch kettle. Gilberto Briceño, a master blender at Diplomatico, told The Manual that each column at the distillery has its "innumerable quirks, and those quirks produce typical alcohol, mostly light in flavors." After it is distilled, the rum for Planas is aged for six years in bourbon barrels and then charcoal-filtered multiple times. The result is a complex rum that is a product of both a unique distillation process and barrel aging.

Planas is the Swiss Army knife of white rums, useful in all kinds of situations. In a Hurricane, it brings notes of banana, pepper, and lemongrass — adding a subtle savory quality to the proceedings. But mostly, this rum gets out of the way of the cocktail's other flavors. If you're going to use Planas for your Hurricane, you may want to use a bold, flavorful dark rum as your float.