After supplying Pittsburgh with craft rum for the past three and a half years, Maggie’s Farm Rum is expanding their brand with two new products, a Falernum, and a Coffee Liqueur, set to become available later this month.
Maggie’s is combining the excitement over these releases with the announcement that they will now be extending their cocktail services to include Thursday, in addition to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, beginning tonight, Thursday, March 2.
Tonight’s cocktail service will also be a preview event for the Falernum and Coffee Liqueur, with a menu of drinks featuring both products.
While Maggie’s is creating these products with hopes to expand their brand, the decision to produce the Falernum and Coffee Liqueur specifically was very consumer driven.
When Maggie’s first opened, laws were such that even in their own cocktail bar, they could only sell products they made themselves. This pushed the distillery to get creative, and start developing their own rum-based syrups, bitters and liquors for cocktails.
However, just like their rums, Maggie’s put much care into fine-tuning these products. They used top shelf rum as the base, and added fresh ingredients to enhance the flavor. The result? Delicious drinks, and a cult following around Pittsburgh. While falernum is usually used to make drinks, it was not unlikely for someone to walk into Maggie’s and ask for a shot of it straight.
It was the logical next step to start producing these components for sale.
“We have been making them in house for close to two years, constantly tweaking them to make sure they are ready for the market,” says owner Tim Russell. “We do this not only so they taste good, but so they are self stable, which is a big concern. A lot of the mass produced products taste the way they do so they can last forever on a shelf. We wanted ours to taste better and use a lot of fresh ingredients. We had to find a balance between taste, and being shelf stable.”
While most people might not recognize the name “Falernum” at first, there is a chance they have tasted it, as the syrup is a a big mixer in Tiki style drinks. Maggie’s Falernum has a base of white rum, mixed with sugar, fresh ground ginger, clove, allspice, and a small amount of powdered lime acid, which Will Groves, who helped formulate the drink, comments, “May sound strange, but it is natural and plant based.”
Maggie’s Falernum will allow Pittsburghers to create their own unique and delicious cocktails, but with the best ingredients possible.
“I think of Falernum as an ingredient. It has a great balance between sweet and acidic. Falernum is undergoing a resurgence in the cocktail world, so people are using it in a lot of different idioms that are not straight Tiki drinks. When I think of falernum, I think Jet Pilot, Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, but people are doing a lot of different things with it. One of the new classic drinks is a Astoria Bianco, which is a gin based drink with Falernum, ” says Groves.
Similarly, Maggie’s Coffee Liqueur was formulated with care to maximize taste, and shelf stability. The liqueur combines Pittsburgh favorite Commonplace Coffee with coffee infused rum, brown sugar and homemade vanilla extract, made with Maggie’s Farm Rum and vanilla beans from Penzeys Spices just down the road. The Coffee Liqueur is another Maggie’s Rum favorite, and can also be used to make interesting drinks at home.
“The coffee could be a nice after dinner cordial, but because our coffee drink is based off of real ingredients, and not just extracts and coloring, I think it is best in simple cocktails where the coffee flavor can be at the forefront. I like using it in addition to coffee to cold brew or hot coffee,” says Groves.
Both products will be available for sale tonight at the preview event, but on limited release, because Maggie’s is still perfecting the product.
“We are bottling the products in 99% UV resistant bottles because these are fresh ingredients and you want to keep them out of sunlight. We are just waiting on the bottles, which will arrive later in the month,” says Russell.
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