Brazen BBQ’s Blazin’ Sunrise

The bar manager at Brazen BBQ, Grey Lockwood also moonlights as a commercial advertising photographer. So, naturally, when he develops a drink, he’s looking for that Kodachrome moment — say, turning a regular old sunrise into a Blazin’ Sunrise.

“Once you pour the drink, the way it falls and settles by itself, the grenadine falls to the bottom while the pineapple and ginger beer stay on top,” he says. “So, there’s a nice gradation from a light yellow through the oranges and pinks into a dark red.”

The layers of flavors the drink offers, Lockwood says, are as gradient as the cocktail’s colors are radiant.

“When you take a sip, you’re going to get the sweet from the pineapple juice and grenadine right off the bat, and then taste the carbonation from the ginger beer as it mixes together, which gives it a little bit of a kick,” he says. “Then on the back end there’s a little bit of habanero flavor.”

Given the mighty little habanero’s famous heat, Lockwood cautions, the recipe for the Blazin’ Sunrise does not easily forgive mistakes.

“You have to be careful with the habanero — you don’t want too much,” Lockwood says. “It should be a really thin slice that you muddle, about 1/16th of an inch — the thickness of a tine on a dinner fork. You don’t want to overdo it because you can kill the other flavors in the drink. If you do it right, you’ll get heat in the drink, but it’s a subtle heat.”

Kitchen Proof: I substituted (by Mr. Lockwood’s leave) Sailor Jerry’s Spiced Rum for Crusoe Spiced Rum — and found in the results several fathoms of flavor: the rum’s habanero-activated heat punches back without scorching the layers of sweetness afforded by the ginger beer, grenadine, and pineapple juice.

HOW TO MAKE IT:

• 2 oz. Crusoe organic spiced rum

• 1 slice of habanero

• 1 oz. pineapple juice

• Cock’n Bull ginger beer

• Grenadine syrup

Muddle habanero slice with rum at bottom of cocktail shaker, fill shaker with ice, shake and strain contents into Collins glass filled with ice. Top with ginger beer and a dash of grenadine. Garnish with a lime wedge and maraschino cherry.