can rum and coke get you drunk

The normal adult human liver can remove the alcohol in one “normal” drink per hour. That is one shot (1.5oz) of liquor, one glass (5 oz) of wine or one (12 oz) beer. So if you pace yourself to one rum and Coke per hour you shouldn’t get ‘drunk.

• If a rum and diet Coke is your go-to happy hour drink, listen up: It might be making you more drunk than you think. A new study found that diet mixers intensify the effects of alcohol compared to full-sugar mixers. Why? Because calories slow down the body’s absorption of alcohol, and since diet drinks, by definition, have almost no calories, alcohol mixed with diet drinks absorbs faster. Meaning: cocktails made with diet mixers make you drunker faster. Researchers made the discovery by testing the breath-alcohol concentration—the same thing breathalyzers measure—of subjects who consumed full-sugar cocktails and diet cocktails. Not only did the diet cocktail drinkers have a higher breath-alcohol concentration than the sugar-cocktail drinkers after 40 minutes of drinking, the those who drank diet cocktails also performed worse on a computer test—even though they didn’t notice feeling any drunker. Kinda scary, right? Makes me think the extra calories, in this case, might actually be worth it. Read more over at HealthDay.

• Runners, rejoice! Runner’s World reports on a study which found that runners have about half the risk of osteoarthritis and hip replacement as walkers. Even more: “Extra hours of non-running exercises increased the rates of OA and HR where running had reduced them,” RW reports. More here.

Every week bartender Jason O’Bryan mixes his up his favorite drinks for you. Check out his past cocktail recipes.

To explain why rum and Coke are so great together, let’s talk for a second about why cocktails work. Sour cocktails in particular follow an easy template: A hugely sour ingredient (citrus juice) clashes against a hugely sweet ingredient (simple syrup), and their battle is so fierce that an 80+ proof spirit—usually defined by its volatile intensity—can just slide right by. That’s why Margaritas and Pisco Sours work, and also why things like water or iced tea or even orange juice don’t make very good mixers: the sweet-sour tension just isn’t strong enough to distract from the ethanol burn.

You know what else is extremely sweet and extremely sour? Coca-Cola Classic. You don’t think of Coke as particularly acidic because of the sugar and salt, but it’s there: the pH of Coke is 2.37. Lemon juice, for comparison, has a pH of 2.25. And seen through that lens, Rum & Coke has more in common with a Tom Collins than a Vodka & Soda. It’s got the sweetness, it’s got the acidity, it’s got the bubbles and the flavors just work.

I’d understand how a pleasure could be “guilty” if that pleasure was, say, heroin, or if you enjoyed spending your weekends setting strangers on fire, but as long as it’s not actively harming anyone, where is the guilt? There is an almost tautological absoluteness to taste; whatever you enjoy, there’s a reason you enjoy it, and that reason should render your enjoyment un-guilty. There’s no “should” or “shouldn’t” in preference. You like what you like.

The short answer is, whatever rum you want. Rum & Cokes aren’t precious—that’s the whole point. Insisting on a specific rum is kinda like insisting on a specific cacao percentage in your chocolate chip cookies. I will say white rum doesn’t work quite as well, so grab something with a little age and color. Spiced rum, aged rum, Spanish style, English style, it all works… the vanilla of Captain Morgan & Coke will always have a nostalgic place in my heart, but if I had to pick a favorite now, mine would be the Chairman’s Reserve Spiced Rum, from the island of St. Lucia—more orange and dried fruit than baking spices, it’s a touch more complex but still inexpensive and uncomplicated and everything a Rum & Coke should be.

What is the BEST RUM for Rum & Coke?

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