I had the pleasure of attending this year’s West Indian Parade in Brooklyn this past Labor Day. While scoping out the island fare I came across a man laboriously juicing sugar cane stalks. I inquired about this supposed refreshing chilled juice and was given a bit of a sample. One swig later and I was left with a not so pleasant taste in my mouth. It wasn’t sweet as I had expected and as for refreshing, I think I’ll stick with lemonade on a hot day.

I got to thinking, all that work has got to amount to something worthy of a drinker’s palate and then it hit me — sugar cane juice cocktails. Alone this drink may be less than desirable but use it as a base or even garnish to a refreshing cocktail and they may just have something here.  Chewingcane.com, a north Florida based company that sells ornamental sugar cane plants for the home, offers this list of sugar cane cocktail recipes.

Goya sells a canned sugar cane juice, but does add sugar and water to make it tad tastier.  I’d say take the extra sugar and water to avoid the cumbersome task of juicing your own sugar cane.  Check out the juicing process…

Step 1:

Assuming that you’ve obtained the stalks pre-cut, you’ll first need to get a machete.  The machete is used to peel the outer layer off of the sugar cane stalk in preparation for juicing.

Step 2:

Feed the stalks into the juicer.  Seems easy enough, but note the slow trickle from the juicer’s spout.

Step 3:

Take juiced stalks and re-feed them through the machine a second and possibly a third time.  A tube-like stalk is completely juiced when it appears devoid of any three dimensional shape.

Step 4:

Collect the fresh juice in a cup and serve over ice.