Blood Moon Panic

This kind of one-off cocktail post is becoming a rarity! Still, tonight's a special occasion: a super-cool lunar eclipse, which as a space nerd I just had to watch. I joked to my wife that I should make a drink to celebrate the occasion, then demurred when she agreed, and rapidly changed my tune again.

I'll list this in slightly weird order, because I made a non-alcoholic version for my wife that excluded the rum:

1 oz lemon juice
3/4 oz sour cherry syrup (made from preserves)
3/4 oz apricot nectar
3 dashes Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas' Own Decanter bitters
3 dashes Peychaud's bitters
(2 oz aged rum, specifically Ron Methusela)

Shake and strain into a large glass over a frozen watermelon cube, then top with 2 oz (with booze) to 4 oz (without booze) soda water and stir gently.

I wanted something with the deep brownish-red color of the lunar eclipse, and in this I succeeded, though in retrospect I might have made this a beer cocktail with a dark stout of some kind. It's pretty tasty as is, though, and I like having a booze-free variant available.

The name, by the way, refers to a particular brand of apocalyptic idiocy that I find entertaining, if completely wrong. The so-called "blood moon" is cool, and rare to see, but an entirely predictable phenomenon!