Need a morning pick-me-up? This SC ‘breakfast rum’ may be just the thing

Daufuskie Island Rum Company makes “America’s best breakfast rum,” according to a recent article on Vice.com.

The article — headlined “America’s Best Breakfast Rum Comes From a Remote, Alligator-Infested Island” — details reporter Natalie B. Compton’s trek to the Beaufort County distillery  that opened 2 1/2 years ago on the island that’s accessible only by boat.

She ends her tour of the distillery with a taste test of three rums and a cocktail, which the Legislature changed state law to allow earlier this year.

One highlight, she reports, is the distillery’s Kona Edition.

Associate distiller Matt Clark explains how that’s made: “Fifty pounds of medium roast Hawaiian coffee beans sit in the barrel for two full weeks. We cold brew a coffee with rum instead of water.”

One Facebook commenter on ViceLand’s page offered this justification for rum with breakfast: “Drinking before Noon makes you a pirate NOT an alcoholic.”

This isn’t the only time coffee and rum have been paired by a Beaufort County business.

In June, Bluffton’s Corner Perk sold coffee made with beans aged for about two months in an emptied rum barrel at the Daufuskie Island distillery. The resulting beverage, available at the coffee shop for a limited time, had a slight aftertaste of rum — “like a rum cake,” coffee roaster Heather Watson told The Island Packet at the time.

During the summer, Hilton Head Distillery debuted its Mountain Peak Espresso Rum, made in-house using coffee beans from Jamaica’s Blue Mountains. The distillery’s website says it appeals to coffee and dessert lovers alike.

This story was originally published October 27, 2017 at 12:23 PM with the headline "Need a morning pick-me-up? This SC ‘breakfast rum’ may be just the thing."