After last week’s Mint Juleps turned Bourbon and Coke debacle, I chose what seemed like a simple, relatively universal drink: Planter’s Punch.

Wikipedia (a great source for drink recipes and ideas, I’ve recently discovered) claims that planter’s punch isn’t a specific drink, but rather a genre of drinks that includes rum, fruit flavors and soda water.

The International Bartender’s Association uses this standard recipe, however:

6 parts dark rum

3 parts fresh lemon juice

1 part Grenadine syrup

Soda water.

Pour all ingredients into shaker filled with ice. Shake well. Pour into highball with ice. Top up with Soda water. Stir gently. Garnish with lemon and orange slices.

In typical college student fashion, we were a little less official:

3 parts dark rum

2 parts generic lemon juice

1 part grenadine

6 parts club soda

ice

Pour rum, lemon juice and grenadine over ice. Mix. Add soda water and drink.

There are many more choices for white and gold rum at the liquor store than dark rum. We ended up having to settle for three regular dark rums and one spiced dark rum. Out of our thirteen “blind” taste testers, two guys dropped out after trying two of the cocktails. In the words of the first dropout,

“I’m an alcoholic, and you couldn’t pay me to drink it.”

There was an overwhelming winner among the people who stuck with the taste test: the spiced dark rum, Captain Morgan’s Tattoo ($22.49). The loser was less clear, but still distinct: Myers’s Dark Rum ($27.49). A few people thought the cheapest one, Port Royal Black Rum ($7.99 for one liter), was best. The last rum, Bacardi Select ($14.69) was no one’s favorite, but a few people’s least favorite.

So what did I learn this week? Never waste your money on Myers’s, and don’t expect everyone to like pink drinks.