Fireman's Sour (and the search for brandied cherries)

Da-amn, it's hot. As far as I can tell, it's hot everywhere in this country currently, as all my east coast friends are blogging about their melting as well.

Time to put out this fire with a Fireman's Sour.

Now, any recipe that has 2 oz of lime juice has my attention. That's a lot of lime juice. I know from past experience that a drink that is half pure lime is going to give me stomach problems, so I added a good amount of the "optional" soda, and then only drank half the drink anyway. The name isn't lying about the sour.

Recipe:
2 oz lime juice
.5 tsp simple syrup
.5 tsp Grenadine (homemade)
2 oz light rum (Bacardi silver)
Club soda (optional)
Shake juice, sugar, grenadine and rum with ice and pour into a sour glass. Fill with soda if desired, and garnish with a half slice of lemon and a maraschino cherry.

I should mention at this point that I have been stymied by the search for brandied cherries. I bought some lovely bing cherries from a roadside truck with the intent of making them into maraschino substitutes. (I'd had a manhattan with brandied cherries at Hawthorne Lane in the SOMA area of SF, and they were lovely.)

Sadly, the internet recipes I found must have been for brandied cherries sauce, as the cooked recipe I found turned the cherries way too mushy to use. I instead turned to the garnish selection at Beltramos. They had a large bottle of what looked like the right thing--small, dark purple cherries--but the bottle not only was huge, it was over $20, which seemed an expensive and wasteful experiment. I settled for a jar of bright red Miss Scarlett's "Drunken" Brandied Cherries. Tastewise, they aren't really any different than your grocery-store maraschinos. Overly sweet, waxy texture. There is a slight brandy flavor, but not the small sour cherry I was looking for. And it's not surprising, since the main ingredients are water and corn syrup.

Cherries are currently in season, so please please please send me your brandied sour cherry recipes.