Ernest Hemingway famously liked a cocktail or two. Hop from bar to bar in his shoes with these Caribbean classics.
It is the Hemingway festival in Key West this weekend, and with our weather currently as hot and steamy as a fighting bull's nostrils, this seems a good moment to reprise a couple of the author's favourite cooling tipples.
Both are tropical drinks, best taken very, very, cold and preferably served in a frozen glass. The Green Isaacs Special (named after the Bahamian Great Isaac Cay) appears in Hemingway's autobiographical novel Islands in the Stream: "Thomas Hudson tasted, took a swallow and felt the cold that had the sharpness of the lime, the aromatic varnishy taste of the Angostura and the gin stiffening the lightness of the ice-cold coconut water."
The drink should contain just enough Angostura to give it a "rusty, rose colour".
If you are feeling adventurous you can eschew the cartons of coconut water and go back to the source. Place a green coconut in the fridge well in advance. Just before you are ready to serve, fill a syringe with a freezer-cold mix of gin, Angostura and lime, and inject it through the soft round spot at the top of the coconut. Drill a hole in the nut and drink with a straw. Simple.
If that sounds too much like hard work, try Hemingway's version of the daiquiri - in my opinion, the acme of the form.
The credit really belongs to Constantino Ribalaigua, who worked at Hemingway's favourite bar in Havana. Hemingway was a diabetic, so the obliging barman made him a daiquiri without the usual sugar syrup. The resulting cocktail is as clear and crisp as his prose.
A final tip from Hemingway - a stickler for detail - for this weekend's drinking: hold your drink in the shadow so the ice doesn't melt as you look out over the sea.
Make your own Green Isaacs Special
Serves 1
50ml gin
100ml coconut water
Juice of 1 lime
2-4 dashes Angostura bitters
1 Shake with ice in a cocktail shaker and transfer contents to a highball glass. Garnish with a wedge of lime.
Make your own Hemingway daiquiri
Serves 1
50ml white rum
1 tsp grapefruit juice
1 tsp maraschino liqueur
Juice of 1 lime
1 Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Recipes by Henry Dimbleby and Jane Baxter. Henry Dimbleby is co-founder of the fast-food restaurant chain Leon (@henry_leon)
The sun also rises: a Hemingway-inspired daiquiri. Photograph: Jill Mead for the Guardian