Ishimaru’s Color Bar - Hot Buttered Rum
Color Bar Hot Buttered Rum - Ink drop
Color Bar Ink (the in-house brand of Nagasaki-based Ishimaru Bunkoudou) has a very large selection of choices in its catalog of inks. Hot Buttered Rum is one of the most recent and is ink number 90. I love the name, and the unusual color matches it very well.
Ink Swatches on Cosmo Air Light and Tomoe River
Hot Buttered Rum is a cool blend of peachy orange and caramel brown. It’s a very nice shading ink and gives you the full range of colors in each stroke. Saturated stroke ends hit the closest to a true brown, and on high-quality papers they are almost a milk chocolate brown. As strokes progress, the lighter oranges emerge and the variation from end-to-end is quite dramatic. At its lightest, you find the delicious peach caramels that really define the overall color profile. On standard paper, oranges can be seen from light to dark along the entire stroke.
Ink Swatches on Iroful and Takasago Bank papers
In flow, this is a consistent ink. It’s pretty well balanced, but slightly on the drier side. On many higher-quality papers, you’ll see a nice, darkened stroke profile edging. As my writing samples show, writing is largely free of feathering or spread. There is the occasional hint of feathering, but it never develops into a real concern or problem. There’s very mild ghosting on some papers, but never any problems with bleeding. This is a pretty nice writing ink.
Writing sample on Cosmo Air Snow paper
The chromatography is a rollercoaster of variety! From brown to red, to orange, yellow and green, and a final, punchy band of blue, this is a very complex color!
Color Bar Hot Buttered Rum ink writing samples
Hot Buttered Rum, and the many, many other Color Bar inks come in 23 ml bottles, and they’re priced nicely. If you’re not in Japan to shop in-person, check out Ishimaru’s website for orders (this link takes you directly to the entire Color Bar collection.) International forwarding is available directly through the site, too.
Color Bar Hot Buttered Rum swatch card
Color Bar Hot Buttered Rum ink comparisons
Color Bar Hot Buttered Rum ink sample bottle