Bahama Mama

When I was a wee lad wearing a much smaller Hawaiian shirt, my family took a vacation to the Bahamas.  One of the most memorable moments from the trip was my being heartbroken over Customs telling me that I couldn't bring a coconut on the airplane home.  Oh well.

One of the other things I remember from the trip was that my parents sucked down Bahama Mamas the whole time.  They even gave me a sip on a few nights.  Do I remember the finer tasting notes of the stuff?  No.  But what I do remember is that I tasted coconut and banana, and that its color was a jewel-like dark red.

It turns out that the Bahama Mama is not just one-of-many monikers slapped onto overly sweet Caribbean crap drinks, but it actually is a concoction that, while varying from source to source, is a drink unto itself and will usually contain dark rum, coconut rum, orange juice, pineapple juice, and grenadine.

On this final Leap Day of Tiki Month 2016, I look back to a particularly poignant post from our Tiki Month proprietor Doug Winship, who shared a post by modern tiki maven Humuhumu on what she defines a tiki drink to be.  While I love being nerdy and pedantic, I fall nearer in opinion to what Doug defines as tiki, which is a bit more gentle.

Further, Doug has parroted(see what I did there?) the idea that drinks can also be Tiki Compliant, lifting the central pole of the tiki tent higher to encompass more of what might be discussed as "tiki".

Well, today I'm giving you a drink that's most certainly not a tiki drink, and really not Tiki Compliant either.  What is it?  It's a recipe that I've spent years tinkering with.  My goal was to re-create what I tasted when I was kid in the Bahamas, but also to make a mean of the recipes out there that still captures the spirit of the drink.  Oh, and to ensure it wasn't also a goopy tasteless mess.

But look, we're slumming it today, guys.  You should use a rum that's colored with molasses or caramel.  Your coconut rum and liqueur should come from the middle shelf of your local store, not ordered off a website because it's so high quality and rare.  This recipe requires the cheap stuff.  The only thing you can't skimp on is grenadine... use the real thing.  While proper grenadine will never give it the mesmerizing ruby color, the drink needs it.

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The DJ's Bahama Mama

2 oz Jamaican dark rum (Myers or Coruba)
1 oz orange juice
1 oz pineapple juice
.5 oz coconut rum
.5 oz creme de banane
.5 oz grenadine

Shake with ice and strain into a double old fashioned glass filled with crushed ice.

Simple Zombie Cocktail

Happy Tiki Month 2016!

One of the most iconic tiki drinks of all time is the Zombie cocktail by Don the Beachcomber.  Aside from the fact that the drink itself evolved bit by bit during the 20th Century, the notorious secrecy with which the Beachcomber and his competitors operated their bar programs way back when has resulted in a multitude of recipes for the Zombie.  As far as I can tell, the only things that they all have in common are: rum, and being high proof.  Most have grapefruit juice, but not all.

For a few years now I've had one such recipe scrawled on the inside of the back cover of my Grog Log.  I swear that I wrote it down when I saw Beachbum Berry post it years ago, but now I can't find any trace of it on the internet except here.  I know I didn't dream it up.  Can anyone source it?

The recipe is a simplified Zombie, whatever that might mean.  It ignores some of the more nuanced and exotic ingredients and instead sticks to a "skeleton crew" of more commons ones, while still claiming to capture the flavor of the 1934 original.  True or not... Zombie or not... this is a delicious drink, and it's easy to make.  It's my go-to recipe (along with the Reverb Crash) for impressing guests wanting a tiki drink who can handle something bitter and/or complex.

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Simple Zombie

1 oz dark Jamaican rum
.5 oz 151-proof rum (any type)
1 oz grapefruit juice
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz cinnamon syrup

Shake with ice cubes, strain into glass with more ice cubes.

Mixology Monday XC

This month's Mixology Monday is being hosted by Joel of Southern Ash. The last MxMo of Joel's that I joined was Highballs, my entry for which can be found here and the roundup can be found here.  Thanks for hosting again, Joel!  His theme this time around is "Perfect Symmetry" cocktails, which use (binarily) opposed ingredients in the same recipe.

As I've mentioned before on this site, my trial-by-fire entry into the world of cocktails was through tiki drinks, which is not something you'll hear very often.  The force that originally bridged my gap from tiki to classic cocktails is Robert Hess, a mixological champion who, if not a founding father of the modern cocktail movement, was at least in the first wave of its cavalry.

Robert Hess' main vehicle of evangelism is his website DrinkBoy, which is where I began my own adventure years ago, and luckily for us all, the site, while simple, remains just about the same today as it ever was(more on that later).  Hess also has a video series called The Cocktail Spirit, the episodes of which are linked to individual cocktail recipes on DrinkBoy.com, thereby intertwining the two resources.  Be glad!

Hess more often celebrates the artistry and nuance of established recipes than creating his own, but when he decides to flex his creative brawn, his aptitude always shows.  A recipe of Hess' that I've been making for years now is the Jolly Roger.  Leave it to the personality who pulled my attention from tiki to hold my attention with a classic-tiki style hybrid, which is most certainly my favorite drink of his.

The Jolly Roger uses both light and dark rum, a classic tiki drink trope.  However, I could swear that the recipe used to use all dark rum instead of the mix, and that Hess changed the recipe a few years ago.  Fortunately, the wonders of the internet responded to this nagging feeling of mine.  Archive.org is a website that creates frequent automatic backup "images" of many websites so that you can view how they looked in the past.  Looking back to DrinkBoy.com at January 1, 2007, shows that I'm correct, pictured below.

And so, the original Jolly Roger contained only dark rum, while the modern one has a mix of light and dark.  I'm not inclined to forget the original, as I think I actually preferred it to the newest recipe.  However, I believe the new version is interesting in a different way, and with its light-and-dark rum mixture, I wouldn't hesitate to call it a Perfect cocktail.

A note about the ingredients.  Hess seemingly changed the rums in the Jolly Roger recipe to understandably accommodate the assertive character of (my beloved) Cruzan Black Strap Rum, which he later began using for the recipe.  Astonishingly, today I will not be using Black Strap.

I will first be using the new Captain Morgan White rum (un-spiced), which deserves your attention, despite what you may think.  It's a properly good rum at its price point; notes of its vanilla and raspberry are so strong that they remain detectable while mixed in simple cocktails.

My second rum is Captain Morgan Deluxe, which is also un-spiced and unfortunately not available in the United States.  Any non-Jamaican dark rum will do.

This recipe uses falernum, the fruity and spicy syrup/liqueur used in tiki drinks.  Instead of searching out obscure bottles of the stuff or soaking spices in rum for a month, I suggest that you make your own rich falernum syrup using a recipe by Kaiser Penguin, which only takes mere minutes, but doesn't taste like it.

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Perfect Jolly Roger

1oz light rum
1oz dark rum
1oz orange juice
.25 oz falernum
1 dash aromatic bitters

Shake ingredients in a shaker and strain into rocks glass over ice.

Recipe & Rating: Lazy Bear

I first heard of the Lazy Bear only recently from Frederic Yarm of the Cocktail Virgin Slut.   Fred in turn got this recipe from Jacob Grier, one of perhaps the greatest bartenders on the west coast and also, in my opinion, one of the greatest cocktail writers in the world.

The Lazy Bear was originally crafted by Grier specifically to be served at his friend's wedding.  Lovely!

This drink uses one of my favorite combinations: whiskey and lime juice.  A more bird's eye glance at the recipe will quickly indicate, whether Grier intended or not, that this is a tiki drink.  And because it is Tiki Month, the yearly tiki celebration hosted by the legendary Doug Winship, my timing is perfect.

Below are the recipe and ingredients I used.

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Lazy Bear

3/4 oz Jamaican rum (George Bowman aged small batch rum)
3/4 oz rye whiskey (George Dickel Rye)
3/4 oz lime juice
3/4 oz honey syrup (1:1 clover honey)
3 dashes spiced bitters (equal parts Angostura Bitters and allspice dram[this recipe])

Shake with ice and strain into a rocks glass(tiki mug?) filled with ice. Add a straw.

I had a hard time articulating my thoughts on this drink, so instead of thick prose I'm going to give my impressions in bullet points:

-One of the few tiki drinks which is almost completely spicy and not fruity
-The two aged spirits combined with the bitters' tannins to provide a dry and woody backbone
-Lime juice here operates mostly to lend its sourness and not flavor, as its flavor is mostly dashed by all the other assertive ingredients
-Dry and sour overall, refreshing
-Earthiness provided by rye and pimento dram
-Herbal sweetness provided by dram and honey
-Sweet funkiness provided by honey and rum
-Dry spiciness provided by dram, rye, and bitters
-Bright lime juice cuts through all the funk, dryness, spice, sugar
-My theory still stands that most of the best tiki drinks use honey

This is one of the best tiki drinks I've ever had, and I don't consider myself a tiki novice.  Make this drink, and thank Jacob Grier.

Rating: 10/10

Mixology Monday LXIV: the Main Brace

February's Mixology Monday is hosted again by Doug Winship of the Pegu Blog. His themes rarely disappoint, but this one is particularly ingenius, since it magically coincides with the theme for his blog this month (and every other February): tiki.


As Doug's submission roundup for this month will likely be a sea of citrus juice and rum(there are worse things in life), I've chosen to post one of the rarer tiki recipes that isn't very typical, like I did one year ago with the Flaming Coffee Grog.

The Main Brace may have one of the coolest names of any drink, but the drink itself might seem fairly mundane: you can either think of it as a tiki drink which replaces rum with red wine, or instead, a tiki take on sangria.

Why is the name so cool? Because it refers to a drinking ritual on seafaring vessels of old.

The main brace(or mainbrace) is the largest/thickest/heaviest rigged rope on a sailing ship, be it a common sailboat or a 3-mast Man-of-War. The braces of a ship were the ropes which helped turn the angle of the ship's sails, thereby steering the vessel. When armed ships engaged in battle, clever commanders knew that targeting a ship's steering apparatus with cannons, the main brace especially, was a much better way to disable an vessel than trying to sink it.

When main braces broke, only the strongest and most skilled of seamen could splice it(thereby mending it), especially in the heat of battle. Those that succeeded on this herculean task were usually rewarded with extra rum that day. The rum reward for splicing the main brace became so customary and traditional that the term "splicing the main brace" was soon used as a euphemism for drinking on a ship, especially after a job well done. This term was said to be used as such in the British Royal Navy until well into the era of engine-powered ships, where braces were no longer even used. (I labored to avoid nautical terminology in this explanation. If you can handle the jargon, you can read more about it here.)

So, why does the Main Brace drink use wine instead of rum? No clue. That's part of the mystery. The Main Brace is one of those drinks that tastes way better than your imagination may guess when looking at the ingredient list. The recipe calls for a wine from Burgundy, but I tend to suggest that a very capable substitute is a dry red wine that has a full body, enough to stand up to the juices.

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Main Brace

3 oz Burgundy (or red wine)
.75 oz orange juice
.5 oz lemon juice
.5 oz sugar syrup
.25 oz triple sec
.25 oz lime juice

Shake with ice cubes, and pour into a tall glass.

Tiki Month 2012: The Grogalizer

Tiki Month 2012 has begun! If you're unaware, Tiki Month is one of the many curious creations of Doug Winship, the proprietor of the Pegu Blog. Instead of giving you a drink to kick off the month, I'll tell you about a tool that helps facilitate that which is tiki.

Each time I bring up the subject of tiki, especially when I "celebrate" February as Tiki Month, I usually decry the drink style as a barely-worthwhile laborious undertaking which may represent mixology's most dark and decadent corridors.

Imagine this frustrating scenario: it's Friday night, and you've just gotten home from work. You don your tropical shirt (or is that only me?), and you want to mix up a tiki beverage to take away the week's furrows from your worn, worn brow. You look toward your rums, your liqueurs... you notice that your fruit bowl is full of bright citrus varieties... you think toward all the bottles of juice and syrups that you have in your refrigerator or elsewhere...

But you know that it will still take a good while to flip through all your tiki drink books in order to find a drink that you'll actually have all the ingredients to make. I TOLD YOU TIKI WAS HARD!


Luckily for you, there's a interwebs solution to your problem: the Grogalizer, created by a dedicated tiki fan nicknamed Swanky.

The Grogalizer is a thing that could only have been made by someone familiar with the hardships of tiki: it's a sophisticated database which will simply tell you which classic tiki drinks you're able to make, once you've told it all the tiki ingredients that you currently have on hand. Specifically, the drink list it draws from are in the books of Jeff Berry.


Whether you only have handful of ingredients or a spread that rivals a craft cocktail bar, the Grogalizer can easily pinpoint which recipes suit your arsenal. To add to that, the Grogalizer can even tell you the drinks that you can almost make, should you feel a bit sacrilegious and attempt to make an ingredient substitution. As I always say: I'd prefer that you make a substitution and drink than not drink at all.

There are two catches, however:

1) You have to have an account in order to use the site, but it's free. I bet that the simple registration is required because the Grogalizer offers the ability to execute fairly complex database queries, technically speaking. Your search's results come from the cross-referencing of up to hundreds of variables, and since the Grogalizer is a small operation, I imagine that Swanky's modest hardware or software wouldn't be able to handle the load of random and casual visitors running intensive searches.


2) Your search results will not give you the recipes for the drinks that fit your criteria. Instead, they will give you the name of the drink, and the page number of the book in which it can be found. This was done deliberately, I imagine, to not break copyright.

Luckily, site registration takes seconds, and Jeff Berry's latest and most comprehensive tiki drink book is cheap.

Your excuses for not making tiki drinks (other than the seven I outline here, as well as those I offer above) grow few! Soon you too will be asking "Why is all the rum gone?" Viva Tiki Month!

Go to PKNY

In the first visit to New York City of my adult life, I of course all but bee-lined it to PKNY, what people are already call one of the best tiki bars in the world.


The Shirt (myself) and the Skirt moseyed into the joint in the early evening of a Sunday night. We found that we were the only customers, and so we mused about all things tiki and otherwise with the bar's head bartender Valentin Gonzalez and a quickly-advancing minion of his, Kigan, who, I declare right now, will one day have a big name within tiki circles.

Considering the lack of thought needed to decide for myself that PKNY was on top of the list of places to visit in NYC, I found that it took a similar amount of thought to decide that my first drink would be a 1935 Zombie. PKNY serves several versions of the Zombie, with each one attempting to duplicate the minor recipe variations that came about through the years since its creation. The Skirt ordered PKNY's famous Pina Colada, which has been meticulously developed to be the highest quality Pina Colada that anyone's probably ever had. (Pictured below.)


We ordered other drinks, of course. They made a few off-the-cuff creations and were even able to work around my peculiar food allergies. We found ourselves the only patrons in the place for a good two hours, and so we simply drank and were merry with our tropical hosts. At the end of it, on the way out, the Skirt took a photo of me in front of the inconspicuous entrance... a photo I swear I can't even remember being taken. That's the danger when high proof booze is so freaking interesting to drink.

Go to PKNY. The breadth of their menu is the most impressive I've seen in a bar. They buy as few products as possible for their inventory, and they hand-craft the rest. Their recipes are more authentic than any bar I've been to. Their staff is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their work. Their rum selection impresses even the well-educated rum enthusiast. Their decor is authentic, right down to their tiki mugs and the long straws meant for the communal Scorpion Bowls. Their drinks are incredible, and are a lesson in tiki drinks, and in cocktails in general.

Go to PKNY.

MxMo LIX: Wahine Censor

Frederic at the Cocktail Virgin Slut is hosting Mixology Monday again, and this time he's chosen one of the more challenging types of cocktails: beer cocktails. I've once again lucked out by having a subject already in mind for such a post.


Shandy, in its most general sense, is beer mixed with some sort of sweet beverage. Depending on where you are in the world, that beverage can be fruit juice, sparkling lemonade, ginger ale/beer, or even hard cider.

I can't find any firm information on how shandy came about. I can see several reasons how it could have: to make beer sweeter and more palatable, to lower its alcohol content, to stretch out the beer and make it last longer, or to make it more refreshing (especially when fresh water wasn't always safe to add to the drink).

Regardless, shandy is delicious. You should really try it some time. It's especially good on a hot summer day. Light lagers are usually used, and along with carbonated beverages. The norm for shandy in the United States is ginger ale or ginger beer.

There's a certain unorthodox shandy recipe that's been my go-to for a few years now. I found it on the Tiki Central forums, which I've posted about several times before. This shandy is a bit harder, with a shot of gin and some lime juice. Rattiki, the creator of this brew, likens it to a combination of shandy and the Gimlet cocktail. (Though, we all know that real Gimlets are made with and only with Rose's Lime Cordial... right?)

A beer that Rattiki suggest for this mix is Negra Modelo, a dark and creamy Mexican lager which is not only a fairly untraditional beer choice for a shandy, but is also one of my favorites.

I've adapted Rattiki's original recipe for a single serving, though I recommend Rattiki's method of making a large bucket of the stuff (and also placing naked women behind it). I've taken a bit of poetic license with the garnish as well. Rattiki didn't really issue a name for it, and he never got back to me when I told him I was going to write about it, so I'll go ahead and give it a modest yet fitting name.


Wahine Censor

5oz Negra Modelo (substitute smooth wheat beer)
5oz ginger ale/beer
1.5oz gin
.75oz lime juice
.25oz grenadine
1 dash orange bitters

Build over the tallest glass you have, filled with ice. Float Cherry Heering. Garnish with a Maraschino cherry speared through a spent lime shell.

MxMo LV

The DJ makes a last-minute slide toward home and issues one last tiki post before the end of Tiki Month!

Mixology Monday set this one up so I could spike it. (Two sports references in two sentences!) This month's theme is hot drinks, and our host is Nancy over at the Backyard Bartender.


Most hot drinks with alcohol just don't do it for me. I think it has to do with how alcohol's low boiling point makes it so much more noticeable in a drink that's warmed. For me, sips of such warm drinks have alcohol vapors that waft toward my nose and the roof of my mouth, and the result is that I'm forced to pay attention to the alcohol as much as the the flavor of the drink, which is far from ideal.

There are a few exceptions, though, and one of them is a tiki drink found in Beachbum Berry's Grog Log. Despite that tiki drinks are meant to "cool" you from imagination-produced tropical surroundings, there are quite a few hot tiki drinks, and they're worth exploring for the most part.

Flipping through the Grog Log, it's easy to do a double take when you pass the Flaming Coffee Grog. There are several things about the drink of note:

1) the drink uses hot coffee
2) the drink interestingly combines orange and lemon with said coffee
3) the drink has a unique method of preparation
4) you get to set it on fire

To make the Flaming Coffee Grog, one heats orange and lemon peels, cloves, Grand Marnier, and overproof rum in a small pan, and then one ignites it. Much like how the heated whiskey in a Hot Toddy would waft alcohol fumes vigorously and unpleasantly to the roof of my mouth, overproof rum wafts vapors into the air when heated in a pan. These free vapors easily ignite the rum when a flame is present, and the burning cuts down on the overall proof of the mixture, but also aromatizes the flavors in the peels and cloves. After ignition, one is supposed to spoon the mixture delicately onto the coffee, where presumably the flames will soon extinguish. Then, happily stir the drink and enjoy.

The overproof rum that this recipe essentially calls for is Lemon Hart 151. As of now(February 28, 2011), the stuff is discontinued (though there are rumblings that it will soon be produced again). Which sucks, because not only is it called for in countless tiki drinks, but worse, there is no other product like it. It is a dark demerara rum which is smokey, sweet, and damn powerful. Tiki Month matron Doug of the Pegu Blog just recently pondered about substitutes for Lemon Hart 151, as I've done as well. I'm lucky this day, because I still have a bottle of the stuff. But if you don't, you have several options. You can either choose to mimic the flavor by using another (lower proof) demerara rum, or you can choose to mimic the proof by using another 151 rum. One of my favorite solutions is to do both, by using a dark/black rum such as El Dorado Dark or Cruzan Black Strap, and then adding a few heavy dashes of grain alcohol to up the proof. Keep in mind that for tiki drinks that call for overproof rums, there's usually a culinary reason for it-- they're not just trying to get you drunk. Clearly, for the Flaming Coffee Grog, we need to imitate proof more than flavor.

I don't drink my coffee black. Usually because of coffee's acidity, I tend to need a bit of cream in my daily brew. This recipe has you mix coconut cream* with the coffee, which, in terms of fat content doesn't really approach the acid-cutting power that I usually need. But strangely, the Flaming Coffee Grog goes down smooth, even though its color is almost identical to black coffee. I guess the creators of this drink knew what they were doing.


I wouldn't feel too bad about substituting another orange liqueur for the Grand Marnier, if you felt like it; at .25 ounces, the difference will not be very noticeable. Today I'm using Patron's Citronge liqueur, and the result is delicious. In fact, I think a great variation of this drink would be to swap the rum with a good reposado or anejo tequila; you could call it the Grog Cafe Flameante.

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Flaming Coffee Grog

.25 oz Grand Marnier (or orange liqueur)
.75 oz Lemon Hart 151
1 lemon twist
1 orange twist
2 cloves

1 tbs cream of coconut
coffee

cinnamon stick


Fill mug 3/4 full with hot coffee. Stir in cream of coconut. Combine rum, liqueur, citrus peels, and cloves into a small pan or pot. Heat lightly, then ignite. Spoon the rum mixture onto the coffee and stir with cinnamon stick.



*Talking about canned coconut products is treacherous terrain. This recipe calls for Coco Lopez coconut cream, but what was probably intended, as with so many tiki drinks, was Coco Lopez cream of coconut. For an explanation on what the hell that means, I'll defer to Giuseppe and Richard of the tiki bar Painkiller in New York City:

"Coconut water, coconut milk, coconut cream, and cream of coconut are all vastly different from each other. Coconut water is obtained by boring a hole into a raw coconut and extracting the liquid therein. It is light, clear, and refreshing. It requires no labor aside from opening the coconut. Coconut milk and coconut cream require a more intensive method of preparation.

Coconut milk is made by simmering shredded coconut with water or milk until it develops a frothy texture. This liquid is then strained through a cheesecloth. When the milk is cooled off and allowed to set, coconut cream (a much richer and mildly sweeter product with a more syrup-like consistency) rises to the top and must be skimmed off in order to extract it. Cream of coconut is simply coconut cream that has been subsequently sweetened. The difference in these coconut products with respect to preparation, viscosity, sweetness, and flavor are quite apparent. A sampling of each will clearly illustrate their differences."

The Reverb Crash and Tiki

"Tiki" is an escapist sub-culture that came about in the western United States during the 20th Century, as early as the 1930s. It was largely a caricature of Polynesian culture of the South Pacific, which was an exotic and relaxing idea meant to be an escape from the average working stiff's day-to-day doldrums. This mostly manifested itself in restaurants, ones which were meant to resemble large thatched huts, with beautiful flowers adorning every room, torches on the walls, and masks and carvings everywhere you look. These restaurants served exotic takes on American and Asian cuisine, but what they eventually would be known for is their alcoholic beverages. Tiki drinks are often complicated concoctions of rum, fruit juices, and exotic syrups.

Keep in mind that this "tiki" culture is an American phenomenon. For example, while the flavors of a tiki drink seek to transport your mind to the South Pacific, the ingredients in the drinks are from this side of the planet: the Caribbean. Do you think native Samoans drink Mai Tais and Aku Aku Lapus? No, they are more often drunk by bewildered professionals with loosened collars (like myself). But don't let that take away from your enjoyment! You just need a little imagination and an escapist mindset, and you too can enjoy tiki just as it always has been.

Since the golden age of tiki, many restaurants and bartenders have bastardized the idea of the tiki drink by making cheap knock-offs with crappy and often overly-sweet ingredients. If you're interested in what a real tiki drink can be, I encourage you to explore the drink guides written by tiki historian Beachbum Berry. A good tiki drink can be as complex and interesting as any of the best cocktails you've ever had.

Doug over at the Pegu Blog has spearheaded a tradition to celebrate tiki each February and is calling it Tiki Month. What better time to celebrate tropical drinks than in the dead of winter (in the northern hemisphere)? While I don't want to spend a whole month talking about tiki or tikifying my site's banner (even more), I would like to join in the festivities this year. Last year I abstained and opted instead to showcase Doug's epic post about Hawaiian shirts.

As I've said before on this blog, tiki drinks were my gateway into mixology, and let me tell you: it was a baptism by fire. Tiki drinks are notorious for being inaccessible:

1) Their construction is labor intensive; most of them require you to freshly squeeze at least one kind of citrus

2) They often require more than one type of rum, and since rum characters vary widely by where they're produced, you need at least a dozen or two varieties in order to capably adhere to recipes; it gets expensive

3) They require specialized equipment if you want to be efficient and/or proper, such as juicers, ice crushers, (real) swizzle sticks, and blenders

4) They often require rare (or even extinct) ingredients, such as orgeat, falernum, passionfruit syrup, cinnamon syrup, allspice dram, Cuban rum, and dark 151-proof demerara rum

5) They're complicated; a five-ingredient tiki drink is considered simple, and they sometimes have over a dozen ingredients

6) Because of all of these above, their construction is time consuming; between juicing the fruit, gathering all the bottles, measuring each ingredient, and then using specialized equipment, plenty of drinks take between 5 and 10 minutes to make, and some of them take even longer

7) Most tiki fans from which you might get help or advice will insist on using only the proper techniques, and that even the obscurest ingredient cannot be substituted

An online haven for tiki drink fans and snobs is the Tiki Central Forums. There, you can read and participate in discussion of tiki drinks and ingredients with casual fans, bloggers, and bartenders.

Years ago, Tiki Central held an original tiki drink contest. The runners up are worth mentioning, but the winner was a drink called the Reverb Crash (one of the coolest drink names you'll ever find) submitted by a community member named "kick_the_reverb" (real name is Ran).

The first post ever made on Tiki Central's Tiki Drinks & Food sub-forum was by Martin Cate himself, who I talked about on my spiced rum post, and it was to remind everyone of the Reverb Crash. Check the thread out, as it provides some interesting discussion about the drink.

The Reverb Crash is just a young whippersnapper compared to some of the older tiki recipes, and is even on the simpler side, but the Crash is of the same caliber as the classics. It's been a go-to for years in my recipe collection, and once you try it, you might see why.

The recipe calls for grapefruit juice, and Ran suggests using the fresh stuff in the refrigerated juice section of your grocery store. I myself have made this drink with grapefruit juice from a can, from a refrigerated bottle, and fresh squeezed from the fruit. All of them are good, but provide a slightly different character each time.

This recipe also uses orgeat syrup(pronounced "oar-zha[t]"), which is essentially an almond syrup that is sometimes flavored with additional things like orange flower water. I have yet to make my own successfully (perhaps that will be a future post), but there are several online venues which will sell it to you, and even more online venues that will give you recipes to make your own, should you dare. Unlike some, I'm not afraid to give you substitutes for ingredients: in a pinch, you can use amaretto liqueur instead of orgeat, or even normal simple syrup with a dash or two of the almond extract used for baking. These aren't great (or even good) substitutes, but I'd rather you try to approximate the drink than not make it at all.

The recipe uses a sprig of mint as a garnish. Like many garnishes, this one is not only aesthetic. Before inserting the (clean) mint sprig into the final drink, lightly rap it against the counter/cutting board/etc. so that the mint's essential oils will be agitated and made volatile. When drinking, be sure to use a short straw (or no straw) so that your nose must approach the mint garnish to take a sip. The mint's aroma will act as an olfactory addition to the Reverb Crash's flavor. Seriously.

Finally, this recipe calls for passionfruit syrup. I've used the stuff before on the blog, but this time I'll provide a very simple recipe on how to make it. Passionfruit syrup is simply syrup that is flavored by passionfruit. It is a very common ingredient in vintage tiki drinks. Much like the orgeat, it can be found for purchase on the internet. The nature of the syrup's strength of flavor varies widely by recipe, and my recipe might be the strongest, but also the easiest to make. All you need is passionfruit juice and sugar. Passionfruit juice can probably be found at your local Whole Foods or gourmet supermarket. And, as I've advocated before, don't forget about your local ethnic stores. Today I will be using Goya brand passionfruit juice from individual drinking cans. Unfortunately, there's no substitute for passionfruit syrup in the Reverb Crash.


Passionfruit Syrup

passionfruit juice
white granulated sugar
vodka (optional)

Pour any amount of passionfruit juice into a saucepan or pot. On low heat, reduce the juice's volume by half. (Tip from Alton Brown: record the level of liquid using a rubber band wound tightly against a wooden spoon's handle at rest at the bottom of the pot. It is then easily discernible when the liquid's volume is reduced to a desired level.) Carefully measure your passionfruit reduction, and dissolve into it an equal amount of sugar by volume. Bottle and refrigerate the resulting syrup, with some vodka if you like, which tends to extend its shelf life.


Let's get on to the damn drink. Unfortunately, the sweetness in every one of this drink's ingredients can vary, so you may need to adjust the ingredient amounts to find what you think is your own perfect balance. As for rums, Ran calls for a Cuban or Virgin Island light rum (think dry and flavorful, like the Cruzan Estate Light that I love) and Myers dark rum (aside from Myers, Coruba will work, and maybe even Gosling's Black Seal, Smith & Cross, or Appleton Estate Extra). This drink has a lot of sugar in it... definitely try to make it a once-in-a-while indulgence. It's worth every bit of trouble to make it, I assure you.

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Reverb Crash

1 oz light rum
1 oz dark rum
4 oz grapefruit juice
1.5 oz passionfruit syrup
.75 oz lime juice
.75 tbs orgeat syrup

Shake with crushed ice* and pour into a large glass. Fill the rest of the glass with crushed ice. Garnish with a mint sprig.

*cubed ice can be used in a pinch.

Choose Your Shirts Wisely

Did you know February is Tiki Month?

Well, now you do.

I figured that I already do enough tiki posts (as I've said before, it comprises my cocktail roots), so perhaps I shall celebrate the month by sparing readers from tiki rather than providing it for them.

I'll tell you who isn't sparing his readers, however: Doug Winship. In fact, he's gone so far as to change his site's logo for this month, but the change isn't only superficial. Doug's Tiki Month blog content has been of exceedingly high quality, and you'd do yourself a favor to check some of it out.


I will share one of my favorite posts of Doug's for this month that talks about a subject near and dear to my heart, thereby employing what Doug calls "Rule #2". I hope you enjoy the post.

On Choosing a Good Hawaiian Shirt

Tiki Drink Contest Entry

I'm a sucker for a cocktail contest... and not usually because of prizes, but rather for the chance to see if any of my concoctions are decent beyond my own delusional tastes. Rick Stutz from Kaiser Penguin is holding a tiki drink contest, and I'm joining in the festivities.

No one needs to hear me blather on about my own accomplishments, so I'll keep it short. I wanted to make a drink with Cherry Heering, which I think is the superior cherry-based liqueur around. I've had tiki drinks that use Maraschino, and they're just not that great. I found myself wanting to put both Cherry Heering and sweet vermouth in this drink; I've been making many more classic cocktails recently than tiki (which do occasionally overlap, btw), so it's like I've been drawn to incorporate some classic ingredients into this drink like some traveller who's picked up a foreign accent after living in some far off land for a period of time. In this drink's preparation, I've shaken the actual drink with citrus peel, an idea I got from Ken at kenmoorhead.com. Whether or not this is a popular thing to do, I'm giving Ken the credit, because in my modest cocktail dealings, I've NEVER come across it, and it's really a great idea. I recommend shaking your cocktails with citrus peel/twists... just try shaking(I know, just this one time) your Martini with a few lemon twists... or my favorite... pomelo twists (if you can find them). Enjoy the results.

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ORIGINAL REMIX

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Flattering Wench

1.5 oz gold rum (something other than Jamaican)
.5 oz white rum
.5 oz falernum
.5 oz Cherry Heering
.5 oz red wine (drier is better than sweeter)
.5 oz sweet vermouth
.5 oz lemon juice
1 oz orange juice
1 oz pineapple juice
2 dashes Angostura bitters
3-4 grapefruit twists

Shake everything, including the twists, in a shaker with ice cubes. Pour all contents into a double Old Fashioned or Mai Tai glass. No additional garnish is needed.

Rum Punch Contest Entry

It's not often that I attempt to create a tiki drink. Why? Several reasons:

1) My attention span is barely long enough to acknowledge all the ingredients sometimes needed to make a good one.

2) Rum combinations are daunting.

3) Some of the best ingredients are obscure as hell.

4) The best ones have already been done.

I love rum and I love tiki drinks; they're actually what got me into cocktails. And some of the tiki drinks' complexities border on the most interesting things you've ever tasted. They merit you checking them out for yourself(in the links above) instead of ordering them in some restaurant.

But along comes Rumdood, who's hosting his own contest on who can make the best tiki drink, or more specifically, a rum punch. While rum punches may not specifically be tiki(the concept of tiki irritatingly clings to cultures and evocations of the Pacific while all of its ingredients come from the Caribbean), I essentially made it so with my ingredients. The prize for this contest is a free bottle of each product Mount Gay makes. I'm specifically excited about the Mount Gay XO, which is an exceptional rum, and Mount Gay Eclipse Silver, which is probably my favorite white rum. He's also giving away a bottle of his famed falernum, whose reputation precedes it. (But, as Dr. Bamboo has found, one should never give one's true opinion of it. Just smile and nod.)

I'm not allowed to make a recipe with specific products, which I'm disappointed about, so I'm going to do my best to not suggest brands for each ingredient. (Oh, and if you think bourbon isn't "tiki", shut up.) The general rule of rum punches is "One of Sour, Two of Sweet, Three of Strong, Four of Weak", which refers to the parts of the drink, and the proportions between the different parts. I stuck pretty close to this formula for my recipe, which I hope the Dood likes. It's very much the bastard child of the punch that your grandma used to make(you know, the one with the pineapple juice and ginger ale?) and the Champagne Cocktail.

Cheers!

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ORIGINAL REMIX

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**This recipe can easily be cut in half**

Dragonfly Rum Punch

1 oz lime juice [the sour]
1 oz cinnamon syrup [the sweet]
.5 oz falernum [the sweet]
2 oz gold rum [the strong]
1 oz bourbon [the strong]
2 oz pineapple juice [the weak]
2 oz champagne or sparkling white wine [the weak]
2 dashes aromatic bitters

Shake all ingredients except the champagne with crushed ice. Pour everything into a tall collins glass. Pour in champagne, stir, and top with more crushed ice. Garnish tastefully, perhaps with a brandied cherry, lime wheel, or even a stick of sugar cane.