The only rule is you have to listen to Arthur Lyman while you make this

Aloha, you boozehounds, you. Apologies for the delay in posting again...I just can't keep up with the pace I established last year.

Anyway, today I've got an excellent drink for you, and one that I can finally make properly thanks to a little bit of luck. A while back, I entered a giveaway that Blair "Trader Tiki" Reynolds was running on Facebook...one lucky winner would get a care package with all of his currently available syrups. Lady Luck was on my side, as I'd picked up her bar tab the night before (man, that girl can drink!) and I soon had seven bottles winging their way to me; Don's Spices #2, Don's Mix, Vanilla Syrup, Cinnamon Syrup, Orgeat Syrup, Passion Fruit Syrup, and Hibiscus Grenadine. So yes, for those keeping track at home, these were a freebie, but not because I'm awesome, or because the Trader was trying to butter me up, but simply because I'm lucky. Trust me, I'm nowhere near a big enough fish in the booze-blogging pond to merit freebies from anyone. All that being said, let's get on to the drink, shall we?

I went with one that would let me use a couple of the Trader's syrups, the Passion Fruit and the Hibiscus Grenadine. This is a cocktail that dates from about 1961 or so, at the Kahiki in Columbus, OH, and it's a blender drink (gasp!) called:

The Port Light

1 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz passion fruit syrup
1/4 oz grenadine
1 1/2 oz bourbon (I actually used rye, but who's counting?)
8 oz (1 cup) crushed ice

Put all ingredients in a blender and process on high for 5 seconds. Pour it, without straining, into a tall glass, adding more crushed ice if necessary to fill.

(recipe adapted from Jeff Berry and Annene Kaye, Beachbum Berry's Grog Log, p.66)

Oh man, this is a beautiful drink. Tart, sweet, ice cold, what more could you ask for? The passion fruit syrup just punches you in the nose with a ripe fruit flavor when you open the bottle, and the grenadine is sweet and bright, with an additional floral tartness from the hibiscus. I used rye in this drink, because it's what I had on hand, but even so, the syrups and lemon juice more than hold their own against it. It's kind of a Polynesian Ward Eight, and sipping one of these on a summer night with fireflies twinkling and Martin Denny or Arthur Lyman on the HiFi is going to be a little slice of heaven by way of some exotic port of call.

I'm very much looking forward to trying the other Trader Tiki syrups when I can get enough varieties of rum to do them justice in all sorts of Tiki drinks!

(FCC disclaimer: the branded products named in this post were received at no cost to me, not for review or promotional consideration purposes, but as a prize in a random giveaway.)

How 'bout a nice Hawaiian punch?

I'd stumbled across this drink a while back, and was intrigued by the notion of "Tahitian limeade." It turns out that it's limeade made by substituting coconut water for the normal stuff. I didn't add any extra sweetener to it, as I figured it'd likely be sweet enough when mixed with all the other ingredients. I just used about three limes worth of juice to an 11.1 oz Tetrapack of coconut water, shook, and chilled, though the typical proportions are anywhere between 3 and 5 parts coconut water to 1 part lime juice. I assembled the rest as follows...

Kamehameha's Mighty Punch

2 oz pineapple juice
1/2 oz mango puree (I just made my own, simple enough. 1 mango gave me about 6-8 oz of puree)
1 oz tahitian limeade
1 1/2 oz amber rum (I used Bacardi 8)
powdered chipotle pepper

Shake all but the pepper with ice, double strain into a cocktail glass or coupe. Lightly dust with the chipotle.

The flavor, while fruity, is surprisingly delicate, which is really neat. The use of the powdered chipotle really works well, both visually and in terms of flavor; the red of the pepper complements the yellow/orange of the drink, and the heat pairs really well with the mango. It sort of tingles and warms as it goes down. It's unusual, but tasty. This is, however, another one of those drinks that I enjoyed, but not one that I'd drink all the time. Although that Tahitian limeade will undoubtedly see use in some other cocktails...I've got a couple more flavors of Dry Soda to play around with!

Oh my god! Social interaction! This is something entirely new!

Every month, a bunch of lushes cocktail aficionados band together and do a little something called "Mixology Monday," centering around a theme. This month's theme is "Ginger," and we know how much I love ginger. So I'm marking my participation in my first ever Mixology Monday with this drink that I just made up in my kitchen.

Koro Koola

1 1/4 oz homemade ginger beer base (I use Paul Clarke's recipe)
1/4 oz falernum
1/4 oz pimento dram
1/4 oz fresh key lime juice
1/4 oz Grand Marnier
1 oz Coruba Jamaican rum
2 dashes Angostura orange bitters
good quality ginger ale to top

shake all but the ginger ale with ice, strain into a good sized Old Fashioned glass, top up with an equal measure (about 3 1/4 oz) of ginger ale.

Koro was a tiki god who was sometimes referred to as the Midnight Dancer...sort of the party animal of the tiki gods, so he seemed a good fit for a drink that got my taste buds dancing the tango (ok, so it's not a Polynesian dance, so sue me). The nice thing about this is that the ginger, while definitely present, is happy to share the limelight with some of the other flavors, and the (relatively) low alcohol content (the pimento dram, falernum, Grand Marnier, and orange bitters are present in such small volumes that they're really pretty negligible, and there's only an ounce of straight spirit) means that you can knock back a few of these before you hit the dance floor and start to hula out of your pants (not advised in mixed company).

I love happy accidents in the lab.

Last night I was playing around with Tiki drinks, because I just got this nifty little iPod Touch app called Tiki+ (link opens in iTunes), which features more than 150 tiki drinks that Jeff "Beachbum" Berry has dug up over the years. So I was looking through them for inspiration, and, well, I wound up going a little "mad scientist," what with a dash of this and a little of that, and just generally experimenting. And I'll be frank, sometimes when I just mix stuff together, it really really sucks. But sometimes you can surprise yourself, and I'm delighted to report that this was one of those times.

And, since I made it up, I got to name it, which is one of my favorite parts of the process. So, since it's just some random thing, I went with the Hawaiian pidgin equivalent of "whatchamacallit," which is "da kine" (it's been described as "the word you use when you don't use the word")

Da Kine Cocktail

1/2 oz pimento dram
1/4 oz falernum
1/4 oz orgeat syrup
dash of vanilla extract
juice of 1/2 lime
slice of lemon
1 oz white Puerto Rican rum (I used Bacardi)
1 oz dark Barbados rum (I used Gosling's Black Seal)
dash of orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in shaker with lots of crushed ice, squeeze in the lemon juice and drop in the slice, and shake well. Pour, unstrained, over the juiced lime half, into a favorite Tiki mug, or boring old glass.

Brok'da mout*, da buggah is ono**! This turned out to be a great drink in the spirit of all the Tiki drinks it drew inspiration from...sweet, sour, full of spice, complex in character. Oooh, man. You gotta make this. Drink more than a couple of 'em, though, and you'll be pau***!

*"Brok'da mout" = "It's so good, it broke my mouth"
**"Da buggah is ono" = "This wicked little thing is delicious"
*** "pau" = "done" or "finished"

Hey gang, long time no see!

So...I'm into rehearsals, and the play is going to be awesome. But you're not here for news about my theatrical career, you're here for drinks! And to oblige, I'm offering a tiki drink, from Don the Beachcomber's vault, way back in 1941. It's called the Test Pilot, and it's made as follows:

Test Pilot

1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz falernum (use a scant 1/2 oz if homemade like mine)
1 tablespoon Cointreau
dash of Angostura bitters
1/8 teaspoon Pernod
3/4 oz light Puerto Rican or Cuban (-style) rum (I cheated this a bit and used Pyrat XO Reserve)
1 1/2 oz dark Jamaican rum (cheated this a little, too, and used Gosling's Black Seal)

Blend all with 1 cup of crushed ice for 5 seconds, then pour it into a double old-fashioned glass. Add a little more crushed ice to fill, and garnish as you like, though a cherry is pretty much all you need.

Now I know you're all going "a blender drink?!" And usually I'm not crazy about blender drinks, because they make noise and are a pain to clean up after, and generally imply that you're going to take inferior ingredients and make a liquor-filled smoothie out of them. However, it is possible to have good blender drinks, and the Test Pilot is a stellar example of one. First off...it's COLD. Which is always good. Secondly, you've gotten a little bit more air in there, and made some of the more inaccessible flavors open up a tiny bit. Third, you've got tiny bits of ice melting all at once, helping to dilute the drink...and it needs it...there's a fair amount of liquor in this puppy. The bitters and Pernod sort of skulk around like good little henchmen, making you aware that something's there, but not really identifying themselves. The two rums, the falernum, the Cointreau and the lime all chime in at various points, making for a tremendously complex but ultimately awesome drink. Do take it out for a spin, won't you?

Strike, yer colors, ye brazen wench! No, not you, mom...

Ah, Mother's Day, when mom's everywhere endure crowded restaurants filled with grumpy children (of all ages), sub-par brunches, and mimosas made with cheap champagne. I know it's the thought that counts, but I just can't stand the thought of enduring all of that just to show mom that she's important to me...she might get the wrong idea and think that I harbor a secret desire to torture her. I'm sure the Geneva Convention prohibits some of the conditions you can find in many restaurants on Mother's Day. Then again, my mom just like sweet rolls, coffee, and the paper. Must be a Midwest thing.

And speaking of Midwest things (how's THAT for a segue?!), this latest drink is inspired by a recipe from a Milwaukee-based music journalist, one that I found in Beachbum Berry's Intoxica!, a great source for all sorts of exotic drinks. I just swapped in two different varieties of rum and added some orange bitters. The interesting thing is, in it's original incarnation, The Marlin, as it was called, was blue. However, with the rums I used, it darkened and tended rather more towards green. So since I changed the rums and changed the color, I figured I'd change the name, too.

El Pirata Y el Perico

1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz Maraschino liqueur
1/2 oz orgeat syrup
1/2 oz blue curaçao (or use a good triple sec and add a little blue food dye)
2 dashes orange bitters
1 oz Pyrat XO Reserve rum
1 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum

Shake all with ice, and strain into an Old-Fashioned glass or snifter filled with crushed ice.

I'll admit it, I geeked out a bit and named the drink after a spot at Walt Disney World, an eatery that's closed as often as not. But it's got a great name, and considering its meaning ("The Pirate and the Parrot") it fits with this drink, as well. I mean, rum and tiki elements and as green as a parrot? Yeah, that works!

In terms of flavor, the lemon and lime do a great job of balancing out the sweetness of the orgeat, the Maraschino similarly baffles the tastebuds (in a good way, of course) and the two different styles of rum really add a lot of depth. If you wanted to experiment a little more, you could add maybe an ounce and a half of a good strong ginger beer or ginger ale to it...might make things even more spicy and delicious. Really, half the fun of modifying recipes is trying variations on them.

Adventures in Tiki Mixology

For years, tiki drinks have languished under the misapprehension that they are only sugary, syrupy confections made with cheap rum. And sadly, that became sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because with few exceptions, that's how they came to be made. The classic, exotic ingredients, with names like "pimento dram" and "falernum" were lost or just deliberately omitted, so that ingredients like commercial mai tai mix and corn syrup-laced passion fruit flavored goo and sour apple mix (!) could be added instead. Well, mercifully, there have been some devotees of Tiki culture who have kept the old ways alive, and others who have sought them out. And it's thanks to wonderful people like those that I can tell you about a great ingredient that you can make yourself; falernum.

Falernum, as I mentioned in last night's post, is a liqueur that's usually a rum base, and is flavored with lime, cloves, ginger, almond, and various other spices. And to make it takes about 20 minutes (just spread over two days). Using a recipe from Kaiser Penguin as a jumping off point, I started mine yesterday, finished it today, and made my first drink with it tonight. It's got two stages; the first one, what Rick at KP likes to call "Soak lots of tasty things in rum" and the second one, where you whip up a quick simple syrup and add it to the booze you soaked everything in during step 1. Here's what I used to make mine:

8 oz overproof rum (I used Wray and Nephew White Overproof)
30 cloves
1 nutmeg
1 tsp whole allspice
1 dozen assorted peppercorns (I went a little OCD and used 3 each of white, green, black and pink)
zest of 8 limes
1/2 cup julienned ginger

Quickly toast the spices over medium heat until they're nice and fragrant, then drop the spices, the lime zest and the ginger into the rum. Cover with plastic wrap, and let macerate for 24 hours. It'll look like a jar of kitchen scraps, but just roll with it.

for the syrup, combine 2 cups cane sugar and 1 cup of water over medium low heat, stirring until dissolved.

After 24 hours, strain your booze-soaked mix through a fine mesh sieve and/or cheesecloth, squeezing to get as much liquid out as you can. Combine with the simple syrup and add 10 drops of almond extract. Bottle and chill.

And with that, you've got falernum. A little goes a long way...I've yet to see a recipe that calls for more than 1/2 oz of the homemade stuff at a time (There are a few companies that produce falernum for purchase, but they tend to be a lower proof or non-alcoholic, and generally a little milder than the homemade version, plus you can't customize those).

So, the drink that I'm featuring tonight with the falernum is called the Ranglum cocktail, from a a bar called Le Lion, by way of a wonderful cocktail blog called Oh, Gosh. Since the original drink features a lower proof commercial falernum, I've dropped the amount a bit to factor in the stronger nature of our homebrew stuff.

Ranglum Cocktail

2 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum, or other dark rum
1 oz lime juice
1/2 oz falernum
1/2 oz Wray and Nephew White Overproof rum
1/8 oz simple syrup

Shake all ingredients with ice, and strain into an ice-filled Old-Fashioned glass.

As Strong Bad likes to say, "Oh holy crap." This is an incredibly awesome drink, and I think if I could just freebase falernum, I totally would. It's sweet, it's sour, it's spicy, it's molasses-y, it's all sorts of good and wonderful things, and it's all in one drink. Plus, there's a ton of booze in there...Gosling's Black Seal is 80 proof, Wray and Nephew is 126 proof, plus the falernum is probably somewhere around 55 proof...This is some serious happyjuice here, folks. Go make some falernum, for your own good.

"Anyone who says I didn't create the Mai Tai is a dirty rotten stinker."

Thus sayeth Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron. The Mai Tai is a classic, though sadly, much mistreated drink. The first problem with it was the base rum that Vic favored, a seventeen year old J. Wray and Nephew Jamaican, saw it's worldwide supply exhausted within a year of the 1944 debut of this drink. Then it saw it's orgeat switched from an imported brand to an easier to procure one. After that, it's seen one modification after another. Hell, even I modified it tonight (but I only try to change you because I love you, alcohol), and in the great scheme of things, my change isn't too egregious of one. So here's tonight's version of the drink!

Mai Tai

2 oz Pyrat XO rum
1/2 oz orange curacao
1/2 oz orgeat syrup
1/2 oz lime juice
1/4 oz Wray and Nephew White Overproof rum
1/8 oz simple syrup

Shake all ingredients well with tons of crushed ice and pour into your favorite Tiki mug (if you don't have a favorite Tiki mug, you really should get one. If you're pressed for time, though, you can use a Collins glass)

The name of this drink comes from the exclamation, in Tahitian, of the first people to taste Vic's concoction, Ham and Carrie Guld. On Carrie's first sip, she exclaimed (according to Trader Vic lore) "It's mai tai! It's mai tai roa áe!" She explained that it means "out of this world! The best!" And lo, the name stuck. And it should...it's a damned good drink. The original didn't use the overproof rum, and instead of simple syrup used 1/8 oz of "rock candy syrup" which is just simple syrup with some vanilla extract added to the mix. I opted to use the Wray and Nephew overproof to add a vanilla note, plus a little extra booze...the Pyrat is good, but it can underwhelm a bit in some mixes (though it's awesome to drink straight with a little lime). Contrast this to the Mai Tai served at your local TGI McTchotchke's GoodTime FoodDrinkery and you'll find there's a world of difference: the difference between expedience and craft. This little tipple, if consumed in the dog days of summer, just around sunset after a fun-filled day of yardwork, may just be the thing that saves your sanity and sends you, if only for a few minutes, "out of this world."

♫Rum lifts us up where we belong...♪

What is it about Tiki drinks that makes them so much fun to make AND drink? Is it the ridiculous names they frequently carry? Is it the unusual, exotic ingredients they contain? Is it the goofy garnishes you get to put on them? Who knows. All I know is I love makin' em. Which is why tonight's cocktail is another Tiki drink; the Rum Lift.

This fellow started out life at Don the Beachcomber's in Hollywood in the late '60s, ostensibly as a hangover remedy. I can safely tell you it's just as much fun to drink as a starter.

Rum Lift

2 oz orange juice
1/2 oz unsweetened pineapple juice
1/4 oz fresh lime juice
Dash of Angostura bitters
1 1/2 oz dark Jamaican rum (I cheated a bit and used Barbados)

Shake well with 1 cup of crushed ice, pour (ice and all) into a Collins glass. Garnish as desired, though a maraschino cherry and pineapple spear would not go amiss. Or just slap a bunch of crazy crap on the rim like I did:

There's something missing in this drink, and I'm not sure what...maybe it's the mellower Barbados rum versus the Jamaican. So I did what any sensible person would do. I finished off the first one and tried my hand at a second! I kept everything from the original recipe, but I added three more ingredients:

Dash of orange bitters
1/8 tsp homemade vanilla extract
1/8 tsp pimento dram

And then shake it like a British nanny.

This one is quite an improvement. You get that floral sweetness from the vanilla hiding in the background, and the pimento dram and orange bitters bring it a little extra spice. With the additional flavors, I'd be happy to make this one again in the future...it's got some personality that way.

Additionally, if you wanted to make a non-alcoholic version of this one, you could shake everything together without the rum, pour it into the glass and top it up with ginger ale, stirring to combine. I think it'd still be a good drink, although not nearly as fun without the rum.

There's a funny little, sunny little melody...

So as luck would have it, I was beaten to the punch on tonight's drink. I was going to do "Jasper's Jamaican" but Trader Tiki over there in my blogroll beat me to it this afternoon. So I went with Plan B and put my own little twist on it. Tonight's drink is the first Tiki drink on the blog here, and it's a simple one (at least compared to some...there's Tiki drinks that you can get at Tiki-Ti in LA that have 8+ ingredients, some that need to be specially made). Trader Tiki commented in his post on Jasper's Jamaican that most Tiki drinks are variants on the Daiquiri, much like Harpo's Special from the other day. I'll give you the straight up recipe first, and then tell you about my addition (as that's an ingredient that you'll likely need to make yourself).

Outrigger
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
3/4 oz triple sec
1 1/2 oz Barbados Rum (I went with Mount Gay and was not disappointed)
sugar

Rub the rim of a cocktail glass with the spent lemon shell and coat with sugar (I used demerara sugar). Shake the juice, triple sec and rum with ice cubes and strain into your sugar-rimmed glass.

Now my variant on it added a scant 1/8 oz of Pimento Dram. You can find it commercially as St. Elizabeth's Allspice Dram, or you can make your own, which takes a while, but is incredibly good. Here's what you'll need

2 1/4 cups overproof rum (go with 151-proof Lemon Hart or 126 proof Wray and Nephew...leave the Bacardi alone)
1/2 cup whole dried allspice berries
3 cups water
1 1/2 lbs brown sugar

Crush the allspice berries coarsely with a mortar and pestle, combine in a large jar with the rum and seal it up. Let it steep for 10-14 days, shaking it every day. Once it's done steeping, pour through a strainer lined with cheesecloth, then pour that liquid through a coffee filter. You'll be happier without little bits of allspice in it.

Combine the sugar and water over heat to make a 1:1 simple syrup, cool, and add that syrup to your rum infusion in a clean, sterilized bottle and let it sit in the back of your fridge for a month or more. As it matures, it'll become very smooth, but very spicy. A little will go a loooooong way.

As for the modified Outrigger, I'm almost thinking the 1/8 oz of pimento dram I used tonight was a little too much, but it plays with this rum VERY well. The lemon juice and triple sec's citrus makes this almost Christmas-like when combined with the allspice liqueur, but not quite...the rum keeps it summery. I think if I upped the lemon juice a little more and added a dash of lime juice, it'd be even better. It wouldn't be an Outrigger anymore, but it'd be good!