I had a lemon to kill and I’d been thinking about revisiting this hybrid Mai Tai / Blue Hawaii cocktail that I developed a few years back. It leans sweet, so feel free to pull back on the simple syrup, but I do still think this works and can be a crowd-pleaser for cocktail newbies.
Blue Hawai-Tai by Kevin Crossman
1 oz Lemon Juice
½ oz Orgeat
½ oz Simple Syrup
½ oz Blue Curacao
1 oz White Overproof Jamaican Rum
½ oz Aged White Rum
Combine all ingredients in a shaker with crushed ice. Shake and dump into a small snifter glass.
- Giffard is an amazing orange liqueur that also happens to be blue, strongly recommended.
- Any overproof Jamaican rum would do fine here, demonstrated in this case by the Monymusk. If you like it more punchy than use one that’s 100% pot still, like Worthy Park Overproof or Rum Fire.
- For the white rum, use one with a bit of age and ideally at least some pot still components to remind you that a Mai Tai started with an aged rum. My old bottle of Denizen 3 works great, as would Probitas, Breezeway blend, or Myers’s Platinum White.
- Latitude 29 Orgeat is great in this application as the syrup is fairly clear and not cloudy like some orgeat can be.