The Search for the Ultimate Mai Tai
Traveling the Bay Area and beyond to find the best Mai Tai in the world! Tiki, cocktails, and adventures by Kevin Crossman
How to make the Ultimate Mai Tai? Follow along with our recipe and make a Mai Tai yourself to celebrate Mai Tai Day on August 30.
Ultimate Mai Tai by Kevin Crossman
½ oz Appleton 12 Rum
½ oz Smith & Cross Rum
½ oz Plantation OFTD Rum
½ oz Plantation Xaymaca Rum
1 oz Lime Juice
½ oz Orgeat (Latitude 29)
½ oz Orange Curacao (Ferrand Dry Curacao)
¼ oz Demerara Syrup (BG Reynolds)
Garnish with Mint Sprig and spent Lime shell
August 30 is Mai Tai Day, the date where true Mai Tai fans celebrate the birth of the Mai Tai in Oakland, California in 1944.
I celebrated by making a standard proportion 1944 recipe Mai Tai with some special rums. A tribute to fine rums that belong in the finest cocktail. And a salute to Mai Tai Nation.
¼ oz Mount Gay XO
¼ oz Pampero Aniversario
¼ oz Clement VSOP
¼ oz Hampden Estate Overproof
½ oz Denizen Merchant’s Reserve
½ oz Appleton 12 Rare Casks
Float ¾ oz Ultimate Mai Tai Blend (Appleton 12, Smith & Cross, Xaymaca, OFTD)
A delicious Mai Tai, slightly boozier than average. Though by Frankensteining the rum blend it doesn’t have a particularly unique character that you’d get using one of these rums all by themselves.
Yesterday I went to Total Wine to sample some new spirits and cocktail ingredients. I bought three things, and they were all losers. But today, my shipment from BG Reynolds arrived. It’s a good day.
It’s a shaken Pina Colada with Trader Vic’s Macadamia Nut Liqueur, and Mai Tai made with light rum. Still delicious.
Sampled some new (to me) cocktails at The Kon-Tiki.
First was the Montego Bay, with funky Jamaican rum, absinthe, allspice, grapefruit, and lime. This was billed as having a bite and I would agree. A little too spicy for me, though Mrs. Mai Tai loved it. Not pictured.
Next, the Lost Cartographer, featuring Irish Whisky, Banana, Cinnamon, and Bitters. I liked this a lot, though it isn’t really a traditional exotic/tropical cocktail. The banana was subtle but paired well with the cinnamon. Pictured with the orange slice in the Kon-Tiki glass.
Lastly, the Coco Gadget, with Guyana and Agricole rums, coconut, curaçao, cold brew coffee, and bitters. Mrs. Mai Tai thought this would be up her alley, but she thought it was too rum-forward and said she couldn’t taste the coconut and coffee. Meanwhile, I tend to avoid coffee drinks but actually really liked this. Seemed very coconut and coffee forward to me, so obviously your mileage may vary. A nice addition to the Kon-Tiki menu.
It is great to see some new menu items at Kon-Tiki. We love our classic tiki cocktails but I do like to expand my horizons.
Most tikiphiles are familiar with the classic cocktails that Jeff “Beachbum” Berry brought back from the dead, finding their original recipes and sharing them with the world. The 1934 Zombie is the holy grail but there’s also Three Dots and a Dash, the Q.B. Cooler, and others. But an overlooked recipe that deserves just as much praise is the Saturn.
The Saturn was originally prepared by J. “Popo” Galsini in 1967 for the IBA World Cocktail Championship – and Popo won the darn thing. You’d think that thereafter this drink would have been world famous, but nobody was drinking these until Berry discovered it and published the recipe in his book Beachbum Berry’s Taboo Table in 2005.
Saturn
½ oz Lemon Juice
½ oz Passion Fruit Syrup
¼ oz Falernum
¼ oz Orgeat
1¼ oz Dry Gin
8 oz Crushed Ice
Blend and pour into a Pilsner or other tall glass.
The cocktail is surprisingly refreshing. Popo was said to have tended bar in several tiki bars, so he would have been familiar with Orgeat and Falernum that were already starting to lose favor along with the rest of the classic exotic cocktail ingredients in 1967.
I personally prefer up the Orgeat to ½ ounce and then to prepare shaken with crushed ice and served up in a coupe glass.
Invented in New Orleans at Pat O’Briens bar, the actual recipe is a closely held secret. But everyone who has had one knows that it is fruity and that it has tons of rum. If you’ve had one from one of the cheap bars on Bourbon Street, you’re totally missing out. Those taste like garbage but when you make it at home with fresh ingredients it is delightful.
Some recipes call for Fassionola syrup, a sweetener with an equally mysterious recipe. The standard recipe used by many comes to us from Jeff “Beachbum” Berry who published this recipe in The Grog Log in 1998. The proportions make it easy to batch, which I did for a neighborhood block party (remember those) celebrating Mardis Gras a couple years ago.
Hurricane
2 oz Lemon Juice
2 oz Passion Fruit Syrup
4 oz Dark Jamaican Rum
Shake with crushed ice and fill in a Hurricane glass. Depending on the sweetness of your Passion Fruit Syrup, you might consider adding a little extra sugar syrup.
This cocktail is not particularly rum-forward, so you don’t need to go high-end for the Jamaican rum. Coruba, Myers’s, or Blackwell are all affordable and will do just fine.
