Category: Recipe

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I Ran Out of Gin!

This was a development I never saw coming. While I’ve always been a rum guy I would never guessed that I’d drain my one long bottle of Gin long before I’d drain the lone Vodka and Tequila bottles. But I have been enjoying a lot of Gin drinks lately, including the Saturn.

This was posted a couple weeks ago but I did another run and I’m still digging it. Something a little different but still tiki if you ask me.

Innovation Cocktail by Kevin Crossman
1 ounce Passionfruit Syrup
½ ounce Orgeat
½ ounce Blue Curacao Liqueur
2 ounces London Dry Gin (I used Beefeater)

Shake with ice cubes and strain into a coupe glass or wine glass.

Innovation Cocktail
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Lemon Juice in a Mai Tai?

It isn’t a state secret that Trader Vic’s often uses lemon juice in Mai Tais made with the Mai Tai Concentrate. The taste test is comparing a Mai Tai made only with Lime Juice and one made with Lemon and Lime.

¾ oz Lemon Juice (or Lime)
¾ oz Mai Tai Concentrate Mix
2 oz Royal Amber Rum
Shake with crushed ice and pour into glass
Squeeze juice of ¼ Lime Wedge
Garnish with wedge and mint.

Overall this was pretty close but the one with Lemon Juice indeed had a brighter overall taste and just a tad more balanced.

This tasted just like the “Trader Vic’s Mai Tai” from the restaurants.

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Innovation Cocktail

We’re having Spirit Week at my company, Juniper Networks. So I submitted this for a Happy Hour event on Friday.

For those looking for something to prepare for Happy Hour on Friday, here’s an original cocktail with a uniquely Juniper theme. The yellow passion fruit syrup and the blue curacao liqueur should give you something close to Juniper Green, without the use of food coloring. The name is a play on words for a famous Gin-based cocktail, the Aviation.

This uses ingredients you can find in many mainstream liquor warehouse stores (e.g. BevMo). Of course the spirit (for Spirit Week!) has to be a juniper-forward Gin.

Innovation Cocktail by Kevin Crossman
1 ounce Passion fruit Syrup (or, passion fruit puree, such as Finest Call)
½ ounce Orgeat (or Almond Syrup, such as Toriani)
½ ounce Blue Curacao Liqueur
2 ounces London Dry Gin (I used Beefeater)

Shake with ice cubes and strain into a coupe glass or wine glass.

Cheers!

Innovation Cocktail
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Tweaked Mai Tai Concentrate Recipe

I took another run at a Mai Tai made with the newly available (once-in-a-lifetime) Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Concentrate. This “industrial strength” syrup is used in place of the Orgeat and Curacao and is used in the Trader Vic’s restaurants for certain cocktails.

The bottle calls for ¾ oz of the Concentrate, but I thought it needed more. This time, I used a full ounce and it’s much better. There are more bright orange notes in this version.

Making Mai Tais from scratch will always be the best option, but this mix is pretty good and saves you one step when preparing the cocktail and potentially substantial cost vs. buying the Orgeat and Curacao separately.

Purchase: Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Concentrate

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New Cocktail Recipe: A Clown Got Us into This

Delicious new cocktail for lockdown weekend

This recipe comes from Bay Area Tikiphile Rodney Stanton, who shared it during Thursday’s “South SF Bay Ohana” online meetup (hit me up on Facebook to get access to the group). The hero ingredient is the BG Reynolds Circus Peanut Syrup, and it’s delicious here when paired with the banana notes from the liqueur and the overrproof Jamaican rum.

A Clown Got Us into This
1½ oz Lime Juice
1½ oz Kuleana Rum Works Nanea
½ oz Overproof Jamaican Rum
½ oz Creme de Banana
¾ oz BG Reynolds Circus Peanut Syrup
⅛ oz Grenadine
2 Dashes Orange Bitters

The Nanea is from the Hawaiian brand Kuleana, but is actually a blend of lightly aged rums from the Caribbean. I don’t have the Nanea, or any rums from Central America, so I used Plantation 3 Star as a substitute. For the Overproof Jamaican I used Rum-Bar Overproof. I used Tempus Fugit for the banana liqueur.

It’s delicious! Glassware by B-Rex.

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Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Concentrate

Available for the first time ever from the Trader Vic’s online store, I had to get this. Back in 1998 I had a bottle of this gifted to me, and I loved Mai Tais made with it.  Opening it today, the fragrance of this mix is the same as I remembered. The Concentrate basically replaces the Orange Curacao, Orgeat, and Rock Candy syrup in a 1944 Mai Tai. So, you supply the 1 ounce of Lime Juice and 2 ounces of Rum. Note that this is very different from the Mai Tai mix you normally find in retail stores.

In year’s past this was what made the standard “Trader Vic’s Mai Tai” at the Emeryville location, and is still used for large batches and at high volume events. It is also used in other cocktails such as the Mai Tai variants Menehune Juice and Pinky Gonzales, Tiki Grog, and the Drum of Ku.

My Mai Tai is made with Hamilton New York Blend, a blend with rums from Jamaican and Guyana. This was my last pour of this very nice rum (now known as the 1670 West Indies Blend). The Mai Tai with the Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Concentrate is pretty good. The recipe calls for ¾ oz, but I’d up it to a full ounce next time. The cocktail isn’t as good as a scratch Mai Tai, but this is an affordable value for those who don’t normally get to try Mai Tais made with this at the Trader Vic’s restaurants. It definitely would be great to use in a Mai Tai punch for a party.

Trader Vic’s is running a 20% off sale this weekend, just use promo code “MAY20” at checkout.

Thank you Trader Vic’s for making this available for purchase for the first time outside of an industry setting.

Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Concentrate Mai Tai
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Book Review: Easy Tiki by Chloe Frechette

While this book doesn’t break any new ground, it’s a quite accessible resource for people getting started. The book covers in light detail the history of tiki, basics of rum, and then presents fairly straightforward and simple recipes. No strange or unusual ingredients, like you sometimes find in these recipe books. It’s kind of like if 2019’s Minimalistic Tiki and Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails books got together and had a baby.

Too often when things are simplified in these books it ends up creating inaccuracies or the topics are so simplified as to be not understandable. Thankfully, Easy Tiki avoids these problems very well.

There are some good recipes here, including the Mai Sha Roa Na (from False Idol) and a very intriguing Breakfast Mai Tai. There is the Quarantine Order, Staycation, Carrot Colada, and a bunch of other interesting recipes.

The book is available now from your favorite booksellers. I bought my in Apple Books and the presentation in the app is pretty good. There are some very nice photographs too.

While this won’t replace the deep coverage you find the Smuggler’s Cove, Sippin’ Safari, or Minimalist Tiki books, Easy Tiki is a good resource and potentially helpful option for tiki newbies.