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
Made a fab Mai Tai for Trader Vic’s birthday using a rum made in Oakland, the city where the Mai Tai was first made in 1944.
Oakland’s Wright & Brown is distilling rum as well as a variety of whiskeys. The rum I used is pot still distillate made from Black Strap Molasses and is aged for a couple years. Quite wild and full of flavor, so it works great in a Mai Tai.
For my Mai Tai I used 1½ oz Wright & Brown and ½ oz Coruba just to add a little additional richness.
One of the aspects of The Kon-Tiki that I made sure to include in my recent Exotica Moderne article about the bar was their participation in community events and partnerships with businesses and organizations in Oakland.
Such was today’s Holiday Bazaar. Several local vendors were set up inside and there was a small holiday cocktail menu and burgers available from the bar. Not really tiki, except for Woody Miller. I bought the lovely green glass tree from Arcadian Stained Glass and some goodies from The Disco Greenhouse. And I bought some rum from the Kon-Tiki Bottle Shop.
The cocktail menu was quite festive, including a drink riffing on the bar’s Krampus themed decor. I sampled the tasty Disco Banana riff “Bad Banana” that dialed back the cocktail’s harder funky notes in favor of a fruitier blend that likely played better with the non-tiki crowd.
Cheers to the Kon-Tiki crew for putting together a great community event.
I wanted to switch it up a little at Trader Vic’s, so I tried to replicate the old rum blend of aged Jamaican rum and Martinique rum. At various points starting in the late 1950s all the way to the early 2000s, Trader Vic’s called for the use of Rhum St. James to be paired with a long-aged Jamaican rum.
I didn’t see St. James on the shelf, but Clement VSOP seemed like a great substitute. For the Jamaican I used the old standby, Appleton 12.
Definitely not the standard-issue Vic’s Mai Tai. The agricole made this taste a bit more dry, and a tad lighter on the tongue. Pretty different but still great.
The Search for the Ultimate Mai Tai was relaunched on Instagram on this day in 2017. 1625 posts and counting, chronicling experiences with cocktails, connections with people in the community, and world’s leading feed of Mai Tai minutiae.
There have been some really terrible and shitty things in 2021, which we won’t focus on except to say that there are some really awful people out there and also that I miss my friend every day.
Some nicer things happened in 2021, though. A few are chronicled in the photos including some travels with Mrs Mai Tai to far off places such as Milwaukee, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Phoenix, Vegas, and various locations in California including San Diego, Palm Springs, Disneyland, Morro Bay, and Sacramento.
Parties were back, and we got to enjoy a few and always appreciate the invites. Plenty of shenanigans especially at The Kon-Tikis in Oakland. Rum Fest was back! 29 different tiki bars – many new to me and some just brand new period, with several more coming very soon. I was interviewed on The Rum Cast and had several long articles published in Exotica Moderne. I completed rum lists at Forbidden Island and Smuggler’s Cove. UltimateMaiTai.com was refreshed with a great logo and banner by B-Rex.
So, thanks to so many fellow Mai Tai fans I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with over the last year. I appreciate your follows, likes, and comments here and in real-life, including the discussion of very important topics such as tiki bar rating criteria and what rums are best in a Mai Tai.
Cheers!
This was one of my favorites on our previous trips to O’ahu, and sometimes I like to make it at home.
The recipe is notable in the use of different proportions of the 1944 Mai Tai recipe template, but also the use of a dark rum float most commonly seen in Island-style Mai Tais.
House without a Key Mai Tai, Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki
1¼ oz Lime Juice
⅓ oz Orgeat
⅓ oz Rock Candy Syrup
⅓ oz Orange Curacao (Cointreau)
¾ oz Bacardi Select/Black Rum
¾ oz Bacardi Gold Rum
Float ½ oz Lemon Hart 151 Rum
Comparing the two photos, it definitely looked better on the beach in Waikiki than it did in my kitchen. But it tasted just fine at home.
Earlier this year I named Foursquare 2004 as my “Special Occasion” rum in the Five Bottle Rum Challenge. One of my favorite rums, so buttery and flavorful. And just a touch more dainty than the more recent Foursquare ECS releases.
If there’s ever been a special occasion for Barbados in my lifetime, today is the day, as the country has removed the Queen as the head of state and is now officially a republic. There’s certainly been a lot of pain and suffering inflicted on the people of the island, but today is a day to celebrate.
#savebarbadosrum
Got try to another one of the new cocktails on the Kon-Tiki cocktail menu. The Golden Snitch is from their Exotic Apperitifs section and has sherry, pineapple gum syrup, and rum. Quite delightful.
The Kon-Tiki’s rum selection continues to bring in some interesting new expressions to try. I sampled Admiral Rodney Saint Lucia Rum finished in Port Cask, and I was definitely impressed by the flavor profile. Easy to drink but also some great lingering flavors.
A very different rum was the LROK release from Hampden Estate in Jamaica. This is supposed to be their “lighter” expression but make no mistake this is still a flavor bomb with a pretty high ester count. Bottled at 47% ABV this is something everyone needs to try. I love Jamaican Rum.
