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
As if 2020 couldn’t get any more bizarre. Look at the orange skies out in the backyard, and honestly it was unsettling and pretty disturbing.
Tried to make a cocktail that matched the color of the sky, so I turned to this one featuring the bright orange BG Reynolds Circus Peanut syrup.
Big Top Mai Tai by Jason Alexander
½ oz passion fruit sirop
½ oz almond sirop
1 oz Clown Sirop
1½ oz lemon juice
2½ oz Plantation Xaymaca
At least the day ended well.
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.
I’ve been playing around with a new recipe for The Hurricane, the famous drink from New Orleans. While the Hurricane is famous, the exact ingredients (besides rum) are not particularly agreed upon. This is a riff inspired by the recipe in Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log.
Hurricane by Kevin Crossman
1 oz Lemon Juice
⅓ oz Passionfruit Syrup
¾ oz BG Reynolds Circus Peanut Syrup
1½ oz Dark Jamaican Rum
½ oz Overproof Demerara Rum
My aim was to hit a fine spot between the overly sweet Hurricanes and those which lean on the tart side. In Beachbum Berry’s recipe it calls for basically double the proportions here, resulting in a cocktail with four ounces of rum. Feel free to double my recipe if you want to fill a tall hurricane glass.
For my version, I used BG Reynolds Passionfruit Syrup, Coruba Dark Jamaican rum, and Plantation OFTD rum.
