254 replies to this topic

[John Rosevear]

Thanks for the tips. It appears I can get the Lemon Hart here in MI, but not the St. James - do you have another recommendation on a Martinique?

I'm almost out of grenadine and have to make up another batch, and just read the thread of Orgeat and think I can pull that off too. But I have a strong suspicion I won't be able to find any Falernum...

Rhum Clement is an excellent Martinique that is (in some parts of the US) easier to find than the St James. I like it a lot -- in fact, I'm sipping a Mai Tai made with Clement's VSOP right now.

Re falernum, if all else fails you can order the Fee Bros syrup online from quite a few vendors.

[tammylc]

Re. Falernum: With the party Saturday, I can't web order cheaply. Found a recipe for making my own that seemed pretty straightforward, but I might just save that for another time.

Having read through this thread, I'm thinking of these three drinks (recipe taken from upthread). These seemed relatively straightforward for a Tiki novice to attempt:

Spievak Zombie (I know it's totally different than the other Zombies, but I love passion fruit and have passion fruit puree in my freezer I can easily make syrup from)
1 oz lemon
1 oz pineapple
1 oz passion fruit syrup
1 oz demerara rum
1 oz white Puerto Rican rum
1 oz gold Puerto Rican rum
tsp brown sugar

Surf Room
1 oz light PR rum
1 oz dark Jamaican rum
1 oz demerara rum
1/4 oz curacao
1/4 oz simple
1/4 oz orgeat
1/4 oz lemon
1/2 oz lime
1 oz pineapple
1 oz orange

Trader Vic's Mai Tai
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce orange Curacao (MB orange Curacao)
1/4 ounce sugar syrup (slightly less rich demarara syrup)
1/4 ounce orgeat syrup (homemade)
1 ounce aged Jamaican rum (Appleton Estate)
1 ounce amber Martinique rum (St. James Ambre)

Although reading those, it looks like it's calling for somewhere between 5 and 7 different rums - what kinds of substitutions can I make to work with the two I have and two more?

Then I just need to make orgeat, juice a lot of fruit and crush a lot of ice...

[Chris Amirault]

Five rums, max, I think: white/light PR, dark PR, demerara, aged Jamaican, Martinique rhum. You can't really sub for the demerara or the Martinique rhum, imo, but you could use the Appleton Estate for your dark PR rum (decadent substitution, I'll add) and get away with those four remaining.

What light PR rum are you considering? I'd urge you to seek out Flor de Cana, Brugal, or Don Q white rums -- and PR style -- and avoid Bacardi like the plague.

[John Rosevear]

The Surf Room Mai Tai is a great party drink. If you multiply all of the proportions by 18, it makes almost exactly a gallon (before ice).

[bmdaniel]

If you like passion fruit and have a good syrup (like from the Goya puree), the Spievak Zombie is a great passionfruit drink.

I think you should be fine if you use Cruzan white as your light PR, the Appleton wherever gold PR or Jamaican are called for, and pick up the Martinique and Demerara.

Sound like a great party!

[tammylc]

If you like passion fruit and have a good syrup (like from the Goya puree), the Spievak Zombie is a great passionfruit drink.

I think you should be fine if you use Cruzan white as your light PR, the Appleton wherever gold PR or Jamaican are called for, and pick up the Martinique and Demerara.

Sound like a great party!

Thank you so much! That exactly the sort of answer I was looking for.

Tonight's project is making Orgeat and Passion fruit syrup. And maybe Falernum too, if I'm really ambitious...

[tammylc]

Five rums, max, I think: white/light PR, dark PR, demerara, aged Jamaican, Martinique rhum. You can't really sub for the demerara or the Martinique rhum, imo, but you could use the Appleton Estate for your dark PR rum (decadent substitution, I'll add) and get away with those four remaining.

What light PR rum are you considering? I'd urge you to seek out Flor de Cana, Brugal, or Don Q white rums -- and PR style -- and avoid Bacardi like the plague.

Missed this post yesterday... thanks, Chris.

I'm going to go with bmdaniel's recommendation below and just sub the white Cruzan rum I have for light PR, but I'll look for one of your recommendations when it comes time to replace this bottle...

[tammylc]

One more question from the tiki drink neophyte - how do I mix and serve the three drinks I picked out (Mai Tai, Surf Room, Spievak Zombie). I've read various threads on here about shaking vs blending and etc...

Thanks!

[Chris Amirault]

I think that most tiki folks would urge you to step away from the blender and use crushed ice for these drinks. If you don't have an ice crusher, just bash a few pounds in an old pillowcase or towel using a wooden mallet or rolling pin and put it back in the freezer, then take it out for use. Don't bash it all to powder, or else you'll have watery drinks. When it's time to serve, shake with some of the crushed ice.

You can also bottle the drinks for service, either by making entire batches (including the fruit juices) or just by combining the non-juice base and then measuring out an appropriate amount, squeezing your citrus, shake, and serve. It eliminates a persnickety step from making these drinks in bulk.

[John Rosevear]

When it's time to serve, shake with some of the crushed ice.

...and don't strain. Just pour the whole thing into the glass, garnish, and serve.

[mkayahara]

What's the effect of shaking with crushed ice and pouring unstrained, versus blending with crushed ice, versus shaking with cubed or cracked ice and pouring over crushed ice? I assume dilution may be greater by shaking with crushed ice than cubed ice (though I realize, in light of the recent Cooking Issues blog posts on dilution, that the jury is still out on this).

When making Tiki drinks, I often find that the amount of crushed ice called for in the recipe isn't enough to fill the glass, so I end up topping up with more to make it look pretty. I'm always tempted to just shake with cubed ice and fill the glass with crushed ice separately. I guess that uses more ice in total, but my gut instinct is that it would keep the drink cold longer.

By the way, I got a manual ice crusher for my birthday last month, and it's one of the best bar presents I've ever received. It's so much easier to use than a kitchen towel and mallet! I'm even finding myself looking for excuses to make crushed-ice drinks now.

[bmdaniel]

What's the effect of shaking with crushed ice and pouring unstrained, versus blending with crushed ice, versus shaking with cubed or cracked ice and pouring over crushed ice? I assume dilution may be greater by shaking with crushed ice than cubed ice (though I realize, in light of the recent Cooking Issues blog posts on dilution, that the jury is still out on this).

When making Tiki drinks, I often find that the amount of crushed ice called for in the recipe isn't enough to fill the glass, so I end up topping up with more to make it look pretty. I'm always tempted to just shake with cubed ice and fill the glass with crushed ice separately. I guess that uses more ice in total, but my gut instinct is that it would keep the drink cold longer.

By the way, I got a manual ice crusher for my birthday last month, and it's one of the best bar presents I've ever received. It's so much easier to use than a kitchen towel and mallet! I'm even finding myself looking for excuses to make crushed-ice drinks now.

I prefer to shake with cubed ice and strain into crushed ice; I find that shaking with crushed ice then topping up can lead to over-dilution (I have an electric ice crusher that produces a pretty fine but not snowlike crushed ice).

[vice]

By the way, I got a manual ice crusher for my birthday last month, and it's one of the best bar presents I've ever received. It's so much easier to use than a kitchen towel and mallet! I'm even finding myself looking for excuses to make crushed-ice drinks now.

Pray tell, which one did you get?

[mkayahara]

By the way, I got a manual ice crusher for my birthday last month, and it's one of the best bar presents I've ever received. It's so much easier to use than a kitchen towel and mallet! I'm even finding myself looking for excuses to make crushed-ice drinks now.

Pray tell, which one did you get?

This one. I swear, it's changed my life.

[John Rosevear]

Looks like a copy of one of the old Rival Ice-O-Mats... I bought one of those (circa 1950, we think) off eBay a couple of years ago for $15 after hearing one of the bartenders at Eastern Standard sing its praises. Changed my life, too.

FWIW, I find that when I shake with cubes and strain into crushed, I inevitably use too much crushed in the glass and end up overdiluted if I don't finish the drink within 5 min or so.

[vice]

Crushed ice can vary quite a bit in size (from snow to something a bit finer than cracked cubes), and that variability could make all the difference. What size do you find good for shaking John?

[John Rosevear]

The size I use is the size that comes out of the ice-o-mat, which (from memory here) probably ranges roughly from small shards to a chunks a little bigger than 1/2" in diameter. Definitely not snow, and a little coarser than what I get when I use a Lewis bag.

[Shamanjoe]

I just bash the heck out of some ice, usually in a plastic bag, which ends up yielding a range from snow all the way to unbroken cubes (though my ice cubes are actually round with holes in the middle. I shake with that and don't strain. As long as you shake really hard (I'm a big guy, and for tiki drinks I make a lot of noise when I shake ), it comes out fine.

One thing about the mai tai, I tried it with both cointreau and curacao, and I'm finding myself preferring the version with cointreau. It seems to have a more pleasant tang to it.

[John Rosevear]

Joe, what brand of curacao were you using?

[tammylc]

Speaking of Curacao, my quest for Tiki cocktail ingredients is being thwarted by the pathetic alcohol distribution in Michigan. The "good" liquor store in town, with the best selection, only had DeKuyper - which people don't seem to like much. Should I get that anyway, or use Cointreau (which at least I'll have a plenitude of other cocktail uses for?)

And, more critically, Martinique rum seems pretty much impossible to find here. The store I was at used to carry some Rum Clement and St James, but neither are being distributed in MI anymore, and they didn't think they had anything else from Martinique. There's another store with a good selection I can call, but are there any other brands I should be looking for? Or something to substitute?

Here's the rum list from the "good" store (although they might be out of some of this, I got the last bottle of Lemon Hart 151 today, for instance).

No wonder cocktail culture in Michigan sucks so much...

[mkayahara]

There's another store with a good selection I can call, but are there any other brands I should be looking for? Or something to substitute?

I would argue that, in a pinch, you could substitute Barbancourt. Others might disagree.

[John Rosevear]

There's another store with a good selection I can call, but are there any other brands I should be looking for? Or something to substitute?

I would argue that, in a pinch, you could substitute Barbancourt. Others might disagree.

Given the choices on that list, I'm inclined to agree. It won't be quite right, but it'll be decent, and still considerably better than any Mai Tai most of your guests have ever had.

[tammylc]

There's another store with a good selection I can call, but are there any other brands I should be looking for? Or something to substitute?

I would argue that, in a pinch, you could substitute Barbancourt. Others might disagree.

Given the choices on that list, I'm inclined to agree. It won't be quite right, but it'll be decent, and still considerably better than any Mai Tai most of your guests have ever had.

There are a bunch of Barbancourt on the list - which one or ones would be preferable?

And what do you think about the Curacao question?

(And thanks again, everyone, really appreciate all the help...)

[Shamanjoe]

Joe, what brand of curacao were you using?

John, I've have the Bols and a bottle of Hiram Walker. I remember reading somewhere that the Bols was Vic's curacao of choice, but I honestly can't remember which one I used at the moment. I'll have to take a peak when I get home and let you know.

And what do you think about the Curacao question?

Tammy, I would go ahead and get a bottle of Cointreau anyway, even if you end up using the curacao in your tiki drinks. It's one of the most versatile orange-based liqueurs I've come across, and while not strictly the same as a curacao, it still makes a damn fine Mai Tai.

[John Rosevear]

Tammy, my two cents on curacao is that I think Marie Brizard makes a superb one and that the Bols is a fine substitute. But if all you can find is Hiram Walker or Dekuyper or whatever, giving the Cointreau a try isn't a bad idea.

Edited by John Rosevear, 08 January 2010 - 07:40 PM.

[John Rosevear]

Oh, and re the Barbancourts... the choices will reflect more or less aging. For making Mai Tais, the basic one (three stars on the label) is probably just fine.

[mkayahara]

There are a bunch of Barbancourt on the list - which one or ones would be preferable?

And what do you think about the Curacao question?

(And thanks again, everyone, really appreciate all the help...)

My advice on the Barbancourt would be to avoid the white for this particular application, and avoid anything older than the 8-year (five-star, "Réserve Spéciale"), because they tend to get too oaky after that. The 8-year is a good choice, though. If anything it smells a little richer than the Saint-James. (Yes, I'm sitting here sniffing the bottles as I type this.)

For curacao, you're almost certainly in a better position than me: Ontario doesn't stock any curacao at all unless it's tinted blue. So I use either Cointreau or Grand Marnier in all my drinks. The Cointreau serves me just fine in a Mai Tai.

[tammylc]

Thanks all! Cointreau and Barbancourt with 3 stars it will have to be.

Next time I'll have to start planning my parties earlier, so I can better find what I need. I'm sure everything will be delicious anyway!

Edited by tammylc, 08 January 2010 - 08:14 PM.

[Shamanjoe]

For curacao, you're almost certainly in a better position than me: Ontario doesn't stock any curacao at all unless it's tinted blue. So I use either Cointreau or Grand Marnier in all my drinks. The Cointreau serves me just fine in a Mai Tai.

From what I've read, the blue doesn't taste any different than the orange, it's all a matter of colouring. Not that I'd want to put blue curacao in my mai tai, if just on principal, but if you're at home in a pinch, blue is better than none.

[Dave the Cook]

It might not be a big deal given the significant and complicated ingredient lists in tiki drinks (or maybe it's just adds another layer of complexity), but the archetype of orange curacao is not Cointreau; it's Grand Marnier. The difference is the base spirit: in Cointreau (or MB triple sec, Combier or Citronge) it's grain neutral spirits. Grand Marnier (or Grand Gala or Prunier Orange Liqueur) use cognac as the base. I'd look for something that says "cognac" on the label, and boasts a decent proof: somewhere between 70 and 80.