Bananarac

 

Story

New York bartending legend Phil Ward espouses what he calls the Mr. Potato Head approach to cocktail creation.  “My theory is that every template of a good drink is a blueprint for other good drinks, so you just take it apart and put it back together.”  Natasha David, whom we have met in this space before, adopted that approach while working with Ward.  Her Bananarac cocktail is of course a modification of the New Orleans classic Sazerac.  The Peychaud’s bitters is gone, replaced by the always amazing Giffard Banane du Bresil, which brings natural banana notes to the drink.  Other Sazerac characteristics like the absinthe rinse and the absence of ice remain, but this variant is very much its own thing.  I made a slight modification by swapping out Cognac for Armagnac.  Both are brandies made from French grapes, but Armagnac incorporates multiple type of grapes and is only distilled once.  As a result, it has a more rich and complex flavor than the smooth, refined cognac.  I think it works really well in this fabulous drink. 

Recipe

1 oz Armagnac or Cognac
1 oz rye (Rittenhouse)
0.5 oz banana liqueur (Giffard Banane du Bresil)
0.5 tsp Demerara Gum syrup  (simple syrup works in a pinch)
1 dash aromatic bitters (Angostura or Bitter Truth Aromatic bitters)
Absinthe rinse

-Rinse chilled old fashioned glass with absinthe and dump.
-Stir other ingredients over ice, strain into glass.  Express lemon twist and discard.

A Coy Decoy

 

Story

As we know, many tiki drinks feature blends of multiple rums to achieve certain flavor profiles.  Don the Beachcomber famously said, “What one rum can’t do, three rums can.”  Modern gins also incorporate a variety of interesting flavors and can benefit from this blending approach.  Bartender Chris Coy of the Indianapolis bar The Inferno Room employs this strategy in A Coy Decoy.  Uncle Val’s Botanical Gin is an American gin that features cucumber flavors along with herbs and traditional juniper. By combining that with a traditional London Dry gin, Coy adds a subtle twist to this tiki-inspired cocktail.  Pineapple and citrus bring in a bright tiki vibe – I’m particularly fond of the Giffard grapefruit liqueur, which seems to make everything better.  Aromatic bitters would take things in an unexpected direction, so instead the cocktail uses a citrus-based bitters to support the theme.  You can top this with mint if you like, but I drink it without a garnish.  Repeatedly.  Cheers!

Recipe

1 oz London dry gin (Fords or Beefeater)
0.5 oz cucumber-forward gin (Uncle Val’s or Hendricks)
0.75 oz grapefruit liqueur (Giffard crème de Pamplemousse)
0.75 oz pineapple juice
0.75 oz lime juice
4 drops citrus bitters (Bittercube Grapefruit Hibiscus or Bittermens Boston Bittahs)

-shake with pebble or cracked ice.  Dump into a tall glass.  Top with additional ice.

Bitter Mai Tai

 

Story

Well, shoot.  As I’ve said before, I tend toward dogmatic when it comes to cocktail names.  The classic example is the Wisconsin Old Fashioned, which is a completely different drink than an Old Fashioned.  If you make a different thing, my thinking goes, give it a different name.  The Mai Tai is classic tiki drink that’s rum, lime juice, orgeat, and orange liqueur.  Trader Vic didn’t publish the recipe for this fantastically popular cocktail for 30 years, leaving others to try and recreate it using guesswork.  That, along with the simplicity and flexibility of the recipe, have made it one of the most riffed-upon cocktails in all of tiki.  A little tweak here and there, and sure, maybe you still have a Mai Tai.  But when a third of the drink is Campari???  Nope.

Unfortunately for my inner curmudgeon, I really like this concoction.  It’s bitter and citrusy, with almost a grapefruit character.  Its bright pink color belies the long astringent tail.  And the cocktail, invented by Brooklyn bartender Jeremy Ortel, is well-established, so I can’t just change the name.  Well, Bitter Mai Tai it is then.  I’ll have another.  Cheers!

Recipe

 1.5 oz Campari
0.75 oz Jamaican rum (I used Smith & Cross)
0.75 oz orgeat
0.5 oz orange liqueur (I used Pierre Ferrand dry curacao)
1 oz lime juice
-Shake ingredients with a cup of crushed or pebbly ice.  Dump into old fashioned glass, then fill with additional ice.  Optional: garnish with a sprig of mint.

Coral Current

 

Story

The journey to the Coral Current began with the search for a tiki-style punch that didn't overlap with the other three cocktails on the menu at a party.  The Mai Tai (rum and lime), Saturn (gin and passion fruit), and Elusive Dreams (rum and pineapple) covered a lot of territory flavor-wise, so finding something different was a challenge. I tried a Scorpion Bowl (too similar to the Mai Tai), the Ancient Mariner (too rum-forward for a punch drink) and several other tiki concoctions without success.  I didn't have a grapefruit flavor in the mix, so I thought of the classic Paloma cocktail (tequila, lime juce, and grapefruit soda).  While not really a tiki drink, it has a sufficiently sandy-beach vibe to sit alongside the other cocktails without clashing.  The Aperol Paloma is a common variant that adds some mildly bitter complexity.  And while the blanco tequila was lovely in combination with the citrus, a switch to lightly aged blended rum put the flavors firmly in the right category.  And while I could go for the classic Squirt grapefruit soda, I prefer the less sweet combination of fresh grapefruit juice, soda water, and a bit of agave nectar.  This particular combination didn't yet have a name, so I looked at the coral pink color and thought of the oceanside mindset I was shooting for.  The Coral Current was born.

Recipe
1 oz lightly aged blended rum (Planteray 3-star)
1 oz Aperol
2 oz fresh grapefruit juice
0.5 oz lime juice
0.25 tsp agave nectar or simple syrup
2 oz chilled club soda
-Shake everything but the club soda with ice. Strain over fresh ice and add the sparkling water.  Stir gently.
-To make a punch instead: scale up ingredients proportionally.  Combine everything except club soda in punch bowl with ice or ice ring.  Add club soda and stir gently.

Four-Rum Mai Tai

 

Story

The Mai Tai was one of the early tiki cocktails. There's some debate about who invented it, but cocktail archaeologist Jeff "Beachbum" Berry holds that Trader Vic invented the drink that we know today as the Mai Tai.  A classic daquiris has just three ingredients - rum, lime, and sugar.  A Mai Tai is a daquiris that uses orgeat (sweet almond syrup) as the sugar and adds orange liqueur.  Period.  End of story.  The drink has suffered some recipe drift over the decades, as well as the indignity of cheap syrups, non-fresh citrus, and gimmicky additions.  Far be it from me to discourage experimentation in cocktail creation, but I hold the same dogmatic opinion here as with the Wisconsin Old-Fashioned.  If you make a different drink, call it something else.  Fight me.

Two things of note with this recipe.  The first is the addition of the lime shell, which is a lime half after the juice has been squeezed out.  I got the idea from tiki expert and bar owner Brian Miller, who maintains that shaking with the lime shell adds additional lime notes from the citrus oils therein.  I tend to agree, and I don't get the bitter notes that some people warn of online.  The other interesting thing is the rum blend.  Tiki bartenders are continually tinkering with blends of different rums for their various cocktails, following the thinking that multiple rums can do things that single rums can't.  I don't have the specific bottles that Brian Miller uses, so my mix is a similar combination of demerara rum, unaged Martinique rhum agricole, pot still Jamaican rum, and lightly aged blended rum.    Interesting, incredibly drinkable, and highly adaptable.  I see why the Mai Tai has become a classic.  Cheers!

Recipe

0.75 oz lime juice

0.75 oz orgeat

0.5 oz curacao
0.5 oz each (El Dorado 5, Rhum JM Blanc, Smith & Cross, Appleton signature)
-Add ingredients, lime shell, 4 ice cubes.  Shake.
-Dump into double old fashioned glass, top with crushed ice.
-garnish with mint sprig.

Saturn

 

Story

While rum is the star player in a great many tiki cocktails, gin is an important supporting player.  The Saturn is a chance for gin to act as the sole spirit while surrounded by other tiki stalwarts like falernum and orgeat.  Passion fruit was a popular tiki cocktail ingredient in the early years of tiki because it was unfamiliar and tasted exotic to most Americans.  As it happens, it also pairs well with both gin and rum.  Its distinct fruity flavor can hold its own against the other strong flavors in a tiki mug to create a balanced drink.  The Saturn is an excellent example of this.  The many flavors in the glass come together to form something altogether different and amazing:  sweet and tart, familiar and novel.  A lesser person would say that the Saturn is out of this world, but there will be none of that here.

Recipe

2.5 oz London dry gin
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz passion fruit syrup
0.5 oz velvet falernum
0.5 oz orgeat
-shake with 1 cup pebble ice.  Dump into double old fashioned glass.  Top with pebble ice.
-optional: garnish with cocktail cherry speared between two citrus peel rings.

Ozymandias

 

Story

Ah, the Vieux Carre – a classic New Orleans cocktail created there in the 1930s.  Boozy, bitter, sweet, and smooth, it features a split base of rye and brandy plus sweet vermouth and Benedictine.  The Ozymandias cocktail is a thoughtful modification of the Vieux Carre.  Bartender Nickle Morris, working at the bar Expo in Louisville, Kentucky, decreased the vermouth a bit to make room for Bigallet China China (pronounced SHEE-na SHEE-na).  This complex amaro is made in France by macerating the peels of Valencia and bitter oranges in neutral spirit before distillation, followed by the addition of all the usual amaro suspects – gentian, cinchona bark, clove, and on and on.  The resulting Ozymandias takes the flavor in a subtly different direction.  It’s still boozy, bitter, and sweet, but there’s an additional citrus angle there that makes a difference.  Like its cousin, this cocktail can be served up or over a rock of ice.  I prefer the latter so the drink can open up over time.  
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! 

Recipe

0.75 oz Rittenhouse Rye
0.75 oz brandy or cognac
0.5 oz Bigallet China China
0.5 oz Benedictine
0.5 oz Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
1 dash Bittermens Elemakule Tiki Bitters

-Stir ingredients with ice.  Strain into old fashioned glass over large ice cube or into a coupe or Nick & Nora.  Express lemon twist over drink and use as a garnish.

Elusive Dreams

 

Story

The Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana is an historic hotel that opened in 1930.  Its flagship cocktail, the Hotel Nacional Special, was created around the same time.  It’s a sophisticated daiquiris variant made with rum, pineapple, lime, and apricot liqueur.  The Elusive Dreams modifies the classic template by replacing the apricot with banana liqueur and amping up the deep pineapple flavor by splitting the rum (half pineapple-infused rum, half unaged rum).  The result is a remarkably smooth drink that gives the fruit flavors center stage without tasting strongly like any of them.  The cinnamon hovers way in the background as it does in a lot of tiki drinks, working magic with the rum almost at the edge of awareness.  Be sure to shake this cocktail for a full 30 seconds to aerate it and give it that silky texture.  I’m glad I have to make these each by hand, because if I could just ask someone to bring me one I would do so multiple times.  

Recipe

1 oz Planteray Stiggins’ Fancy pineapple rum
1 oz blended unaged rum (Planteray 3 Stars) or white rum
1 oz pineapple juice
0.75 oz lime juice
0.75 oz cinnamon syrup
0.5 oz banana liqueur  (Giffard Banane du Bresil)
-Shake ingredients with 3-4 medium ice cubes for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe.

Iron Ranger

Story

One of the creators of tiki cocktail culture back in the 1930’s was Victor Bergeron, aka Trader Vic.  The other was Donn Beach (born Ernest Raymond Gantt), whose “Don the Beachcomber” bars were the original establishments from which Trader Vic shamelessly borrowed ideas.  Unlike Vic, who published a dozen recipe books, Beach was famously secretive about his recipes.  He only wrote them down in coded form, meaning they had to be reconstructed through meticulous research by a hero named Jeff Berry.  Berry published the first of his famous recipe books in 1998, helping to inspire the tiki renaissance in the early 21^st century.  The Iron Ranger is a combination of a traditional Beachcomber framework with a whiskey base, which was a favorite trick of Trader Vic’s.  The result is deliciously juicy and drinkable like a classic tiki cocktail, but just when you expect the rum to make an appearance, you get the smoothness of bourbon.  The tartness of the citrus and falernum keep the cocktail from being overly sweet.  I enjoy the aroma of freshly grated cinnamon as a garnish, but you’ll be fine if you omit it.  Cheers!  

Recipe

2 oz bourbon
1 oz pineapple juice
0.75 oz lemon juice
0.5 oz John D Taylor’s velvet falernum
0.5 oz simple syrup
2 dashes angostura bitters

-Combine ingredients in cocktail shaker with a handful of pebble or crushed ice.  Shake until it’s mostly melted.
-Dump everything into a pint glass or tiki mug.  Fill the remainder of the glass with additional pebble or crushed ice.
-Optional garnishes: freshly grated cinnamon, mint bouquet, cinnamon stick. Serve with a straw.

Fog Cutter

 

Story

The Fog Cutter is a classic tiki cocktail recipe from Victor Bergeron, aka Trader Vic.  As one of the two entrepreneurs who pioneered the concept of the tiki bar in the late 1930’s, Vic invented some of the original cocktails that bartenders continue to imitate and refine today.  The Fog Cutter combines Trader Vic’s signature template (rum, orgeat, lemon, orange) with another one of his favorite tools – a blend of multiple base spirits.  This drink manages the same trick that you find in a well-made Long Island Iced Tea:  a bunch of ingredients that don’t seem to match up and a final flavor that doesn’t seem like any of them. This version of the Fog Cutter is from Chicago bartender Paul McGee, who felt that orange juice made the drink flabby and unfocused.  He brought in the orange flavor with dry curacao instead.  The result is a version of the drink that's flavorful and refreshing, with hints of tart citrus and echoes of rum.  Just the thing as the days grow warmer.  Cheers!  

Recipe

1 oz aged Martinique-style rhum
0.5 oz cognac
0.5 oz London dry gin (Ford’s)
1 oz lemon juice
0.75 oz orgeat
0.5 oz dry curacao
0.5 oz amontillado sherry

-Combine ingredients in cocktail shaker with a cup of pebble or crushed ice.  Shake 5-10 seconds.
-Dump everything into a pint glass or tiki mug.  Fill the remainder of the glass with additional pebble or crushed ice.
-Optional garnishes: orange peel, mint bouquet. Serve with a straw.

Toasted Old Fashioned Godfather

 

Story

The Godfather is a simple mix of blended Scotch whisky and amaretto liqueur served over ice.  It became widespread in the 1970s after the movie The Godfather exploded in popularity, likely due to a marketing effort by the makers of amaretto.  Unfortunately, it contains blended Scotch, which just isn’t for me.  Fortunately, someone saved the day by inventing this alternative. Stepping back to the 1800s, the classic Whiskey Cocktail was whiskey, sugar, bitters and water – what we call an Old Fashioned today.  An “improved whiskey cocktail” added a liqueur to expand the flavor of the classic whiskey cocktail, giving us drinks like the Godfather.  At some point someone switched spirits to create the Toasted Old Fashioned Godfather, where the split rye/bourbon base takes the place of the blended Scotch.  The result is a delightfully smooth and rich sipper with a touch of almond.  There aren’t scores of competing flavors here, and that purity is part of its strength.  Not everything needs to be complicated.

Recipe

1 oz rye (Rittenhouse)
1 oz bourbon
0.5 oz amaretto liqueur
2 dashes Angostura bitters
-Stir ingredients with ice.  Strain into old fashioned glass over ice.

-optional: garnish with toasted almonds (really only for looks, the flavor is unchanged)

Division Bell

 

Story

The Last Word is an equal-parts drink of gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and lime juice that dates back to 1915.  After many years out of memory and time, it was unearthed in the early 2000s in the Seattle bar scene.  Like many great cocktails, it inspired a lot of variants, including the Paper Plane (bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, lemon juice) and the Naked & Famous (mezcal, Aperol, yellow Chartreuse, lime juice).  The Division Bell is similar to the latter, but the ingredient substitution and rebalancing make it distinct.  The result is super interesting.  The mezcal flavor is definitely there, but the other ingredients add complexity and variation.  It’s got a balance of sweet, savory, and tart that make it memorable.  Cheers!

Recipe

1 oz mezcal (Del Maguey Vida)
0.75 oz Aperol
0.25 oz maraschino liqueur (Luxardo)
0.75 oz lime juice
Grapefruit twist
-Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. Express grapefruit twist and discard.

District B-13

 

Story

I’m obviously a fan of the Death & Co. family of bars and I’ve learned a lot from their trio of cocktail books.  The third book in the series, Welcome Home, has a well-deserved reputation for talking a lot about becoming a better home bartender and then listing a set of recipes with really obscure ingredients.  This cocktail is one of the few that I could make without a special trip to the store.  Luckily, it’s terrific.  The drink is the sort that creates a flavor journey: there’s a citrus and grape scent, followed by the smooth cognac.  The vermouth and the nutty sherry then get into a bit of a tug-of-war for dominance only to have Cynar waltz in at the end and trounce them both.  The Luxardo adds interesting little grace notes throughout.  The resulting cocktail is bitter and boozy, not too sweet, and definitely worth savoring.

Recipe

2 oz cognac
0.75 oz Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
0.5 oz oloroso sherry
0.25 oz Cynar
1 teaspoon Luxardo maraschino liqueur
-stir ingredients with ice in a mixing glass
-strain into chilled coupe or Nick & Nora.  Express lemon twist and discard.