So I had to resort to hiring a crew to clean up my yard after the wholly inadequate job I did last Fall of putting the gardens to bed. I was outside in the gloaming just now and discovered that my unstoppable bed of mint has put in its debut. This annual appearance always leaves me of two minds. On the one hand, my struggle to keep it in its confined bed becomes more and more like Leiningen vs the Ants each year. On the other hand, mint is the greatest combined cocktail ingredient and garnish since limes.

Lemons?
Screw lemons. They aren’t in the same class.

Cherries either.

The way I see it, a cocktailian has only two choices when he beholds nature’s first offering of mint each year. He can whip up a Mai Tai with a garnish so thick it tickles one’s whole face. Or it is Julep Time, baby! Somehow, I always end up making the same choice. There is time enough for Tiki Month flashbacks later.

Screw waiting for Derby Day. And screw the sickly sweet, maddeningly green concoctions you are too likely to get at a commercial bar or lame home parties when Derby Day comes. The Julep is one of the truly great cocktail categories of the 19th Century, and it is high time it is restored to greatness in the 21st.

That is my recipe. You can omit the other spirits, if you like. If you are a wimp. You can also substitute rye for the bourbon, which I often do, especially if I’m having my Julep before, rather than with food. A Julep at its heart is just spirit, sugar, and mint. How you put it together shows whether you are a contender… or a pretender.

OK, time for a new series of posts for this and future Tiki Months: Garnishing!

Watch out, Kaiser Penguin. Doug is gunning for you.

I am hardly “gunning” for Rick. He retired the World Champion Garnisher trophy long ago.
But, since he hasn’t posted in almost two years, I thought it’d be a shame to let the sport completely die….

Garnishes are always cool in a cocktail. In some cases they are functional, in others ornamental. The best are both. And garnishes are particularly important for Tiki drinks. A really kicking Tiki garnish is like the Triple Lutz in figure skating; it isn’t technically required, but you won’t win the Gold Medal unless you pull one off.

As seen during MxMo: Lime

The first garnish I want to post on is one I’m calling the Kulahua Orange Peel. I’ve never seen it done before, so I’m claiming its invention. It is a modification of the Tattooed Lime Wedges I make, which are a direct reverse-engineer from Audrey Saunders’ Pegu Club.

You can physically do the tattoo technique on lemons as well, but there is so little visual contrast between pith and peel that it is seldom worth doing, really. I had never really thought to try with oranges though, chiefly because I don’t usually have them around in my bar. This Tiki Month I’ve made the commitment to working out how to employ the “sweet citrus” without ruining drinks, so I keep lots on hand right now. After tattooing a lime for a guest one night, I was staring at some left-over wedges the next day when it occurred to me to see just how cool a tattooed orange would look. The result is not only cool-looking, but a serious garnish multi-tasker.

To start, you will need a good, clean, unblemished orange of a variety with thicker skin. You will also need a citrus zester like the one pictured below. It is a kitchen tool with four or five tiny channel knife blades in a row on the end. One of these is also hugely helpful for making falernum, or even marmalades.

This will make a mess, so hold the orange over a towel or the trash, depending on if you have a use for the zest at the moment. Press the upward curved edge of the zester against the skin of the orange, and draw it toward you in a sweeping diagonal line or curve. Shake the zest loose, and repeat. Try to build an interlocking patchwork of different runs and curves.

It takes a little practice to get the hang, so expect to have a few fairly abused-looking oranges your first try or two. After you get good at it, you can cover a piece of fruit in tats in about a minute.
When the entire surface of the orange is covered in lines, you could cut it into wedges, as with the limes shown above. But oranges have a characteristic that limes do not: A thick skin. This allows us to make the Kulahua Peel. Set aside your zester and grab your basic, household peeler.

Hold the orange upright and peel it all the way around the fruit, rotating it around the stem and flower axis. Be sure to press hard against the fruit to flatten it slightly where you are peeling to get the widest, sturdiest slice you can. The result will be a long, half-circle of orange zest. You can get two per orange.

The peel is the same size and shape as you’d get peeling an orange for an extra large Old-Fashioned twist, but the tattooing gives it texture, and the added bonus of the jungle foliage edge that I was not expecting when I first gave this a whirl.

This twist is a fabulous base for at least three families of cool Tiki (or other) garnishes.

The first of these you may have already seen earlier this month adorning the Queen’s Road Cocktail. Cut two pairs of deep diagonal lines, following the zester grooves wherever possible, and weave the peel onto the edge of a cocktail glass, giving you Princess Kulahua’s Tiara.

The Tiara is nifty, and gorgeous, but it has a hard time staying in place, and won’t work well with coupe glasses. I like it, though.

The lovely though slightly unwieldly Princess Kulahua’ Tiara is hardly all you can do with your Kulahua Peels. The next thing to try is to curl the peel up into a narrow cone and fix it in shape with a discrete toothpick, turning it into a pretty flower.

I already employed a basic one on my post about the Beachbum’s Own.

This Kulahua’s Bouquet is nice on it’s own, but you can dress it up nicely. Notice that I left the point of the toothpick on the inside of the flower and pointing up. That way, you can use the point to secure something inside the flower, such as the cherry you saw in the picture atop this post.

You can stick any garnish element of a nice contrasting color in the flower center, and doing so covers up the lighter sheen of pith on the underside of the peel. Another example I’ll offer, that works well with all sorts of drinks, but especially the Mai Tai, is to thread a sprig of lightly bruised mint or two down through the orange peel. If you leave the stem on the mint, it helps keep the garnish on the surface of the drink.

The last use that I’ve come up with, which I call Kulahua’s Crater, is a wrap for a spent lime hull. Simply wrap the peel around the spent lime and run a single toothpick through, making sure to go through where the ends of the peel overlap. It looks great whether with the outside up…

…or perhaps better, it adds some extra pizazz with the hollow turned up. Just drop a sugar cube in there and douse with 151. Apply a lighter, and presto!

Tiki garnishes are really little mixed-media sculptures in fruit, foliage, paper and wood. Go wild with them. They can be complex or simple, extravagant or minimalist. Just make sure they are fun.

And hey! This post is part of Tiki Month 2013 here at the Pegu Blog! Be sure to look around for LOTS more Tiki stuff all February!

One thing I hope to do this year’s Tiki Month is find some good modern original Tiki drinks to try and to feature here. Lo and behold, I wake up first thing the morning of Day One to a Tweet from @Dagreb of Nihil Utopia, alerting my to the I Should Buy a Boat, an original by Joe at Measure & Stir.

If all you people are so Johnny on the Spot with the Tiki tips, this Tiki Month will go smoothly for all of us!

Above is a picture of Joe’s concoction. You need to click through to his site for more, larger pictures, as well as his exact recipe, and why his proportions are as they are. He unaccountably fails to mention in his discussion that this is a Tiki drink, but with rum, grapefruit and exotic spice syrup, I declare it so. In his post on the original version he did note that its spiritual godfather is Don the Beachcomber, though.

The presentation, though certainly beautiful and elaborate enough to be Tiki, isn’t what I’m looking to do this time of year, so when I took my shot at it, I went with crushed ice and curled the grapefruit slice into a flower with mint stamens. Also, I used equal parts vanilla syrup and cinnamon syrup, rather than Joe’s combined syrup. Frankly, it is still too much sweet, but the ice cuts things a lot. The challenge is to use the minimum of the syrup needed to still deliver the spice flavors. This is the best round I came up with:

Fez found at FezMonger

And hey! This post is part of Tiki Month 2013 here at the Pegu Blog! Be sure to look around for LOTS more Tiki stuff all February!

The garnish wars look ready to heat up on the Cocktailosphere once more. Yay! (Where’s my channel knife?)

Well, Mixology Monday LXIV is in the books. I happily hijacked it this time around in search of more content for of my annual Tiki blog-a-palooza, and boy did the internet deliver. There were 35 blog posts, with five more contributions over on the eGullet forums as well. I asked for more than just drinks, and got some molecular mixology, some food, some garnish, vessels, and some good old Tiki memories. But mostly, as it should be, I got drinks. There were classics, riffs on classics, and originals. As for contributors, the usual suspects were in, as well as a raft of new and up and coming bloggers. A few old silverbacks even reared up on their hind legs and let their Tiki roar.

Without further ado, here we go!

I’m going to lead with Rowley’s Whiskey Forge, because his post on Jellied Mai Tais made me call my wife to tell her to pick up Knox gelatin right that moment. I wonder what Don and Vic would have thought of molecular mixology. My suspicion is that they both would have secretly hated it, but would both also have become masters of it, each claiming they invented it.

There was a strong international contingent this time around, as probing the appeal of Tiki transcends all boundaries. We all love our pagan Polynesian citrus-rum-spice-everything-else goodness.

Danish blogger Andrea writes three blogs, a food blog and a cocktail blog in Danish, and Gin Hound in English. It is there that she forgoes her love of gin to craft the herbal school original offering, Weeping Ukulele.

Louis-Florian Tatsuhito is a Franco-japanese musician and sound artist who is documenting his cocktail explorations at Le Trou d’Argent. He offers us a passionfruit treat that certainly fills the faux-Polynesian bill, but also couldn’t be more, um, French/Japanese if he tried: 膣 : Vagina.

Polish cocktail blogger, Tarasco Bar first rolls out the classic Blue Hawaiian, then fiddles with the color (and flavor) balance to produce a tarter and more even-sounding version, the Red Hawaiian. He blogs in Polish, but always provides an English translation that is annoyingly better written than lots of English language blogs of all sorts.

Speaking of “furriners” who write English better than they have any right to, my Tiki idol Tiare, of A Mountain of Crushed Ice, brings us two drinks. The the first is a Beachbum Berry drink, the Tiki Revival. It is presented in the flat-out awesome Tiki mug you see above. She follows it up with the muskily delicious sounding coffee-based original she calls the Tiki Torch.

François Monti, of the french-language blog Bottoms Up, discusses the Molokai Mule, one of the better examples of later, juice-heavy Tiki recipes. (A Google translation, with some charm all its own can be read here.)

My good buddy Tony Harion of Mixing Bar in Brazil begins with a discussion of Brazil’s belated warming to the Tiki phenomenon. He then focuses on the greatest of Tiki drinks, the Mai Tai (sorry, Zombie guys), while engaging in some magnificent Rule 2. He then does what all Tiki-philes eventually do, and riffs on said Mai Tai, offering up the Uai Tai, a Mai Tai with some Cachaça. You can also read his post in the original Portuguese.

Next up, we have three Canadian posts. Here is where I would on principle make some joke about how they are really Americans and not foreign at all, but the Canadians have heard it all already, most Americans don’t realize that it’s a joke, and other international types think we are both weird anyway. So here we go.

Bitter monger Janice Mansfield of House Spirits (the company and the blog) had her own festival similar to Tiki Month in January. She pledged to drink Fernet Branca every day. This worked out so well that she has carried the spirit into Mixology Monday. She takes some of her acquired Fernet wisdom and produces The Misfits, an herbal-school Tiki original that I’m sure Don the Beachcomber would have appreciated.

Mackenzie Wheeler of The Spirit of Imbibing produced the delicious looking and sounding Terror on the High Seas. This one uses one of the more delicious but pain-in-the-ass ingredients for home mixology, Port.

My buddy Dagreb of Nihil Utopia is on the wagon or something. (Is there anything sadder than a booze-blogger taking the Cure?) The upside for us is that after a round of his own Rule 2, he offers up some Tiki tots for the Designated Driver or those who need to extend their stay a bit before driving home. Pictured above is the Jamaique Fleur Café, and he follows that with the Falooklyn, a… I dunno what it is. Read about it.

Back to America The United States (Happy, Canadians?), homeland of Tiki (and cocktails over all, for that matter). Specifically, we head to South Florida, where something must be in the water, or maybe the rum, because both entrants from that region work on the same Tiki icon: The hollowed out pineapple drinking vessel. {Flips a coin}

Joe Garcia of Basic Civilization does the Chief Lapu Lapu as his offering. He intros it with an amusing take on the history behind the name (Spoiler: Magellan dies), and natters on upon his usual hobby horse of buying everything on eBay. (Gimme a break, Joe. I’m Episcopalian. There are fewer of us every day, but somebody’s gotta pay retail.) After that he goes step by step in making both the vessel and the drink.

The Atomic Grog blog’s Hurricane Hayward also namechecks the cranky old Polynesian chief who told Magellan to “get off my lawn” as intro to his hollowed out pineapple. Both use the same tool, but Hurricane uses the top as a lid, then offers us to other classic recipes for pineapple potation: The Pineapple Paradise and the Pineapple Surprise.

Guys, I’ll indulge myself in a little flashback to Tiki Month 2010, when I posted this about Ohio bartender Zak Renzetti-Voit’s turning the whole pineapple drinking vessel thing on its head… literally.

The eGullet crowd came up with a ton of cocktails to try, and a delicious-looking Tiki shrimp dish as well. The thread where they all went up over there is here, or if internet forums scare you, I digested them in a separate post right here on the Pegu Blog. Thanks to Frog Princesse, Zachary, Dan Perrigan, Katie Loeb, Kerry Beal, and another foreign entrant, Australian contributor Haresfur, who used the International Date Line to enter late and still be on time.

Very new blog The Mix Lab makes it into its first Mixology Monday with two of the richest-sounding cocktails of this MxMo. The first is an Improved Rum Fizz that shows egg whites can be Tiki too. The second is a coffee-infused number by the name of Starbuck. (To the lawyers of a certain barista mega-employer, I bear no responsibility for this name, I only report!) The garnish on this one is particularly cool and Tiki.

The next group of posts are all what I feel like calling “Donnish Drinks”. I haven’t made many of them, so I’m not sure, but they have the feel of the Beachcomber’s style of Tiki.

Rowen of San Francisco’s Fogged in Lounge offers the original Rongorongo, a spicy, dark, rummy concoction, as well as a look at his impressive collection of Moai Tiki mugs.

First time MxMo participant Tri2Cook wanders off the eGullet reservation to blog the original Crackin’ Jenny’s Teacup. The drink is also suitable for International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Read his post to see why.

Colonel Tiki is one of my original Tiki Muses, the Board of Tiki Idols, and also one of those silverback cocktail bloggers I alluded to at the start of all this. He presents the Rio Tonga, an amazing amalgamation of spices, cachaça, bitters, and just enough fruit. The dim, mysterious photo above is typical, by the by, of all the Colonel’s pix. I think they capture the Tiki vibe perfectly.

Chicago Craft (and occasionally Tiki) bar, The Whistler gives us the fabulously garnished Free Rider. Given that it combines Lemon Hart 151, Benedictine, and Fernet Branca, I think that delicate orchid in the garnish is damn near false advertising!

Portland Oregon’s leading (only?) Libertarian, Jacob Grier of Liquidity Preference trots out a drink to salve the savage heart of his 49ers lovin’ boss, calling it the Bitter End. Another Fernet Branca run at Tiki, the only thing about this drink that bothers me is that Jacob has access to better paper umbrellas than I do.

Wordsmithing Pantagruel’s Ed features Chartreuse in his creation. A riff off the Improved Chartreuse Swizzle, the Gilligan’s Ginger Swizzle is a frosty, frosty glass of high-octane Tiki funk. Ed also includes two other Tiki-fitting creations he’s produced during his recent blog hiatus, the Tornadiki and the Einbahnstraße.

Speaking of elusive silverbacks of the Cocktailosphere, Rumdood himself (who is not a Tiki blogger) appears from the mist to give us an update and improvement on an earlier creation of his, the Absinthe-Minded Professor. With a full ounce of absinthe, some maraschino, some Smitty, and more, this learned instructor seems not to be trifled with. Quick, go read Matt’s post before he slips back into the obscuring jungle.

Paul Willenberg of, um, Portland (he’s the only guy in town without a blog) brings this wowser: The Kahlua Pork Old-fashioned. This one is worth a read, let me say. I do have one question, Paul. Do the pig ears lend flavor to the falernum, or are they there to collagen up the texture?

I’ll finish the Donnish Drinks section with my own post on the Missionary’s Downfall. I’m pretty sure this one belongs in this section because Don created it. With mint, rum, honey, and fruit brandy, this light concoction has a big, mysterious flavor. Since it’s written by me, I’m sure you’ll read every magnificent word….

Zach the Venture Mixologist just got back from Hawaii itself, America’s Polynesian frontier. He brought with him that most elusive of Tiki ingredients, a bottle of Okolehao, the unique spirit of Maui. He uses it to lend some of the dreaded authenticity to his Polynesian pop, the Shaka.

At Shake, Strain, and Sip, Scott Diaz does an Almost Tiki Month in a Post, with four fully fleshed out and beautifully photographed cocktails. It took some doing to decide on a picture to use here, but I settled on the Castaway. Surrounding it is a short history of Tiki, as well as a classic Mai Tai, Don’s Navy Grog, and a Pimm’s Plantation.

Speaking of Navy Grog, my nephew and family cocktail apprentice Duncan also comes in for his first ever cocktail blog post with a run down of his Super (punch)Bowl edition of Vic’s Navy Grog. Read this post. Duncan is one of them genuine Disney Imagineers and is learning his cocktail-fu fast. You’ll want to be able to say you read him back when.

The Hardest Working Man in the Cocktailosphere™, Fred Yarm the Cocktail Virgin leads off the group of what I’ll of course call the “Vic-like drinks”. That said, his drink is Don’s Beach Planter, by the Beachcomber, not the Trader. I may be way off since I haven’t made this one yet, but this Zombie variant just looks more like one of Vic’s sour/sweet citrusy efforts than most stuff Don ran off.

DJ Hawaiianshirt splices the Main Brace over at Spirited Remix. He spends four interesting paragraphs exploring the meaning of this piece of nautical jargon before claiming he’s avoided nautical jargon. The drink employs a hearty amount of red burgundy wine and is the only alcoholic Tiki drink I’ve seen this year that doesn’t use any hard spirit at all.

Jordan of Chemistry of the Cocktail goes with his Ahau’s Dram. This one also has roots as a Beachcomber original, but the changes seem to make for a more Vicish result.

Half of Scofflaw’s Den (Marshall) loves me and posts on a find from Remixed, the Ankle Breaker. I intend to try this one, maybe tonight. The other half of Scofflaw’s Den is dead to me, and I hope the Tiki Gods fill his bed with molten lava.

So, SeanMike’s made the list?
We’re on it….

Marc of A Drinker’s Peace focuses on dangerous garnishes, a hallmark of Tiki. His Flaming Boats Don’t Float is a how-to on giving your insurance agent a heart-attack. This is a helluva fun post, but Marc needs to go back and put in the proportions to actually make the drink in which to present your pyrotechnics!

Bartender-blogger Brian Thomas of Bottle of Swan posts on his neighbor’s dog, Tiki. Wait… what? Oh, he gets around to a drink too. First, he carves a gorgeous Tiki mug out of a young coconut, which he then eats instead of drinking out of, before finally giving us the Monkey Business.

The final Viclike cocktail comes from Mixology Monday Supreme High King, Paul Clarke of the Cocktail Chronicles. He declares he has now become as lazy as Beachbum Berry lies about being, and so went looking for the ultimate Tiki drink for the mixer who has no Tiki setup at hand and no time to assemble it. The result is the simple and elegant Trade Wind Cocktail, which demonstrates that the right name can take certain classic-style concoctions and turn them into a ticket to the Polynesia that never was.

Now, after my comments earlier on Mai Tai supremacy, you Zombie-philes get your turn.

Dennis of Rock & Rye gives us a short history of the grandpappy drink of the entire Tiki movement, then offers Ted Haigh’s version of the iconic Zombie, and ruminates on the why of so many Zombie variations, since even the bartenders who first made them didn’t know what the recipe was!

Ian Lauer of Tempered Spirits rounds out the drink offerings this Mixology Monday with more history on the George Romero of Tiki, Don the Beachcomber. He then gives us three versions of the Zombie, all claimed by Don. Finally, he gives more places to look for other variations, and touches on some good music selections for when you drink them all. (But not in the same seating. Only 2 per customer!)

Pittsburgh columnist Hal Klein, who blogs also at This Man’s Kitchen, heads us home with Tiki Memories of great faux Polynesian haunts of his halcyon days of youth like the Tonga Room and the Tiki Ti. These are the places that bridged the end of the Golden Age with today’s revival.

The last word of all goes to The Old Town Alchemy Company. Jon missed the deadline for a full post, but prompts us all to watch this Public Service Announcement about the effects of Zombie consumption from British comedian Bill Connolly. I shamelessly steal the video to embed here so that you will be sure to watch it and be forewarned!

That’s it folks! Thanks for joining us and see you all soon. If MxMo has gotten you in the Tiki mood, please stick around here for the rest of this and every February, when this old joint goes from classic cocktails to all Tiki, all the time.

And one last thing: Paul Clarke Wants You! … for MxMo host. Paul’s schedule has been hectic lately, and as several posters this month have mentioned, a few months have been Mixology Monday-less of late. If you are an established blogger who’d enjoy a tremendous amount of extra work but lots of luscious content, contact Paul through the Mixology Monday home site and inquire about offering your services. This is my third time hosting MxMo, and it is Not Just a Job, It’s an Adventure!

Aloha, everyone!

Lei Lani Volcano
Mug: Generic Ceramic Coconut
Available: Bar Supplies

When I was revving up for Tiki Month this year, I put out a call on the Tiwtter Machine for some favorite Tiki recipe’s that I had not blogged already. (For a limited time only, you can still follow me on Twitter for free at @dawinship!) One of the more promising results among the suggestions was the Lei Lani Volcano, a genuine Walt Disney World Polynesian Village Resort recipe from the 1970s.

Okay, the recipe looked promising, and I didn’t read it’s background until after I made the first round of these. I’ve blogged about drinking at Walt Disney World a couple of times before. The long and short of my experience is that while (almost) all bartenders at Disney World are pleasant and efficient, and a few bars, notably the one at the California Grill atop the Contemporary Resort, are outstandingly equipped and staffed, the world’s most successful creativity company is not known for it’s brilliance in creating original works of cocktailian art.
Further, as I’ve already documented this Tiki Month, the 1970s were not the height of Tiki mixology either….

But all that aside, the Lei Lani Volcano did come recommended by more than one person, and it does feature an ingredient I had not previously used in cocktails of any kind, Guava Nectar. More on that ingredient after the recipe.

Guava nectar isn’t exactly the most common beverage out there, and I was warned that most available bottled stuff was so goopy or over-sweetened with HFCS that it would ruin, well, anything you put it in. Fortunately, my Twitter buddy and fellow Tiki Month blogger, Joe Garcia gave me a great way to produce premium Guava Nectar cheaply and swiftly.

“Cheaply” and “swiftly” are adjectives not often associated with scratch ingredients described on the internet by foodies or cocktail geeks….

That’s very true, but why are you inserting yourself into this fairly straight-forward recipe post?

No reason, I just wanted to make that point.

Oh, that and I wanted to say that you can follow me on Twitter, too!

He’s shameless, folks. I apologize.

Anyway, Goya, the Hispanic foods giant, makes a line of frozen pure fruit pulp pureé called Fruta. Among the fruits offered in the line is Guava. It comes in 14 oz. bags and is awesome. Your regular grocery store likely does not carry Fruta, but your nearby large Mexican grocery store does. To make Guava nectar, simply place one 14 oz bag of frozen guava pulp in a saucepot with an equal volume of water (about 12 oz.). Stir as you bring it just to a low boil, then immediately remove form the heat. Let cool, and bottle. It’s delicious all by itself.

The resulting Lei Lani Volcano is… damn good! The guava lends it an immediate tropical essence that is unusual, even if you’ve been spending a month or longer immersing yourself in faux Polynesian potables. Neither is it overly sweet (the usual first complaint about Disney Drinks™). It is an excellent use of coconut rum, which provides a nice, noticeable underlayer to all the fruit, without standing out so much that you are forced to deal with its rather mediocre quality.

This is a fruity drink, and offers little for the spirits connoisseur to appreciate. But it is nicely balanced, the flavors clear and identifiable, and delicious. It’s probably good for you, too. I think that you’ll like this one if you try it.

A whole pineapple as a Garnish? Yep, this is a Tiki drink… and looks delicious.

@Rumdood’s tweet says it all: “Garnish Pr0n“

Dietsch on Garnishes. Decorative vs. functional.

This month’s MxMo theme is Flores de Mayo, presented by Dave at The Barman Cometh. When I first saw this, I figured that I’d take this month off. I figured that since the only floral cocktail I could think of off the top of my head was the awesome Aviation, and I assumed it will be well-covered elsewhere. (As I write this, I get a ping-back that tells me Kim of Understanding Cocktails is already fulfilling my prediction.) But then I realized that I have in fact recently been drinking a fairly hefty number of a cocktail in which the floral element is utterly critical: The Mint Julep.

Uh, Doug…
Mint is an herb, not a flower.
Stretching much?

That’s true, but the floral element I’m talking about is Orange Flower Water. Without it, you can’t make a really kicking Mint Julep. I know it is a little late to write about Juleps, what with the Kentucky Derby already in the books, but that leads to my whole post. Today, the only time anyone drinks Juleps is on Derby Day. Why? Because 97.235% of all Mint Juleps made today are… nasty. (Source: Institute of Statistics I Pulled Out of My Ass But Are Totally Accurate Anyway)
Even among the cocktail-knowledgeable readership of this blog, I’ll wager that half the readers have never had a decent one, and fewer still of you have had one that has you looking forward to another before you even finish the first. What is the secret?
I’ve written about Mint Juleps before, emphasizing different elements.

First, on the question of Rye versus Bourbon, I prefer Rye. Bourbon, the modern default, usually tastes better at the first sip, but by the time you get through an entire glass of this minty sweet concoction, the rye maintains the drinker’s interest better. I think the reason is that the spice in Rye stands in greater contrast to the sugar, keeping the palate clean.

Second, Juleps benefit from some added complexity. During the heyday of the drink, there were a multitude of recipes for all manner of Juleps. A good number of these looked more like Tiki concoctions than classic cocktails. I don’t get so Byzantine, but I do think that Mint Juleps make the step from upper crust hunch punch to serious drink when you add in some good dark rum to the mix.

Third, proper handling and dosing of the sugar and mint are of course mandatory. It’s easy to yield to temptation and use too much. You can easily lose all depth and interest of the liquor if you use too much. I imagine that this is how the julep dropped out of public favor. Prohibition left us, during and for a while after, with nothing but rot-gut liquor. If you have only this to drink, then a candy-flavored Mint Julep is a great way to disguise the awful taste. But when booze started to get good again, people seem to have retained the Prohibition recipe.
If you want to enjoy your Julep as a good cocktail, use your sugar sparingly. And muddle less mint, less aggressively. Instead, use a huge, lush, Mai Tai-like spray of it as a garnish for looks and aroma.

Do all that, and you’ll have a delicious, but still not remarkable drink. The final ingredient that you seldom see in a Julep recipe is a tiny amount of something called Orange Flower Water. Like bitters, orange flower water (and it’s sidekick, rose flower water) is an ingredient where a little goes a long way. A mere quarter teaspoon full will completely open up this drink already filled with powerful and fragrant ingredients. It subtly transforms the essence of your Mint Julep from a more or less culinary feel into something that evokes the fresh, natural outdoors of the rural South. (I’d elaborate on the transformation more, but I’m starting to sound like Alex Ott… even to myself.) It’s a very subtle ingredient, in that you really only notice it when you leave it out and you find you really miss it.

Orange flower water (also known as orange blossom water) is not the easiest ingredient to find in your grocery store, even when they do carry it. Some stores will carry it in the spice aisle. Others have it in the baking section. Still others will have it in the ethnic food section, usually under the rather broad sobriquet of “Mediterranean”. Most stores won’t carry it at all. There is quite a bit of it available on the internet of course. The brand I use, and you most often find in regular stores, is A Monteux. Amazon is out right now, but here’s another from a company called Malandel. (Sixteen ounces is a lot of OFW. I can’t find a good answer on how long it keeps, but since it is nothing but volatiles in distilled water, I’m sure it gets weak long before you’ll use 16 ounces.)
Darcy notes that orange flower water from France is different from the stuff by the same name from the Eastern Mediterranean. The French is more aromatic and less flavorful, making it better suited for cocktail applications. Be careful when you go looking for it.

If you have access to fresh orange blossoms, you could make your own water as well. There are two ways I’ve found, and since I can’t get my hands of orange blossoms around here, I have tried neither yet.
The easiest way is to macerate your orange blossoms in distilled water, then put in mason jars and steep in the sun for a couple of weeks, until the aroma whacks you when you open the jar. I suspect that this method will produce a more eastern kind of flower water with more flavor than you might want, however.
The other method is the one more commonly described for making rose flower water, where you actually distill the aromatics out of the petals. (I first saw this on Good Eats. Alton Brown just popped up on Twitter, then promptly announced he was ending Good Eats after 249 episodes. Follow him and call him a quitter.)
Place a brick in a large pot with a domed lid. Fill the pot with blossoms and distilled water to the top of the brick. Put a heat-safe glass bowl in the brick. Put the lid on upside down and fill with ice. Bring the pot to a good simmer and the aromatic steam will condense on the icy lid, running down the curve and dripping into the bowl. This method sounds fun, but hard to balance.
If anyone has done either method, I’d love to hear how it went. I’ll be doing it with rose petals from my garden this Summer.

Of course, orange flower water is good from more than just Mint Juleps. The big Kahuna among cocktails is the Ramos Gin Fizz and numerous other fizzes. It’s also a common ingredient in all sorts of desserts.

Orange flower water is not terribly expensive, and will last you longer than a bottle of bitters, so give it a whirl. Than head back to Dave’s and check out the rest of this Mixology Monday!