“Oh, I think we’ll be the judge of that!
Source: Meme-O-Rama

Twitter is, no doubt, a terrible time-suck. I can think of any number of great cocktail blogs whose death can be attributed to being cut up into 140 character chunks and fed to the big blue bird. And if you follow and are followed by the wrong sort of tweeter, Twitter can be a hive of scum and villainy so awful it makes Mos Eisley spaceport look like a convent.

But if you have the right followers, Twitter can also be a great place to start conversations and develop new ideas.

One such idea we’ve been kicking around this month, that I believe first arose from the mind of Joe Garcia, an otherwise excellent blogger, tweeter, and commenter who apparently constantly teeters on the edge of washing his clothes with dried coconut flakes, is the cocktail class we’ll call Tiki Compliant.

A Tiki Compliant drink is one that is not, due to its origin, history, name, etc., a Tiki drink, but which sure as hell works as a Tiki drink. If you were to find one of these cocktails on a real Tiki bar menu, the ignorant drinker would not be able to tell the difference, and the average cocktailian would say, “you know, that really makes sense if you think about it.” Even the serious Tiki types, the ones who will argue vehemently until 3 in the morning that the Q.B. Cooler is really the prototype of the Mai Tai, will look at a Tiki Compliant drink and go, “Eh. I’ll allow it.”

To be clear, people who argue that the Q. B. Cooler is the progenitor of Trader Vic’s Mai Tai are known, clinically in the Latin as, “wrong“. They are hapless Donn Beach fanboys deluding themselves about this subject, and who, if outnumbered by drinkers who test positive for “correct”, are always nine seconds away from making this YouTube video:

And yes, I am aware that this Q.B. Cooler thing is espoused by no less a light than Jeff Beachbum Berry himself. But Jeff is forgiven for it because he has to sell tickets to seminars, and Rule 4 says there is no success like controversy.

I want everyone to know that Guy’s opinions are his own, and if you don’t like them, address your flames to his Twitter feed, @TheGuyPegu, that way your mascara won’t run all over me.

And now, if I may have my post back before you completely derail it?

By all means. My work here is done.

So what are some Tiki Compliant drinks, and why?

I’ll start with the one that started this whole process, the Dark ‘n Stormy. Intellectual property issues aside, the Dark ‘n Stormy is no Tiki drink. It has only two ingredients. And while it is from an island, it is one on the wrong side of the world and which is known chiefly as the home of funny shorts and where Bloomberg runs off to hide when there is to much unremoved snow or storm water lying around for his limousine to navigate the streets of New York City. But with its particularly dark rum, and the spicy sweetness of ginger beer creating such a mysterious and unaccountably deep blend of flavors, the DnS just works.

Another obviously compliant non-Tiki drink is the Hemingway Daiquiri. The ingredient list reads a lot more like a Tiki drink this time, with two citruses, rum, and an oddball liqueur in the mix. But it clearly isn’t Tiki again because it’s Caribbean and it’s godfather is one of the least Tiki old SOB’s I can think of who nonetheless slept that much on a boat.

There are lots more, lesser known drinks that are Tiki Compliant to one degree or another, like this new Martinique Cocktail from Chow.

And how about drinks considered Tiki drinks that should really be considered Tiki Compliant? The Carioca Hawaiian that I blogged earlier this Tiki Month is maybe one of these. It is called a Tiki drink because of the recipe, and because it was invented as a Tiki drink to begin with.
But it isn’t really that Tiki in its actual flavor. Do we perhaps call it more Tiki Compliant than straight up Tiki?

It’s a fun game to play. What is your favorite Tiki Compliant cocktail?

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!

Jordan Devereaux of Chemistry of the Cocktail posted an original drink early on this Tiki Month entitled the Suit, Tie and Lei. To be honest, I didn’t know what to do with it, partly because I do not have one ingredient, Aperol, and partly because this did not look like a Tiki drink or a drink that I’d particularly like.

But I trust Jordan’s taste, and yesterday I went ahead and made up one, using a old bottle of Campari I haven’t gotten around to pouring out have been keeping around. And what do you know, it is remarkably good, and has far more of a Tiki vibe than I would have thought possible. It really demonstrates the transformative power of the kind of long list of ingredients that Tiki features, because no drink including Campari, Angostura, vermouth, and allspice should be this smooth and soft. It is a helluva lot more in your face than many Tiki drinks, but still remains accessible and possesses that undefinable new gestalt flavor that just isn’t any of its ingredients that makes Tiki drinks what they are.

Go check Jordan’s site for the recipe!

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!

Among my favorite blogging compatriots is Joe Garcia of Basic Civilization. While not strictly a Tiki blogger, or even strictly a cocktail blogger, Joe does both of those well. In fact, he kinda annoys me. See, he thinks he possesses a better sense of sartorial style than I. He is wrong, though I admit he has far more opportunity to indulge in haberdasherian excellence—He actually sees his customers face to face on a recurring basis.

More annoying is the fact that he may in fact be funnier than I am. Take a few minutes to read this piece, entitled “It’ll be fun,” they said. That is some Dave Barry, James Lileks, Patrick McManus-level stuff there.

And his cocktail posts also exhibit this sort of amusement value at times, as he does in the Tiki Month post I want to Rule 2 highlight here.
Since he has no picture, and the part I want to you to visit his site for is the writing, I’ll actually post the recipe here, and discuss. Joe calls his original drink the Aku-Capo Cooler. He actually offers two versions of it, but I will stick with #1, the better one.

Why two versions of the drink, you ask?
Read the damn post, say I!

I’ve modified his recipe in two ways. First, Joe wants you to rim the glass with dried, ground coconut. This is a pain in the ass to accomplish. Second, he wants you to shake the drink and serve on crushed ice, rather than blend it. Since he also thinks the Cooler is a bit on the sweet side, my solution is simply to blend the drink, rather than shake. This increases the cold water content. The cold water damps down the sweet and lets the other flavors come forward.

Don’t get me wrong, the Aku-Kapo Cooler is still on the sweeter side, but I really like it. I’ve served to a number of guests so far this month, and they’ve liked it to. I didn’t tell them they were supposed to be getting a coconut rim, because what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

I’d like to thank Rowan, in the sense that he is one of my fellow bloggers who is helping turn this year’sTiki Month into something of a month-long, slow-rolling, Mixology Monday-type blog carnival.

I’d also like to thank Rowan, in the sense of “Thank you sooooo very much for this festive earworm you’ve given me!” in his latest effort.

Yeah, he calls this drink the FM. And yeah, it’s good. It is a nicely musky mix of grapefruit and chocolate that makes a very effective drink for after-dinner relaxation. It also gives me a use for that aging bottle of creme de cacao I’ve been storing.

Sip an FM, and you’ll endure no static at all. And now hopefully I’ve gotten rid of the worm by inflicting it on you. Be sure you follow the link to check the recipe, and Rowan’s far classier, less garishly Tiki photo.

Oh, and enlarge my photo to see how I embedded a paper umbrella stem in a solid block of ice; a metaphor for trying to jam an icepick in my ear to remove Steely Dan….

It took about a week.

Maker’s Mark has now completed the legendary and incredibly difficult New Coke Maneuver.

After backlash from customers, the producer of Maker’s Mark bourbon is reversing a decision to cut the amount of alcohol in bottles of its famous whiskey.

Rob Samuels, Maker’s Mark’s chief operating officer, said Sunday that it is restoring the alcohol volume of its product to its historic level of 45 percent, or 90 proof. Last week, it said it was lowering the amount to 42 percent, or 84 proof, because of a supply shortage.

“We’ve been tremendously humbled over the last week or so,” Samuels, grandson of the brand’s founder, said of customers’ reactions.
—NBC News (H/T: @TeeKeeMon)

I didn’t quite have the guts to predict this when I posted about it last week. You can see from the post title that I cut out a lot of my speculation, in part because it would have been so risky, and in part because I wanted to focus on the bind Maker’s was in economically and marketing-wise.

But I kinda think they pulled it off. Most giant corporate entities who try similar maneuvers, planned or not, (I’m looking at you Netflix and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince and Now Is Once Again Known as Prince™) fail like Hitler’s push on Stalingrad. But I’m betting Maker’s has pulled it off. And they pulled it off because of the fact that they were honest about why they made the move in the first place.

They had to do something, as I outlined before.

If they had just jacked up the price, with a few dry stories about supply constraints in business publications, customers would have just noticed the price increase and said, “Aw, sheeoot! Maker’s is so damned expensive alluva sudden. They’re a awfully proud of their product these days. I’ll be proud of my Jim Beam for less.”

If they had constrained supply, bars and restaurants would have stopped making it a staple brand. And cutomers not finding it on shelves would have said, “Hmmm. No Maker’s these days. I’ve always wanted to see what the fuss was with this Four Roses….”

If they’d just tried to quietly lower the proof with the bullcrud explanation that customers wanted less booze in their booze, as Jack Daniels (barely) got away with in an era before Twitter and FaceBook lynch mobs roamed the Earth, in this age, where Twitter and FaceBook lynch mobs roam the Earth, they would have been crucified with comments like this:

Alert drunkard Chris Sharp brought this unfathomable blasphemy to my attention and I feel it my sworn duty to bring it to yours.

“I was outraged,” says Sharp, a once avid Jack drinker. “They continue to claim in their ads that they stick to tradition. Tradition, my ass. If they think that people will take this sitting down they are sadly mistaken.”
—Modern Drunkard Magazine, on the Jack Daniels watering

But Maker’s pushed their decision big. They went out of their way to tell all their biggest customers what they were doing, and more importantly, why. And they were explicit with the press about the problem as the inevitable wave hit. And customers told them, in no uncertain terms, and in a way that everyone knew what everyone else was telling them, that, “Thank you, but we’d really prefer that you keep our whiskey the same, and try one of those other options.” (Please note the peculiar consumer deceit that it is “our” bourbon.) I disagree with the old adage that any publicity is good publicity, but Maker’s didn’t hunker down and stonewall through it, but made sure every reputable story about the situation made clear the problem was real.

Now Maker’s can go back to the old formula. The customers have essentially all told them “raise the price instead,” and they know they all told Maker’s that. If they see an intermittent shortage, they will know why. Maker’s has the consumer buy-in to take the long-term path out of a supply crunch.

Source: Bourbon Blog.
Follow the link for more on initial reaction to the 84 proof decision.

And now they have cases and cases of the best collector’s item bourbon out there. Bottles that will be bought, but not drunk. Most bottles sold at 84 proof will be sold right alongside a bottle of 90 proof that is meant to be drunk.

Did they mean to do this all along? Just as I’m not a Coca-Cola Classic Truther, I doubt (despite my suspicions this would end this way) they intended for this to happen. But they were smart. And they did lay the groundwork to retreat and get away with it. I think that they will.

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!

Source: PlantWell
The Healing And Nutritional Properties Of Ginger

Today is Mixology Monday, and this month’s theme is “Inverted”, which could mean a lot of things. I intend to take it as turning a concept on its head, as you will see if you hang with me. Since it is Tiki Month on this blog, and other places as well, I’m going to keep with the Tiki theme and invert a Tiki element.

Part of the fun, but also a big part of the pain in the ass of Tiki are the myriad of exotic ingredients you need to make or track down. These syrups, juices, etc. take varying amounts of work to make or obtain, but they all have limited shelf lives and most have very little application to cocktails other than Tiki. If you keep enough of them on hand to make a decent range of Tiki drinks, you practically have to make nothing but, just to keep from throwing away a criminal amount of the stuff. This is both expensive and depressing.

This is the biggest reason for Tiki Month. I love Tiki drinks, but not enough to crowd out all the others in the larger world of craft cocktails. So I indulge myself in one month a year where I assemble all those fruits and home-made or difficult to obtain liquids, and chase away the cold. The whole idea of Tiki Month itself is a bit of an inversion, but not the focus here.

This post is about a particularly useful but problematic essential Tiki ingredient, ginger simple syrup. Ginger simple is awesome because of the exotic but gentle burn it can lend to a drink. It plays well with a very wide range of juices, spirits, and even other spices. Further, it is an exception to my rule above about Tiki syrups not being much use in more mainstream cocktails.

The list of decidedly non-faux-polynesian drinks that can be happily modified or improved by the mere substitution of your ginger syrup for plain simple is distinguished and too long to so much as scratch here. I’ll just name one: Rum Old-Fashioned.

Of the critical Tiki syrups, ginger simple is the only one I’ve tried making reasonably often when it is not Tiki Month.

And it is a pain in the ass.

The problem with ginger simple is that it lasts for a much shorter time than other similar infused syrups. The ginger flavor just packs up and leaves in a depressingly short time, leaving you with plain old simple syrup with an almost unidentifiable, imperceptible heat. Without a party or two, even during Tiki Month, the diminuative 12 oz bottles of ginger simple that I make don’t stay potent to the bottom.

I’ve done some research on extending ginger simple syrup’s life. A good thread at Tiki Central on a modified Mai Tai moves to an in-depth discussion of making ginger syrup last. The two prong approach they kind of settle on is to treat your raw ginger very roughly (Vitamix sounds like “Jack the Ripper” to fresh produce), and making your ginger syrup so strong it bites. I find this solution unsatisfying for several reasons. I don’t like brute force solutions. I imagine that this may introduce other chemicals into the syrup from the ginger than those you’d get in the traditional steeping method. Just starting with a stronger ginger content to delay the point where it fades to unrecognizability does not address the problem of the syrup weakening from one session to the next. And I’d spend longer cleaning my BlendTec carafe of all the fibrous remains than I would drinking the drinks I made with the ginger. I’m lazy. Sue me.

Another approach can be found at a blog with the mind-shatteringly awesome name of I Love You but I’ve Chosen Cocktails. It is more focused on creating a ginger beer base than a cocktail syrup. The approach here is to add a bit of lemon juice to the ginger puree, altering the PH. This allegedly helps stabilize the flavor essences of the ginger, making them less likely to volatilize. But now you have lemon juice in your ginger syrup, along with a lot of sugar. It could work in some applications, but a recipe calling for generic ginger simple may find this version problematic.

After wrestling this with some time before this Tiki Month, I’ve decided to give up invert the problem; stand it on its head, if you will. I harkened back to the words of the mighty philosopher Mick Jagger, who once spake, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need.“

Hipster kiddies, you probably don’t get that joke, but trust us old farts, it’s friggin’ hilarious!

Well, at least it makes sense.

What I wanted was ginger simple syrup that would be stable in flavor long enough to use most of it. But what I, and other cocktailians, needis a way to get ginger into a cocktail, in reliable amounts, easily. Not the same thing.

I hit on the solution while browsing the herbal remedy section of one of our nearby organic/locavore/gluten-free supermarkets. (When you reach a certain age, your body starts telling you to stop dismissing herbal remedies as the poppycock you always thought, and give them a chance.) Here on the shelf was a bottle of high-quality, food-grade ginger extract.

A simple syrup base is the normal way that bartenders and mixers have been prepping certain flavors so they dissolve easily in cold liquids for decades. Sugar is common in drinks anyway, and preserves and retains lots of flavors well. Just not ginger.
The scales fell from my eyes as I saw that I did not actually need to do this with a single, special-purpose ingredient. I picked up a bottle. And you don’t need a nearby organic/locavore/gluten-free supermarket to do the same. Amazon has you covered.

Now I just use plain simple syrup, the ready availability of which in my bar is exceeded only by that of gin, and about 6 drops of pure ginger extract per teaspoon called for in a recipe. Further, when I’m making up my own drinks, the amount of ginger I can deliver to the drink is divorced from the amount of sugar I add. I get the same ginger heat, with added reliability and flexibility. The ginger essences in the extract are contained in a small, well-sealed bottle, and stabilized with alcohol, not sugar. The bottle will last a good long time on the shelf next to my bitters.

I save space in my fridge, time and mess in my kitchen, grumpiness from my wife over said mess in the kitchen, and waste in my bar. All for a little cheat on the Traditional Method. It is Tiki Month, and if it teaches you nothing else, it teaches you that there is good stuff to be learned from that Glorious Lack of Authenticity!

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!

Oh man, do I love this drink.
Rather than fighting his way through the savage natives of greater Van Nuys to unearth this recipe from a spider-filled attic of some bartender’s grandson, Indiana Beachbum Berry just up and created this one himself. Unlike the cocktail-style offerings which have comprised so many of the drinks that I have highlighted, and will continue to highlight, this Tiki Month, the Beachbum’s Own is a classic crushed ice, ceramic mug filler.

I’ve adjusted Jeff’s recipe slightly from the one appearing in Remixed to account for 151 being the only Lemon Hart Demerara we can get in the States right now. If you have a regular proof El Dorado or other aged demerara, use 1 1/4 oz.

Licor 43 (aka Cuarenta y Tres) is an underused liqueur in Tiki drinks, if you ask me. Richer, deeper, and boozier than vanilla simple syrup, it adds more complexity to any already complex drink. In this beverage, it really helps give a unique and different element.

A final word on the Beachbum’s Own, it is very classically Tiki in that there is a lot of alcohol in here, and it does not give much indication of this to the unsuspecting drinker. It’s no Zombie or Hurricane, but comport yourself with all due caution….

Hawaiian Karaoke?
No thanks, I’ve heard you sing.

Ha! I’ll have you know I used to be a soloist… when I was still a soprano… But no, Carioca was a bar in Puerto Rico in the Second World War. Let’s hope they didn’t have karaoke back then.

This is pretty simple little cocktail, and it definitely tastes less Tiki than many of the other drinks I’ve tried this year. It actually has Caribbean origins, so it makes sense that it work more like classic rum cocktails, rather than the Tiki drinks that descended from them.

Be sure to have a ball with the garnish, to help Tiki this little number up. It’s a rewarding sip, but as I said, it lacks the Pacific island funk I’d like in a February libation.

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!

Via a Mountain of Crushed Ice

One of the best pure bloggers in the entire Cocktailosphere is Tiare of A Mountain of Crushed Ice. Her blog is one of the oldest, most lavishly photographed, and continuously updated cocktail blogs out there. And she always has something for me during Tiki Month. Of course, for her, every month is Tiki Month, with a sprinkling of spirit reviews and other stuff that allow her to insist that you not call her a Tikiblogger… unless she wants you to!

Her first Tiki-related post this year is ostensibly about the Sumatra Kula, allegedly one of the first Tiki drinks created by Don the Beachcomber.

Again with Donn Beach’s stuff. It’s all about the Beachcomber this year, isn’t it?
You’d better be careful, or the Ghost of Vic Bergeron over at the Fraternal Order of the Moai will start bitching at you!

The Sumatra Kula features Rhum Agricole and several other things from Don’s recurring cast of supporting characters. As is my practice with these Rule 2 posts this year, I will not really be writing about T’s post. Go there to read the recipe and see the rest of her distinctive photos.

Instead, I just want to note that her post highlights something about the international nature of Tiki. Tiare is Swedish, and not only is she the only Tikiblogger in Sweden, she likely is the only one in Europe! (If I am wrong, please correct me quickly) Tiki seems primarily an American phenomenon. And I suppose a certain provinciality is right and proper, since the appeal of Tiki is as an exotic “escape” from the humdrum of domestic American mid-century life. Incidentally, the early James Bond books filled much this same niche for English readers in the broke and broken post-war UK, to whom a journey even to a casino (royale) in northern France was a dangerous, exotic, and near-impossible to manage ideal. I think this may be a good reason that Spy Music and themes seem to mesh so effortlessly and inevitably with Tiki.

But while Tiki is mostly American, those scraps of Tiki that do spring up in Europe, and which I’ve become aware of, seem to be very sturdy and well-constructed. Tiare’s blog (which yes, I know, isn’t just a Tiki blog) is an example. In her post, she notes that her three new mugs, all of which are unique and quite cool, are of Scottish manufacture! Who knew there was a tiki mug operation in WhiskyLand? Of course, since they are Scottish, they are not crap. Not only that, but they are made exclusively for what looks to be a helluva joint in Glasgow, the Tiki Bar and Kitsch Inn. Tiki palaces are so rare in Europe as to make them look outright common here in the US, but each that I have ever heard of over there seems to be executed with a ferocious fervor. I do have a question for my Euro readers. How successful are these outposts of American psychoses?
(more…)