One last bite of Tiki. Jjoe Garcia reminds us that with all these drinks, we should eat a little something, too.

I don’t want Tiki Month to end without a quick listing of what appear to me to be the big three Tiki events of each year. None, alas, are held during Tiki Month, but each seems to sell out, so now is probably a good time to make your plans to get your pagan on.

For all my fellow classic cocktail nerds, if you don’t get enough of Jeff Berry at Tales of the Cocktail, where he is treated like a rock star, visit one of these events, where I’m pretty sure the Bum is considered the Messiah….

For West Coast Americans, there is Tiki Oasis in San Diego. The 2012 event will be held August 16-19. There aren’t a lot of details at the website for this year’s event yet, but it seems that this year’s sub-theme will be spy genre fun.
Having a sub-theme at a Tiki event is an interesting idea, and ought to help broaden the appeal and perhaps bring in a few new folks to the movement, though I think that spy fun is a better fit with Tiki than last year’s South of the Border idea. You can see, and hear, the way Tiki and spy stuff overlap and compliment each other in this audio podcast episode of The Quiet Village, which I profiled earlier this month.

Next up is Ohana, Luau at the Lake. Alas for me, even though Ohana is a production of the Fraternal Order of Moai, whose origins are right here in Ohio, Ohana is held at Lake George, NY. This year’s dates are June 21-24, 2012.
Lake George appears to be a perfect place for a retro event like a Tiki convention, as it is one of those time-capsules of the pre-Disney, honky-tonk vacation era like Niagara Falls, ON or Ober Gatlinburg, TN. The headquarters for Ohana is the The Tiki Resort (autoplay video at that link). Tickets went on sale for Ohana just a month ago, and rooms at the Tiki are already sold out. Tickets for the event, and other rooms in Lake George are still available.

In Fort Lauderdale, FL, you can attend the Hukilau. The Hukilau will be April 19-22, 2012, and while it is headquartered at the Best Western Oceanside, it is spiritually centered on the legendary Tiki palace, the Mai Kai. I’ve been to the Mai Kai, and it rocked at 6:30 on a normal Thursday. I can only imagine what it will be like during Hukilau.
The Hukilau is the first of these big fetes and if you want to go, I’d get on the stick. South Florida in April is frankly awesome, and if you go to Hukilau, you should add on a day or two so you can go to the beach. You’ll have no time to do so during the event, I’m sure.

I’ve never been to any of these, and I’d dearly love to. But I know for a fact I can’t make it to any of them this year, drat it. If any of you do go, and write about it, drop me an email. I want to read the story, and I’ll throw some Tiki supplemental linkage your way!

My pace of at least one full post a day throughout this year’s Tiki Month got a little attenuated at the very end, not because I was burning out, but because I was ramping up to and recovering from a sort of doctoral dissertation on all I’ve learned so far about Tiki. We hosted an all-out Tiki party at home for about twenty of our friends. I’ve hosted a ton of cocktail parties, of course. And I’ve thrown in some Tiki elements or drinks from time to time. But I’ve never done the whole magilla, and I wanted to see how much Tiki knowledge I could employ and still pull it off with out some kind of capsize event.

I think it worked. I learned a lot of lessons in the process, and spent more than I needed to to get the effect I wanted and offer the refreshments I required. But I didn’t mess anything up, and I definitely got the atmosphere I was looking for.

I started with modifying my basement bar. I’ve written quite a bit about it already, and it is most definitely not a Tiki bar atmosphere in its bones. It is all black and aluminum and purple, with bright white lights. I started by replacing all the can lights with colored floods. I used red in the areas where guest were to go, and lit the far corners and service/inventory areas in a mix of blue and green. This gave the effect I was looking for of an evening, fire-lit environment. I then removed the barstools from the bar, and ran a long, fairly lush length of rush skirting along the entire length and around the end, enhancing/disguising the top edge with some fake flower leis. The soffit overhead, I covered with vinyl printed like bamboo, and used more to wrap the base of all the pillars in the room. I covered a table along the opposite wall with sand-colored fabric and “planted” two fake palm trees covered in Christmas lights. Two cheap flower door curtains did a remarkably godo job obscuring the messy inventory room in the back.
If I had been making a permanent Tiki bar, I’d have done much the same things, but with all natural, far more sturdy materials.

I also jacked up the ambiance with a few inexpensive hand-carved objects like a nice Tiki Bar sign, a small electric fountain for some running water, and lots of fresh cut orchids all over the place. Again, in a permanent installation, I’d have used potted orchids (with more variety of look), a larger fountain, and more wooden carvings, rather than the cardboard and vinyl Tikis I put in badly lit areas to disguise their nature.
I even dug into the Summer gear and lined the front walkway with burning Tiki torches.

I put in several hours putting together a really good iTunes playlist of Exotica and other Tiki-sounding music. Two songs that I just loved, and which served as some vocal moments in the list were Don Tiki’s Pagan Lust, and An Occasional Man. The music was especially effective in adding depth to the atmosphere I was trying to create, changing the lighting in the basement from merely dim and hard to see, into darkly exotic.

I always create a menu for each cocktail party I throw. That way I can control what I need in stock, and gives me my talking points for the booze portion of the evening’s conversation. I decided this was especially important this party, since most of the guests didn’t know beans about good Tiki drinks and would have had no idea what to order. You can read a copy here. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. With this, I was able to keep the ingredients under control, or so I thought. I ended up getting way too much of most fresh ingredients, and my respect for the professionals who run real Tiki bars and manage to stay in business has gone way up. I wanted to do all juices fresh, and while this did show in the drink quality, it also means I have way too much juice lying around to drink in the aftermath. With the right tools, the juicing wasn’t that hard, but guessing the right amounts needed was beyond me this first time.
I bought a few extra stems of orchids for garnish, preserved pineapple tops, and had a bowl of kumquats, which are a great Tiki alternative to cocktail cherries. And I went to the local produce wholesaler to buy gobs of super fresh mint for garnish. I wholeheartedly recommend you find such a business, likely located on the backside of your airport, for times like this. In Columbus, the place I found is Sanfillipo Produce, who have a retail Cash N Carry in their warehouse.
My wife and I both managed to buy, without consulting each other, a box of each fun/tacky garnish toys available in Columbus. As a result I now own approximately two gross of paper cocktail umbrellas. (We probably used five during the party.)

While I planned to spend more time behind the bar this party than most, I still hired my regular bartender Tony to assist. With the planned on number of guests, one guy would certainly not be enough when making the kind of Tiki drinks I was offering. A little more than a year ago, I kinda went postal on some hapless Brooklynite who declared you shouldn’t have a party if you’re too poor to swing a bartender. There are plenty of party formats where you don’t need staff, no matter how large. But if you are having a drinks geek party, (and why would I have anything else?) and you are having more than 10 guests, you won’t get out from behind the bar to enjoy your guests if you mix things yourself.
Tony is particularly great because, while he’s ten times the pro I’d ever aspire to be, he is always willing and able to absorb whatever new tricks and/or schtick I’ve got up my sleeve for my parties. Cultivate at least one good working pro bartender in your town who can work your own occasional parties with or for you.

I placed the barstools around a small high-top table across the room from the bar. This gave me a place to serve the bowls on my menu, with their flaming garnishes and make a big stinking production out it. The fire extinguisher is there but not visible in the picture….
Always have plenty of better than average fake flower leis on hand, in case an actual Tiki shows up at your event….

A few other tips that worked out well:

• A chunk of dry ice is a cheap and easy way to liven things up. Tony usually had one or two mugs frothing away on the bar, and he and I dropped a sliver here and there into random drinks to keep people’s attention.
• There is genuinely something fascinating about a swizzle stick being employed properly. People really dig it.
• People are afraid that Tiki drinks are too sweet. It took me a while to understand that what I thought of as “sweet” drinks on my menu weren’t all that sweet to them.
• Cultivate a good relationship with your fishmonger. I was able to get mine to give me 15+ pounds of crushed ice from his machine and it was plenty usable for the party a couple of hours later.
• No one wants to order a bowl drink. Everyone wants to drink out of them.

Of course, some drinks worked, some didn’t. My earlier idea that Dr. Funk might be a good Absinthe Entry Drug? Yeah, no. The kindest comment I got from this group of Absinthe virgins was, “It tastes like Good n’ Plenty”. The surprise hit was a new drink I learned about just that week on Mixology Monday, Gilligan’s Ginger Swizzle by Ed at Wordsmithing Pantagruel.
And of course the number one cocktail (almost everyone had one) was the Mai Tai (half Appleton’s V/X, half Smith & Cross). It is a never-ending surprise and delight to me to see the look on a friend’s face the first time they take a sip of a really well-made Super-Weapon of Tiki. If you are any kind of cocktail geek, you have no excuse not to know how to make a good Mai Tai. Even with Tiki Month six months away in either direction, when I am in full Pegu, Manhattan, Old Fashioned, Aviaton, Gin Rickey-mode, I always have the means to make Mai Tais. Not only is it among the easiest Tiki Drinks to make (the orgeat is the only remotely weird ingredient), not only is it likely the best Tiki Drink, but it is simply hard to make the case that Trader Vic’s Mai Tai isn’t one of the best straight cocktails ever invented.

The food looked like it was going to be hard, but turned out easy.

Easy for you to say, Mister!
I didn’t see you in the kitchen making any of it….

True. But at no point in the process did you threaten to take a hostage, so in comparison to the usual situation, I’d rate this party as pretty easy.

Hmmm.
You may have a point.

Anyway, the key to remember in Tiki food, as with everything else Tiki, is that the key is in selling the presentation rather than in any kind of authenticity. Our most successful dish was a South Georgia and Carolina Low-Country specialty, Shrimp Sea Island. (Note: That’s not our recipe. No one gets our recipe.) There is nothing remotely Tiki about this dish, but skewer the shrimp on bamboo skewers with chunks of mango and serve on a bed of the lemons and Bob’s Your Uncle.
Sous vide chicken chunks, skewered with pineapple bits and finished under the broiler made for a second delicious main dish. Between the two of them, all the bamboo spears made the table look like the aftermath of Magellan’s last stand. Beyond that, we surrounded some pre-made spring rolls with fresh fruit and crudité, and were left with a tropical-looking spread that helped the guests extend their evening quite nicely.

Here’s the bottom line: Tiki parties aren’t hard. Certainly no harder than any other kind of party. Nor need they be much more expensive, especially if you plan on having them ore than once. But they do take planning, and especially imagination. Use plenty of both, and your Tiki party can be one you really hit out of the park.

I want to start to round up Tiki Month 2012 with an answer to a question I hope many of you have been asking all month, “Why Tiki Month?” Why am I posting as such a furious rate, changing my basic drinking habits, and otherwise driving my dear, suffering wife to distraction with this Polynesian potpourri?

The first year I did it was to see what would happen. Many of my most favorite bloggers, Trader Tiki, Tiare, Dr. Bamboo, Colonel Tiki, and Kaiser Penguin were Tiki bloggers of one sort or another. I had tried virtually none of their stuff because I didn’t view myself as a Tiki guy, and it all looked so hard. So I wanted an excuse to give a bunch of things a whirl.

Plus, he was looking for a blog stunt as a desperate plea for attention!

It was supposed to be a one-off experiment, just to see what it was all about and as an antidote to a Winter designed to make Al Gore feel (more) embarrassed about his life…. And I had fun. And the next year, as Winter set in once more… I couldn’t help myself.

Tiki Month 2010 was a bit more organized, both in my bar and here on the blog. I was discovering that getting your Tiki on is an acquired skill, one that gets better with practice. As I realized this, I decided that having some decent Tiki skills beyond just a good Mai Tai is an essential thing for any self-respecting cocktailian. I knew Tiki Month was a Thing then.

2011 was a breeze. I whipped through things, with lots of the basics already covered. I could delve into the auxiliary stuff, the cultural and artistic sides of Tikidom without it overwhelming me. and the drinks got easier. In response to Tiki Month last year, DJ Hawaiian Shirt wrote this insightful critique of Tiki and it’s shortcomings:

1) Their construction is labor intensive; most of them require you to freshly squeeze at least one kind of citrus

2) They often require more than one type of rum, and since rum characters vary widely by where they’re produced, you need at least a dozen or two varieties in order to capably adhere to recipes; it gets expensive

3) They require specialized equipment if you want to be efficient and/or proper, such as juicers, ice crushers, (real) swizzle sticks, and blenders

4) They often require rare (or even extinct) ingredients, such as orgeat, falernum, passionfruit syrup, cinnamon syrup, allspice dram, Cuban rum, and dark 151-proof demerara rum

5) They’re complicated; a five-ingredient tiki drink is considered simple, and they sometimes have over a dozen ingredients

6) Because of all of these above, their construction is time consuming; between juicing the fruit, gathering all the bottles, measuring each ingredient, and then using specialized equipment, plenty of drinks take between 5 and 10 minutes to make, and some of them take even longer

7) Most tiki fans from which you might get help or advice will insist on using only the proper techniques, and that even the obscurest ingredient cannot be substituted

As Tiki Month 2012 kicked off, DJ whined about not having a genuine swizzle stick to make a 151 Swizzle. The smart-ass who’s masquerading as “The Tiki Gods” in my comments insisted that he use only a real swizzle…. or a virgin. (The Tiki Gods seem really into virgins) DJ responded by resurrecting the above post.

I meant to link it earlier at first, but it got me to thinking, and I left off commenting on it here until it was getting to wrap up time.

The answer to DJ’s criticisms of Tiki is the answer to why I keep doing Tiki Month. Tiki requires commitment to be any fun for anything other than a meticulously planned special event. It requires commitment to gather the knowledge to make it fun, and the skills to pull it off well. But just doing things for a long time doesn’t really make Tiki work either.

If you examine most folks who do Tiki well, it’s all they do, drinks-wise. At first, I kind of thought this was because they were, well, weird.

Pot.
Kettle.

Yeah, exactly.

But that is not it. Let’s address a few of DJ’s complaints above, which I think encapsulate what most classic cocktail types think about Tiki.

1. Boo Hoo. I juice limes for almost everything. Or I use RealLime after peeking behind the curtain to make sure CocktailNerd won’t jump out and start bitching at me again. I ignore this one.
2. I got 12 types of gin in my bar regularly. It is no skin off my nose to have many bottles of rum, a spirit with far greater variety in style than gin. For most booze nerds, this is also the case. Still nothing blocking Tiki.
3. Yup. You do need some funky stuff for Tiki that may not be too useful for non-Tiki stuff. But who doesn’t need a good blender anyway?
4. Rare ingredients are again part and parcel of the modern booze nerd’s oeuvre. But we are starting to get to the heart of the matter here.
5. This also is on point. Not only do Tiki drinks have lots of ingredients, but those ingredients are not necessarily the same ones as even a first order cocktailian will have on hand as part of his regular inventory.
6. Bingo. This is real heart of it all. There is a butt-load of perishable ingredients or preparations to make Tiki drinks—make them well at any rate.
7. I think this seems like a bigger issue than it is. Tiki guys have all these specialized things on hand, so of course they assume you should use them. Fact is, there are lots of ways to finesse the more esoteric methods or ingredients.
   If you think that you have to do things the pain in the ass geek on the subject commands you… Have you met the Internet? A week on the web and you should realize that common sense is a needed companion when looking for answers hereabouts.

What all this comes down to is: For Tiki to be fun, it needs to achieve Critical Mass. You need several specialty syrups to execute some of the best drinks, and more to maintain any kind of variety from one round to the next. The produce you use may or may not be more than what you uses in regular drinks mixing, but it will be different produce for your normal needs. Dressing up yourself and your bar, and loading your iPod properly for the Tiki experience takes time and a change in routine. Bringing yourself up to speed for Tiki takes time. Do it only 28 times a year means spooling yourself up 28 times. It’s a mess. But do it 28 days in a row, and you spool up once.

Feel the power of Critical Mass!

In late January, I place an order with Okolemaluna for certain syrups I don’t want to make myself. I go online and order a few bottles of hooch that I can’t get in Ohio, but that I know I will want. I pick up a new shirt or two, and order any other new Tiki elements I want to have show up as the month progresses to enrich the experience. I make a few modifications to my bar’s ready rack of equipment, make up the fresh ingredients I need, and keep them in stock. I alter my produce buys. I then alter it further when my daughter discovers the joy of fresh pineapple juice and keeps drinking me dry….

And when it is cocktail time, for the entire month of February, I just toss on my shirt, don my fez, and go downstairs. A new drink, or repeat performer, is now really no more time-consuming than a regular cocktail. All because I have achieved Tiki Critical Mass. It’s a bit of work up front, but that pays off all month. And voila, Tiki is easy!

And at the end of the month, I box everything up, pour out any leftovers, and go on an Old-Fashioned binge. My guests and I have enjoyed a month of awesomeness and variety, I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve made something cool accessible to me.

And he’s gotten a whole month’s worth of material for his blog stunt that begs for the attention he still desperately craves!

Yeah. That too.

If you crave Tiki, but like me do not want to make the metamorphosis into a Tiki Idol, here’s the secret: Pick out a couple of weeks in a row, or even a month, and take a vacation to the South Seas. Immerse yourself and your friends. Have a fun time, and one that will be surprisingly easy and convenient. Then put it all away and go back to Sazeracs and Martinis, until the next time the mood calls you. As for when would be a good time to achieve your own Tiki Critical Mass, may I suggest next February?

We’ll be here!

Yes, we will.

The Tikiyaki Orchestra. Appearing tomorrow night at Don the Beachcomber! Try Aloha, Baby! on for size. (@Tikiyaki)

Coffee is an under-used flavor element in Tiki drinks. There are a few that feature it a front-row ingredient, mostly in hot drinks like the Flaming Kona Koffee Grog. Board of Tiki Idols member, Colonel Tiki has written about creating his own coffee syrup for us in his original Tiki drink, the Dark Magic, but I’ve got enough new syrups to make this time through Tiki Month without adding coffee syrup to my agenda. And BOTI member Tiare wrote about an original of her own, Banda Island Punch, as part of her Tiki Month festivities and it uses coffee liqueur. Coffee liqueur I have in the shape of a big Kahlua bottle I seldom employ, but T’s punch employs it in a very small amount. I was looking for something where the coffee flavor is a bit more front row.

My wife is a big coffee fan, and I aim to please….

A quick flip through the Tiki+ app, and I chose to go with the Mr. Bali Hai, for a number of reasons. The ingredient list is pretty easy to put together for the non-Tikiphile, comparatively, and I wanted to have a few of these Tiki drinks that don’t require specialized setups or inventory to pull off in this year’s schedule.
And South Pacific was the first professional stage production I ever saw. I was about 8 and it was a high-end dinner theater in Florida. I admit to loving it, and Bali Hai was my favorite song.

The original recipe calls for only 3/4 of an ounce. At that level, the coffee is still a background element, and takes a moment to be identified. If you want to try this drink as a Kahlua, or just as a coffee-flavor vehicle, bump it up just a bit and it becomes more apparent. My wife likes the stronger version, whereas I prefer the original.

I leave you with the inspiration for the drink. Hollywood went a little insane on the color saturation in the 50s, but the song is magnificent….

Hand-Carved Tiki Necklaces. I’ve seen a lot of this this month as I look for Tiki fun. Is this now a Tiki Thing? Is it becoming a more general Thing?

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!

Greetings everyone from Orlando, a land that peddles itself to have pretty much everything. Which I thought would lend itself well in discussion with my uncle Doug Winship on all forms of tiki drinks. After being humbled at the hands of the master, I had to rethink my standing in life. So I come to you as a Grasshopper, a student on the TAO, to share what the way as taught me so far.
So my first lesson was in mixology, is a recipe from one the grandmasters. Trader Vic’s Navy Grog!!! First lets run down what is in this Recipe.

1 part fresh lemon juice (Great Citrus is easy to get in Florida)
1 part unsweetened pineapple juice (Unsweetened is important)
1 part Passion Fruit Syrup (I will describe this maneuver in more detail in a sec)
2 parts dark Jamaican Rum
1 dash of Angostura Bitters per ounce in a part

So, armed with my new-found knowledge, I head to my small corner of my home bar. It is a small amount of real estate that my wife would allow me to own.
It is kinda sad compared to the mammoth sized basement size bars that some heavy weights I know have, but the little corner is mine so I love it. Anyhow, I start running down the list. Jamaican Rum, Check, Angostura Bitters, Check, Lemons, Check, unsweetened pineapple juice, Check even!! Passion Fruit Syrup??? This one stopped me in my tracks. SO reaching back out to my teacher, I wondered how I would acquire said syrup. Like the voice in field of dreams, he spoke to me. He said to make it yourself. I had my doubts, I would say that cooking would not be my strongest skill. Amazing enough, it is a simple task. First, you need to get your hands on Passion fruit puree.
I found this little gem in the ethic frozen food section of my local Publix. I mixed equal parts by volume of sugar, water, and half the passion fruit. Bring this to a boil!! When it hits a boil add the second half of the fruit. When everything is nice and dissolved. There will be some pulp left. You will have to strain it. When it is all said and done you should have something that looks like this!!! Mix according to proportions listed above and enjoy!!. I made a large batch for my super bowl party. I had to make two large batches for everyone to get their fill. This is the second one I made. It was a hit to say the least. So to all the little grasshoppers out there, welcome to the big wild world of cocktails. To the Grandmasters, WATCH YOUR PEBBLES!!! Everyone else enjoy TIKI month!!!! Good thing it is a leap year, we all get to enjoy an extra day of tropical delights. So from Orlando, I am signing off.

I view the world of internet forums as a sort of parallel universe to the Blogosphere. Both are filled with a sea of information and opinion. Blogs often are more informationally compact or lush in their presentation, while the forums tend to meander a bit, be a little harder to search, but much more rich in the informed back and forth department. Both are useful and entertaining.

Every so often these parallel worlds meet, usually with better results than in Star Trek. One forum that has participated well in Mixology Monday in the past is the eGullet message board. eGullet is sorta the epicenter of food wonkery, and you can find some great stuff on cocktails there too.

This month, there has been some great responses this time around, and I’m reprinting them here. (More came in before the end of the day, so this post has been updated.)

FrogPrincesse answers my call for all sorts of things Tiki with both a cocktail and a Tiki dish!

Our friends, whose parents have passion fruit vines in their yard, kindly donated some fresh passion fruit pulp last weekend. This became my inspiration for the challenge.

I started by making a passion fruit syrup. I mixed the pulp with simple syrup (1 part each), heated the mixture gently, and strained through a fine sieve.

For the cocktail, I went with the Hart of Darkness from Beachbum Berry Remixed. I found that it highlighted the fresh passion fruit flavor quite well, and the spice from the Lemon Hart 151 gave it a nice kick.

HART OF DARKNESS

• 0.5 oz lime juice
• 0.5 oz homemade passion fruit syrup
• 0.25 oz lemon juice
• 0.5 oz honey mix (1:1 honey/water)
• 0.75 oz soda water
• 1.5 oz Lemon Hart 151-proof Demerara rum
• 1 cup crushed ice

Blended

We needed a little pupu with our powerful cocktail. I wanted to use more of the passion fruit pulp so I marinated some shrimp in it together with vinegar, minced ginger, brown sugar, and fresh mint. After about an hour, it was time to grill the shrimp.

Mint-Passion Grilled Prawns (adapted from Sam Choy’s Polynesian Kitchen)
1/4 cup fresh passion fruit pulp
1/2 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon minced ginger
1/2 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 tablespoon minced fresh mint
1/2 pound shrimp (15 count)

Combine everything in a bowl. Marinate for 1 hour.
Skewer shrimp on bamboo skewers and grill until they are pink and cooked through (about 7-8 minutes), basting occasionally with the marinade.

Zachary has made the same journey many of us have with regards to Tiki.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with all things Tiki (mainly because there was a long period of time when I thought that Tiki drinks were all dozens of ingredients, most of which were bizarre neon colored syrups). Since getting Beachbum Berry Remixed, I have seen the light.

I wanted to take a minimalist tack with this challenge, so I present this, which is archived here.

WHITE TAI

• 1 oz. La Favorite Blanc (for aroma)
• 1 oz. Flor de Cana White (for dryness)
• 1/2 oz lime juice
• 1/2 oz orgeat
• 1/4 oz Cointreau
• 6 drops Pernod Absinthe (just enough to louche slightly in the drink)

Shake, strain, up. If you’d like a fancy orchid garnish, that’s great, but please… no fruit salad to detract from the drink’s whiteness.

Dan Perrigan gives us an original:

I don’t know if this name has been used before, but for a Pisco-based tiki drink it was a name that was begging to be used:

BAHAMA LLAMA

• 1 1/2 oz Macchu Pisco
• 1/2 oz El Dorado 15
• 1/2 oz Mezcal Vida
• 1 oz Coco Lopez
• 1/2 oz Fresh Lime

Shake well with ice. Pour unstrained into a Tiki mug. Garnish with 8 drops of Orange Flower Water.

And Katie Loeb also goes with one of her own creations:

Here’s one I did a little while back for a dinner honoring one of our local chefs. The name comes from the fact that all the flavorings grow in the subtropical temperate zone.

SUBTROPICAL FIZZ

• 1.5 oz. Mango vodka
• .5 oz. Laird’s 7.5 year old apple brandy
• .75 oz. fresh lime juice
• .5 oz. housemade orgeat
• .25 oz. St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
• dash Orange bitters
• 1.5 oz. club soda
• Garnish: Grating of fresh nutmeg, small lime wheel.

Shake and strain over fresh ice in a Collins glass. Top with club soda and stir. Garnish with grated nutmeg and a lime wheel tucked into the glass.

Kerry Beal jazzes with some damn high-end Tiki-style ingredients:

KITCHEN SINK ON A TIKI THEME – threw together ingredients that seemed Tiki appropriate.

1 oz Havana Club Anejo
1 oz Mount Gay Extra Old
1/2 oz Cointreau
1 1/2 oz orgeat
1 oz orange
1 oz lime
barspoon homemade grenadine
2 dashes angostura bitters

A bit sweet – room for adjustment – but altogether quite enjoyable.

And Australian member Haresfur just leaps through the closing blast doors of the deadline. Welcome to the world of orgeat addiction!

Counting on the International Date Line working for me.

Tiki trouble is actually having an approximation of everything needed. But Tiki opportunity is finally getting off my tail and making some orgeat. Piece of cake, really. That is if you start with blanched South Australian almonds bought from the grower. I found that the immersion blender worked well for grinding the almonds in some of the water. And a cut up pillow case worked well for straining. Nice and milky, oily. How does it taste? Tastes nice, not strongly almond, but I have no real basis for comparison to what it should be.

So last night I discovered that there wasn’t a single piece of citrus in the house. But I acquired orange lemon and lime at the end of a long work day. With ebbing energy I decided on a Fog Cutter:

2 oz Cuban white rum
1 oz cheap French brandy
1/2 oz Plymouth gin
2 oz lemon juice – a bit much for my taste
1 oz fresh Valencia orange juice
1 oz plus some orgeat
float cream Sherry

After balancing the lemon it turned out quite nice. Oh, and we split it 2 ways.

Bonus drink: Orgeat in a bourbon cocktail with Fee’s orange bitters is a nice use of orgeat even though (or perhaps because) I used cheap bourbon.