Today I'm going to show you how to make an utterly transportative Mai Tai!
Do you want to know a secret? The magic of cocktails is not really about what's
in the glass, it's about escapism.
They're a small luxury that we can indulge in in our day-to-day lives and nothing
encapsulates that more than Tiki drinks. Done badly they can be really syrupy and sweet,
but done properly they are a tropical holiday for the price of a
bottle of rum. As its inventor Trader Vic supposedly said
you have more fun with a flower behind your ear, a Mai Tai in your hand,
and good friends. And if this sounds up your alley then take a
trip to Cuba after this, with a delicious Daiquiri.
Tiki was really more than a drinks movement it was a cultural phenomenon,
and also gave birth to plenty of really fun shirts.
It's fairly easily traced due to its relative recency. Born during the great depression
the founding father of Tiki was Don the Beachcomber, who opened his bar in 1934.
He certainly deserves his own segment so we won't delve too deep into his backstory,
but safe to say he created possibly the
greatest cultural mashup of all time. You've got Polynesian inspired drinks
made with Caribbean rum served alongside Chinese food in a
tropical kitch setting all by an American dude in America.
The cultural appropriation aspect is definitely an important discussion to have
nowadays, but these were far less woke times
and the Tiki phenomenon played perfectly to a generation of Americans who wanted
the glamour of an overseas holiday but didn't have the budget.
Victor Bergeron better known as Trader Vic had always understood the escapism inherent
in bars and cocktails. He tells the story of a young couple who
were clearly in love but quite poor but they still made time every single week
to sit at his bar for date night to get away from the trials of everyday life,
and have a little mini vacation. And this, incidentally, is why i have no time
for bars and bartenders who concentrate too much on the liquid and
not on the experience. It might be the most inventive molecular
concoction ever made but if you aren't made to feel special while you're drinking it
then what's the point?
In 1937, inspired by this grand philosophy of bartending,
and admittedly not a little bit by Don the Beachcomber,
he converted his unthemed bar Hinky Dinks to a Tiki den called Trader Vic's,
so-called because of his habit of swapping drinks for interesting trinkets
customers brought in, and he used them to decorate the bar.
He is credited with quite a few venerable Tiki drinks but undoubtedly his most famous
is the Mai Tai.
Now Don has also tried to claim credit for this drink saying that Trader Vic ripped off one of
his creations, which Trader Vic vehemently denied, what i'm going to show you
today though is very much Trader Vic's original take invented in 1944.
Don's drinks are notoriously complicated
hence the popular misconception that you can just smash a heap of rum and syrups
and juices together and that makes a Tiki drink.
Whereas Vic's original Mai Tai is tight, sharp, well balanced and most importantly boozy.
The name Mai Tai apparently comes from the explanation of one of Trader Vic's
Polynesian friends when he presented them with the drink
maita'i roa a' e' means 'out of this world' but please do excuse my pronunciation.
If you'd like me to delve deeper into some of Don the Beachcomber's complex
concoctions then drop a comment below and let's get to making a Mai Tai.
So I did refer to this recipe as Trader Vic's original Mai Tai
and that's because he then went on to create a kind of tourist friendly
version in Hawaii which was sweeter with the addition of
some various fruit juices and so this is where much of the confusion around this
drink comes from as the second version was very popular.
And I'll definitely hold my hands up, when I first started bartending I put
orange juice in my Mai Tais, fresh squeezed, but still.
The classic though just really heroes the rum, which was originally
Wray and Nephew 17 year old. Vic had to tweak the recipes a few times
as supplies of the first Wray & Nephew 17 year old and then
15 year old dried up, so it's basically now impossible to recreate the original
but the main point is that the rum
should really shine through so make sure you're using something full-bodied and
flavored and that you like soIi'm using Appleton Estate because
it's Jamaican like the original and really robust and a little bit funky,
some people like to blend rums or even float a darker rum on top,
for instance a molasses based rum like Goslings to make it really punchy,
personally i prefer to keep it a little bit simple and lighter but definitely
feel free to experiment until you find your sweet spot.
Orgeat is an almond-based syrup it's used a lot in Tiki drinks
because the nuttiness plays really nicely with rum and other tropical fruit flavours
You can make it and I'll pop a recipe below
but it's a bit fiddly and honestly I tend not to bother. I just leave it to
the experts, but just make sure you use a good
quality one. I'm using Monin, which is almost always a safe bet for
syrups and very widely available. In a pinch you could even use some
Amaretto, it's one of those bottles everyone seems to have a random one of
in the back of their cupboard and this is a great use for it just
maybe pare back the other kind of sweeteners a little
bit to balance that out. And Curacao and Triple Sec are really
just different names for orange liqueur the differences are more historical and
stylistic so it's really about going with a brand that you like
As always i'm going with my favorite the zingy and quite dry
Marionette curacao, but Pierre Ferrand triple sec is a great option
or trusty Cointreau. Again just a little bit sweeter.
Now for the garnish;
purists argue that this drink should be garnished only with a spent lime husk
and a mint sprig and that symbolizes an island with a
little palm tree and then you also get a face full of
delicious minty aromatics as you're drinking.
Personally I'm always a fan of an over-the-top Tiki garnish so if you do
want to go to town and add some other fresh fruit and even a little umbrella
if you have it then absolutely go for it.
So first you're just going to want to
squeeze some fresh lime juice and just make sure that you keep your
little lime husk at least you know one per drink.
Some people do like to pop the lime husk into the shaker while they're shaking
and that just kind of adds a bit of the oils in there too, I just like
once you've shaken it then you already get a little bit of the lime oils kind of on
the skin and it's going to be up by your nose
anyway so i kind of tend to think that's plenty.
So we're going to go 60 mils of dark rum, this cocktail is meant to be boozy so if
you want to be a little bit generous you are on holiday after all!
Then 25 mils of your fresh lime juice. 15 mils of your triple sec or curacao
something orangey flavored.
Ten mils of your Orgeat and then five to ten mils of your rich
demerara sugar. I mean this one's mostly just to balance out
so obviously depends what Curacao and Orgeat you're using,
you might only need a little bit, also what your palettes like
um so kind of leave that up to yourself. So no mint in this drink it's just for
the garnish you just want the aromatics, you don't want the whole
drink to taste minty. That's everything, just going to fill your shaker tin
up with ice. Pop your tins together make sure it's nicely sealed you have a
nice straight line and shake as hard as you can.
Grab your whatever kind of fun Tiki glass you have or a rocks glass out of
the fridge or freezer. Mine's really nice and frosty to make
sure that it'll stand up to the humidity. And then we're just going to shake and dump
so that just means pour the entire contents of the shaker in the glass
super simple, it's meant to be a beach cocktail you don't want to be
faffing around with strainers, obviously if you want to strain on fresh
ice you're more than welcome.
This one will just need topped up a little bit because it's quite a large cup.
And as we know the more ice in there the better. Pop in your straw.
Get yourself a nice big fresh mint sprig and then give it a little slap,
just to release all the aromatics.
Pop that in right beside the straw so that you're gonna get it up your nose every time you
take a sip, pop in your lime husk and you've got a
little island with a little palm tree on it,
and your Mai Tai. So now you know.
I just wanted to take a quick second to
say a really heartfelt thank you to our patron angels
and the guys that have supported us on Patreon so far
I really can't express to you how much it means, we love making this content and
are so glad that it seems to be connecting with you,
um and we just want to keep making it for as long as possible
and you're helping to support that so thank you.
This just looks so inviting it's so frosty and
fresh looking i just wish it was a little bit warmer in Melbourne you can
see I've had to wear my, my warm top under a Tiki shirt because
we're not quite in the right season for this.
Yeah so fruity and refreshing but yeah still really kind of nice and dry finish
I just love the kind of almond Orgeat and I think it works particularly well with
these kind of quite big funky rums, just kind of tacks onto their
little bit of nut and spice as well. Yeah just super, super zesty I'm just
like wishing I was on a beach. This one is basically just a riff on a
daiquiri if you think about it like it's just kind of rum
lime and sweetener and you see that combination repeated time and time again
to very delicious effect. One of my other favorites is the
Royal Bermuda Yacht Club which just switches out the Orgeat for Falernum which is like
an even spicier kind of nutty syrup and that one's served up rather than on
the rocks so more similar to a classic daiquiri.
If that does sound like something that you're interested in then you
should definitely hit the notification bell so that you
don't miss out on that episode which is coming up soon.