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The Kona Castaway.

More tiki here at the farm. Why? Well….why not? When is it a bad time for a tiki drink? In winter, tiki drinks remind you of summer. In summer, tiki drinks are a celebration of summer. And in spring or fall they are something to enjoy wistfully, or as a harbinger of the warm months to come. Besides, they give you an excuse to pull out that Hawaiian slack-key guitar CD that’s been gathering dust…

The other reason to enjoy tiki is that you get to play around with all sorts of crazy ingredients. Special rums, orgeat, falernum, pineapple, cinnamon syrup, grapefruit, absinthe, passion fruit and just about anything else you can think of. Not surprisingly, the ingredient list of some tiki drinks looks like a congressional appropriations bill (and the likelihood of you making one at home is about the same as the odds of that bill passing congress). We do mix tiki drinks at home, but ~~we can’t stop buying cocktail ingredients~~ we are silly that way. Occasionally we actually find a simple tiki drink with just a few common ingredients. So what do we do? Add more ingredients, of course…

In this case we took the Castaway, a Beachbum Berry concoction of gold rum, Kahlua and pineapple juice, and decided to experiment. The Castaway is a good drink, as the pineapple and coffee play together way better than you might expect. A good sipping cocktail. But since we are often in Hawaii, and the local coffee is awesome, we decided to nix the Kahlua and use leftover Kona coffee as our base.

And after some (mostly) enjoyable trials, we got the Kona Castaway. The Kona Castaway combines aged Jamaican rum, light rum, coffee syrup, pineapple juice, Tiki bitters with crushed ice and a lime wedge for garnish. The main change here is making coffee syrup with a 1 to 1 ratio of leftover coffee and sugar. The coffee syrup is much smoother (and tastier) than Kahlua and gives you room to add more layers of flavor.

In this case, the aged Jamaican rum and Tiki bitters add spice and funk, and the lime wedge garnish (squeeze it into the drink) adds a nice citrus note to the coffee and pineapple. Overall you get a sweet sip with smooth, spicy coffee notes. The other cool thing you get is a nice frothy head from the pineapple juice. In some ways the Kona Castaway reminds us of a pint of Guinness with the frothy head and the coffee notes, but that only goes so far. It’s still a Tiki drink, after all….

The Kona Castaway:

3 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice
1 oz. aged Jamaican rum (Appleton 12 yr.)
1 oz. light rum (Bacardi)
3/4 oz. coffee syrup (see below)
2 drops Bittermen’s Tiki bitters
Lime wedge

Assemble:

Combine all the liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker with crushed ice. Shake until well-chilled and pour everything into a chilled wine glass or highball. Garnish with a lime wedge.

For the coffee syrup, combine a 1 to 1 ratio of coffee (preferably Kona coffee) and sugar. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat and simmer until it reduces by 1/3. Keep in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

The Castaway:

(From Beachbum Berry)

Ingredients:

3 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice
3/4 oz. Kahlua
1/2 oz. gold rum (Virgin Islands or Puerto Rican)

Assemble:

Shake well with crushed ice. Pour unstrained into a pilsner glass. Add crushed ice to fill, if necessary.

Weekly Cocktail #55: The Scorpion (putneyfarm.com)
I don’t do Tiki, except for when I do. (verseandvermouth.wordpress.com)
Don’s Mix (tartinestotikis.wordpress.com)
Kona coffee is the real deal (alohajournal.com)
TIKI TIMEOUT: The “Inland” Skin Diver (mixologized.com)

Ancient Mariner Cocktail

We can’t resist tiki drinks for long here at the farm, and Memorial Day provides a good excuse, so here we go again. Although for this tiki drink, we need no excuse. The Ancient Mariner is one of our favorite cocktails, period. And unlike most tiki drinks, the Ancient Mariner is a recent creation from a mixologist in his prime, Jeff “Beachbum” Berry. We’ve mentioned Berry’s books on tiki drinks and culture and his excellent iPhone app. Berry is well-known for chronicling the world-famous tiki bartenders “Trader Vic” Bergeron and Don the Beachcomber, but he also makes his own recipes and the Ancient Mariner is his creation. And it is a great drink.

A mix of dark rum, light Demerara rum, allspice dram, lime juice, grapefruit juice and simple syrup, the Ancient Mariner has all the fruit and sugar flavors of a classic tiki drink, but with a dry, spicy finish from the allspice dram. Mixologists like to talk about “balance” a lot, and it is often hard to define. (Often I think balance means “what I like”). But whatever balance is, the Ancient Mariner has it. Sweet, sour, tangy and spicy with just a touch of boozy heat, the Ancient Mariner is a lovely sip. The only downside we see is that it might be tempting to have ~~way~~ a few too many.

Note the “ancient” jelly jar for a glass. We need some lowball glasses…

But there is one part of this drink that kept us from posting it sooner, the allspice dram. We try to avoid more obscure cocktail ingredients in the blog, but this one is worth finding. Allspice dram (also known as pimento dram) is an allspice and rum-based liqueur from Jamaica. It is a low-alcohol (45 proof) ingredient used to add spice and a touch of almost tannic dryness to cocktails. Widely used in tiki drinks, allspice dram is also used in regular cocktails like The Lion’s Tail and the Balm Cocktail. But about 25 years ago the Jamaican importer stopped bringing allspice dram to the States. So unless you wanted to make your own (and many a mixologist did) you were out of luck.

Allspice Dram

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Putney Farm

Get some good food. Cook it. Share with friends. Have a cocktail.

Tag Archives: beachbum berry

Weekly Cocktail #57: The Kona Castaway

Tiki Drink for Memorial Day: The Ancient Mariner

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