Tag: Tiki Cocktail

Categories
Cocktails

Banging Against the Wall: The Galliano Mai Tai

Galliano. 

What can be said about it? It comes in a tall bottle that refuses to fit in a liquor cabinet. It is vibrant yellow, blindingly so. Like licorice, Galliano has an “either you love it or loathe it” taste profile of anise and vanilla. It is definitely an acquired taste.

The liquor gained prominence during the Dark Ages of Cocktails in the 70s when executives at McKesson Liquor Co. concocted the Harvey Wallbanger, a cocktail made of Galliano, vodka, and orange juice. The Harvey Wallbanger was a hit and McKesson sought other ways to market Galliano. 

Read the rest of this article to discover gold!

One of those efforts was an early 70s cocktail booklet published by McKesson that featured Galliano front and center in all of the recipes. Some of the recipes were new and unique to the booklet while others were riffs on established cocktails (Galliano Margarita, Galliano Manhattan, Galliano Daiquiri, etc.).

A variation that appeared in the booklet was a Galliano take on the tiki vanguard cocktail, the Mai Tai. 

Galliano Mai Tai Recipe.

The Galliano Mai Tai calls for:

  • 1 oz Galliano
  • 1 oz White Rum
  • 0.5 oz Lime Juice
  • 0.5 oz Orgeat
  • 0.5 oz Orange Curaçao

Put all ingredients into an ice-filled rocks glass, stir, and garnish.

The end result should look akin to this:

Galliano Mai Tai from the Galliano Recipe Booklet.

The Galliano Mai Tai is quite similar to the classic ‘44 Trader Vic’s Mai Tai save an ounce of rum has been replaced by an ounce of Galliano.

This drink is 29% Galliano.

That’s a lot of Galliano. 

The spirits for this cocktail are fairly easy to obtain; nothing discontinued since the 70s. Galliano is Galliano and there is no substituting that in a Galliano Mai Tai. For the Orange Curaçao, Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao is a nice go to for Mai Tais. 

Dangerously low on the White ‘Stache.

The Galliano Mai Tai calls for a white rum. Based on the recipe this poses the question: use a higher quality rum and increase the probability of making a good tasting drink, or error on the side of caution and use an inexpensive rum and build from there. For this cocktail, caution will be heeded and Bacardi Superior will be used over a higher quality rum, which would entail El Dorado 3, Plantation Three Star, or, as pictured above, Hamilton White ‘Stache. 

The first step is to fill a rocks glass with ice.

Next, pour in one full ounce of Galliano. Bask in its yellow glow. 

Add one ounce of Bacardi Superior.

Then half an ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice.

Pour in a half an ounce of orgeat. Liber & Co. is a great one to use.

Finally, add the half an ounce of the Dry Curaçao

Despite containing citrus, the recipe calls for the drink to be lightly stirred once or twice. This, of course, isn’t going mix the cocktail very well as it will keep the ingredients in layers.

The end cocktail is horrible. In an attempt to salvage it, it was dumped into a shaker, shaken, and repoured with additional ice. It failed.

Galliano is the dominate flavor, which is probably to be expected as this is the Galliano Mai Tai after all. The Bacardi doesn’t have much character to it, which allows the Galliano to dominate the drink. Using a rum with more character, such as a funky Jamaican rum or a Rhum Agricole, would clash with the Galliano. Using a higher quality white rum also would have been a bad idea as any uniqueness it would have brought would’ve been overpowered by the Galliano.

The taste is akin to absinthe-vanilla; it is sickly sweet and not a pleasant sweet that is found in other tiki cocktails. Adding simple syrup, which many Mai Tais call for, would have made this worse. The cocktail also leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. 

A possible remedy for the Galliano Mai Tai would be to re-balance it. Cutting back the Galliano by at least half and also reducing the orgeat would help bring down the sweetness. Perhaps a better option would be to prepare a Mai Tai according to spec of preference and then add a splash of Galliano to it at the end. 

The Mai Tai is not the best cocktail to have a Galliano riff done to it, but it might work in other tiki drinks that use absinthe or Pernod. 

If you enjoyed this write up about a cocktail from a vintage cocktail book, check out other write ups I’ve done:

Categories
Cocktails

Museum Quality Cocktails: Jennifer Croll’s Art Boozel

In the decades since the dark ages of the 70s and 80s, cocktail culture has made giant strides into the greater pop culture arena. Nowhere is this more evident than the proliferation of themed cocktail books. Popular television shows and movies, such as Game of Thrones (Game of Thrones Cocktail Recipes by Dan Babel), Downton Abby (The Official Downton Abby Cocktail Book published by Weldon Owen), and Star Wars (The Unofficial Star Wars-Inspired Book of Cocktails by Rhiannon Lee) capitalize on both fan and cocktail enthusiast interest. Cocktail books that homage the literary world, such as Tim Federle’s Tequila Mockingbird and Mike Slater’s Lovecraft Cocktails, are also readily available.

Personal copy of Art Boozel

Jennifer Croll’s Art Boozel is a themed cocktail book, but it differentiates itself from the crowd by focusing not on artistic end products, but on the creators of art: painters, photographers, film directors, and so on. The recipes in Art Boozel are not of cocktails favoured/created by artists, but instead are brand new, unique creations that pay homage to their personalities, crafts, and legacies. 

What Art Boozel accomplishes can be best exemplified by its entry on Banksy. The base cocktail recipe is fairly simple: Campari, lemon juice, Cherry Heering, and egg white. How it honours Banksy is that after the drink is poured/strained and has developed a nice egg foam on top, the next step is to place a stencil over the cocktail and mist bitters through it, mimicking Banksy’s distinctive street art style. Paired with this interactive libation is a rendition of Banksy, hooded and completely silhouetted in black. This isn’t just a cocktail, it is an experience, an act of creating and consuming art. 

There are fifty-eight other cocktail recipes in Art Boozel, all celebrating different visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers from the past century. Some choice recipes include the Gerhard Richter, a drink that balances a few unusual pairings – blue curacao, apple brandy, gin and green chartreuse – into a rather smooth, robust libation that conceals a maraschino cherry.

Gerhard Richter

The Jeff Wall goes all in on orange with mandarin juice (and garnish), orange blossom water with gin and honey. The end result is a Tom Collins variant that is tangy and refreshing.

Jeff Wall

The Miranda July follows a similar path with gin, orange juice, orange Fanta soda, and Campari. The bitterness of the Campari is tempered down from the sweetness of the one-two orange combo.

Miranda July

A final example, the Roy Lichtenstein, challenges conventions with its vodka-margarita riff: vodka, simple syrup, Cointreau, lime and lemon juices. The formula works, the vodka allows the Cointreau to be the star of this show, and it is a must see.

Roy Lichtenstein

Each recipe is accompanied by a portrait created by Kelly Shami whose style is perfect at representing each artist in a fun, unique way. Every portrait also contains a rendition of the cocktail, which is extremely helpful and a huge step above cocktail books that lack photos to help guide folks along.

The majority of cocktails in Art Boozel are not aimed at beginners, as some have fairly esoteric or unusual ingredients. This is by design as Art Boozel aims to experiment and advance mixology while at the same time appreciating and honouring a variety of influential artists – some household names, others underground. With this in mind, Art Boozel is a stand out tome in a sea of themed cocktail books, inviting readers to check out interesting artists via inventive cocktails. 

If you’re interested in checking out Art Boozel, the book can be found for purchase in the below links:

Categories
Cocktails

Houston, We Have a Problem: The Tiki Melange

Jasper’s Starlight Tavern is a space-comedy comic strip created by Bob Salley and Jason Sparich that focuses on the interactions the staff of an intergalactic space bar have with their patrons. In 2021, there was a Kickstarter to release the comic in a variety of formats including a compact, hardcover edition.

My copy of Jasper’s Starlight Tavern from the Kickstarter

Like an alluring neon sign, the cover of Jasper’s Starlight Tavern draws readers in with promises of vibrant and terrific artwork. In this department, JST delivers more than promised. The art by Juan Calle, in conjunction with the coloring of Don Mathias, is stunning. Every character looks distinct; each panel pops off the page with a rainbow of colors that emulate well-produced cartoons.

The writing for JST, however, does not live up to its amazing art. The comic strip relies heavily on cameos of characters from popular or cult science fiction sources (usually films and television shows) to convey its humor. Specifically it is the presence of the guest characters themselves that is each strip’s punchline, though in fact the the cameo-ed entities rarely performs any (funny) actions at all.

The following page from JST illustrates the comic’s style of humor:

The joke of the page is literally “we need an extra set of hands because there are a lot of vehicles in the drive through” and those vehicles happen to be spaceships from a variety of sci-fi sources (an Imperial Star Destroyer, a Borg Cube, the Satellite of Love, the Normandy, and so on). Lobot from The Empire Strikes Back is present for an inexplicable reason; instead of adding anything useful or funny, he merely stands there like a drooling mess.

Of particular interest is the appendix of cocktails made specifically for the book titled “Interstellar Mixology Guide.” Sincere there’s no bartender or mixologist credited, one has to assume the writers created the recipes themselves.

The eight cocktails are:

  • Dr. Zoidrosé
  • Tiki Melange
  • The Imposter
  • Mocha-Dimensional Madness
  • Galactic Committee
  • The Solitude
  • The Kraken Strikes Back
  • Ecto 1

Each drink is paired with a drawing of what the cocktail looks like in the JST universe, ingredients, and measurements. However, there are no directions of any kind for the cocktails. Stirred? Shaken? Swizzled? With or without ice? Strained? Floated? These are all absent.

The Tiki Melange is JST’s attempt at a tiki cocktail.

Tiki Melange

  • 1.5 oz Kraken Spiced Rum
  • .5 oz Oregeat [sic] Syrup (or Amaretto)
  • 1 oz Lime
  • 1 oz Pineapple

Looking at the ingredients along with the artistic depiction, it is fairly obvious that this cocktail will not work with primitive Earth mixolo-technology and ingredients, but it is a curio and warrants a deeper dive.

Limited edition Kraken from the personal stash.

First, the Kraken Spiced rum is not necessarily a bad call. Spiced rums get a lot of hate in the tiki community, usually under the guise of “you don’t know what is in spiced rum, it could be anything” and “you should be able to control what your drink tastes like.”

To the first sentiment – pluck up a bottle of Kraken and look at its label: “rum with natural flavors and caramel colour.” Now pick up your bottle of Angostura bitters (the salt and pepper of the cocktail world) and read its ingredients: “alcohol, water, sugar, gentian, natural flavors and caramel color.”

Natural flavors can mean anything, so why is it not acceptable in spiced rums but acceptable in Ango (and other bitters)? True, Ango has been around for a long, long, long time – but what’s actually in it is still proprietary and obfuscated. The best way to view spiced rum is to envision it as a rum that has built in bitters.

Take a drink of spiced rum. Now you know what it tastes like. Now you know (and can control) what is going in your drink. For the Tiki Melange, one definitely does not want to use a pricier rum in the cocktail, and the Kraken imagery of tentacles go hand-in-hand with the intended Lovecraftian cosmic horror.

Next, the amaretto or orgeat. These two ingredients are not interchangeable; their only commonality is they are both sweet and both have almond flavors. One is a syrup, the other is a liqueur and they each have different roles in cocktails. One can walk into an establishment and order an amaretto sour and enjoy a fantastic drink. One would not order an orgeat sour, as this would be an affront to all cocktails in existence. For best practice, treat the two as non-interchangeable.

Finally, the lime and pineapple. These are often found together in many tiki drinks, with the Jungle Bird being a notable example that uses both to balance its bitter Campari. Unfortunately, as will be shown, the Tiki Melange is far from balanced.

Looking at the artwork, there is no way these ingredients can achieve this look on their own. There are no directions, but because citrus is present, the best practice is to shake with ice and then strain. There’s no ice in the cocktail proper, so it is either getting its coldness from being shaken with ice and/or the futuristic glassware being chilled. There is the slim, but possible, chance that the drink is dry-shaken and poured into a chilled glass.

There is also a color gradient in the drink: brownish red on the bottom, yellow on top. That coloring is not from the square glassware, so is this cocktail floating its lime and pineapple on top of the orgeat and Kraken? Typically, it is the other way around: the rum is floated on top. There is also a lack of foam on top of the drink, which would be present if the drink was shaken with pineapple juice. With this aspect in mind, the cocktail was either stirred (with no ice) or left out for a length of time for the foam to disperse, both of which are horrible practices for this (or any) type of libation.

The Tiki Melange is a paradox, so the best way to tackle it is to make both versions: an orgeat Tiki Melange and an amaretto Tiki Melange.

The orgeat Tiki Melange has a brownish foam, with the pineapple dominating and the lime in a close second. The Kraken, surprisingly for having a fairly distinct taste, is absent from the flavor profile. There is a slight sweetness from the orgeat, but not much.

The amaretto Tiki Melange has a white foam, with the pineapple also dominating. This incarnation is tarter than the orgeat variation. Both have awful colors and should not be served in clear glassware.

Though the art depicts the drink without ice, this cocktail definitely needs to have ice in it to be even remotely palatable. The pineapple and lime are fighting for dominance in both versions, as this drink is horribly unbalanced. It can be suspected that this cocktail is attempting to be an extremely stripped down version of the Royal Hawaiian Mai Tai.

Neither iteration of the Tiki Melange taste good. Unfortunately, for folks who are adventurous and like to try new cocktails, the other exclusive cocktails featured in Jasper’s Starlight Tavern look to suffer the same fate. While the comic book delivers spectacularly with its artwork, it burns up in orbit with its humor and cocktail recipes.

Thanks to Jay Mize for edits and second set of eyes for this article.

Links