Jamaican Spiced Swizzle #3

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One of the cocktails that became a “best seller” on the Tahiti menu was the Jamaican Spiced Swizzle. Over the years, I have continued working on this cocktail, creating new versions in order to improve costs and also optimize the time of preparation of the drink, but always keeping the flavor of the original that was so popular in those times. On this occasion, I present the third version of this cocktail.

Jamaican Spiced Swizzle #3

Author: Oriol Elias, 2014

Ingredients:

  • 2oz Aged Jamaican Rum
  • 1oz Lime Juice
  • 0.5oz Angostura Bitters
  • 0,75oz Bastard’s Mix #2*
  • 0.5oz Black Cherry Real

*Bastard’s Mix #2: Equal parts Orgeat, Cinnamon Syrup and Pimento Dram

Technique: Swizzle

Ice: Crushed Ice

Glass: Highball

Garnish: Lime Wedge, Maraschino Cherry, Bamboo Stick

Basic Homemade Ingredients for Tiki Drinks

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During the 6 years of life that this blog has, I have been publishing various recipes, including those that I consider to be the basic ingredients for making tiki drinks. I’m talking about homemade ingredients such as Orgeat, Cinnamon Syrup, Pimento Dram, Falernum or Vanilla Syrup. In this post, I have decided to group these recipes through links to the articles in order to facilitate the location of these.

You only have to press the name of the ingredient to access the recipe:

Volcán Tahitiano

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On the menu that I made when I was working at Tahiti cocktail bar in Barcelona, we had a version of the Volcano Bowl that worked very well and had a quite particular ingredient for 2014, Pumpkin Real, a pumpkin purée infused syrup spiced with ginger, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg.

The truth is that, currently, I don’t have many options to be able to make cocktails to share in my actions, and this one in particular I have only done it a few times in some masterclasses. One day, I decided to make a version of that cocktail, adapting it to an individual service, making it less complex in the selection of rums, but making it more complex on the spices, there the Volcán Tahitiano was born.

Volcán Tahitiano

Author: Oriol Elias, 2018

Ingredients:

  • 3oz Don Q Añejo
  • 2oz Grapefruit Juice
  • 1oz Lime Juice
  • 0.75oz Pumpkin Real
  • 0.25oz Pimento Dram
  • 1 dash Angostura Bitters

Technique: Shaker/ Serve unstrained

Ice: Crushed Ice

Glass: Double Old Fashioned

Garnish: Mint Sprig, Fresh Grated Nutmeg, Maraschino Cherry

Bastard’s Life

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Reading Minimalist Tiki, the book of my friend Matt Pietrek, I found a recipe from Daniel “Doc” Parks that caught my eye, the cocktail was called Banana Life. As I continued to immerse myself in my reading, I realized that there were some twists of the same cocktail in the book, such as The Banana Life Redux by Matt Pietrek or Commando Life by Jason Alexander. Honestly, I thought it was an interesting cocktail and a fun idea, so I decided to make my own twist on it, that’s how Bastard’s Life was born.

Bastard’s Life

Author: Oriol Elias, 2020

Ingredients:

  • 2oz Tiki Lovers Pineapple Rum 
  • 0,75oz Grapefruit Juice 
  • 0,75oz Lime Juice 
  • 0.75oz Pineapple Juice
  • 0,75oz Banana Liqueur
  • 0.5oz Passion Fruit Real
  • 1 dash Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas Own Decanter Bitters 

Technique: Blender/Serve unstrained

Ice: Crushed Ice

Glass: Snifter

Garnish: Mint Sprig, Fresh Grated Nutmeg

Homemade Pimento Dram

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Another particular ingredient used in tiki cocktails is a spicy liqueur called Pimento Dram, which is also known as Pimento Liqueur or Allspice Dram. It is a Jamaican pepper liqueur with a rum base.

Pimento Dram

Ingredients (aprox 1,2l):

  • 70g Allspice
  • 500ml Unaged White Jamaican Overproof Rum
  • 600gr Cane Sugar
  • 600ml Water

Instructions:

  • Add the ground allspice with the rum in a jar and leave to infuse for 10 days.
  • Strain pressing the solids well.
  • Make syrup 1: 1 with water and sugar.
  • Add it to the filtered infusion, bottle and leave to settle for 30 days.

Homemade Orgeat

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Orgeat is an almond syrup of French origin widely used in cocktails by Trader Vic. The truth is that I have been working this ingredient on my cocktails for years, even before commercial versions were found in the Spanish market and, at the end, I always end up using two recipes, one faster or another more elaborate.

The first one that we should know is the most elaborate, consists on generating an almond milk first and then we can make our orgeat.

ORGEAT

Ingredients:

  • 500gr of raw almonds without skin
  • 800ml of water
  • 700 gr of sugar
  • 100ml of vodka (or unaged rum)
  • 1ml of almond extract
  • 2ml orange blossom water (or rose water)

Instructions:

  • Put the almonds in a bowl, cover with cold water and let soak for half an hour. Drain and crush the almonds.
  • In a bowl, mix the almonds with the 800 ml of water. Let stand for two hours.
  • In another bowl, strain the almonds through a superbag (or similar) pressing the solids well to expel the maximum liquid. Put the pulp again in the almond water that we have obtained. Let stand another hour and repeat the casting process. Optionally, the process could be repeated a third time.
  • Put the obtained almond milk (without the solid pulp) in a saucepan. Add the sugar and heat until it dissolves (without allowing it to boil), stirring constantly. Let cool about 20 minutes and add the extracts and the vodka (or unaged rum).
  • Let cool for about two hours and then bottle and store in the fridge. It lasts about a month.

The second and fastest way would be not to make the almond milk and start from an almond cream base.

ORGEAT (fast version)

Ingredients (aprox 500ml):

  • 3 tablespoons Almond Cream
  • 250 ml water
  • 250gr sugar
  • 2 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1/2 tablespoon orange blossom or rose water
  • 100ml vodka (or unaged rum)

Instructions:

  • Dissolve almond cream in hot water.
  • Add sugar and heat, stirring until dissolved.
  • Add vodka (or unaged rum) and extracts.
  • Let cool and bottle.
  • Store in a fridge. Lasts about a month.

The truth is that both options are interesting, one because you have the orgeat done in about 20 minutes and the other because you can control the entire process from the almond milk. This would allow us to play and experiment with other types of nuts instead of almonds, such as: chestnuts, pistachios, cashews, peanuts, …