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:

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, …