It’s time for us to keep this amazing Tiki Month going strong! I knew that in doing an entire month of tiki drinks, I didn’t want to only hit the classics (those are great), but we had to introduce a few new ones too. Introducing new tiki drinks is also an opportunity to introduce unique and new ingredients like moonshine (or white whisky for you pedantic folks, since it’s legal and stuff)! Now introducing the Tropical Prohibition Paradise!

That’s right, we went both for tropical and paradise in the name — you can’t get much more tiki than that. Naturally, we had to give a nod to our moonshine with the prohibition.

Let’s get down to it, you can’t base an entire tiki cocktail for Tiki Month off of any ol’ limp wristed generic moonshine. It just wouldn’t do. Luckily, our friends over at Manhattan Moonshine sent us some of their prohibition style moonshine and it fit the be bill ideally. If you’re wondering, yes, it tastes as great as it looks (admittedly, I’m a bit ol’ sucker for art deco and that’s a pretty damn rad bottle). Now that we have our backbone, time to take it to the islands.

What we didn’t want to do was hide the flavor of the moonshine — we always aim to accentuate our base flavors, so we worked to keep that moonshine flavor solid.

To start our island trip, we added mango and pineapple juice. Tropical and tasty, that’s the way to get the party started. Fun fact: on a trip to Maui, Alice and I once drove by a pineapple field. True story. We didn’t go in it, harvest or anything like that. We did see it though. You just can’t buy experiences like that.

Next, we felt there was a distinct lack of brightness so we turned to sweet and sour. Now, we need to make a point of contention here (and repeat after me): don’t buy sweet and sour. Honestly, it’s easy as sin (which is super easy) to make. Take half a part of lemon juice, half a part of lime juice and one part of sugar — combine and dissolve like you would a simple syrup (for example, 2 oz. of lime and lemon juice to 4 oz. of sugar). Bingo bango, you have sweet and sour! In case you’re wondering, yes, it’s a lemon lime simple syrup.

Now you have great power, use it responsibly.

That brought up the extra tart and brightness nicely, but we were still missing a little something. Support players! Something to work with the richness of the mango, the sweetness of the pineapple and the brightness of the sweet and sour — oh, and not to muddle the moonshine flavor. This was a tall order. Turns out a splash of curacao and crème de cassis brought it all together famously.

Why yes, there are many ingredients in this one, but that’s what makes tiki cocktails fun, they’re ingredient rich! Now let’s enjoy this Tiki Month moonshine winner, onto the Tropical Prohibition Paradise!

 

July 9th, 2016 | by morgan