(13) Don the Beachcomber Mai Tai, Homemade Falernum Syrup, and Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Revisited

Don the Beachcomber Mai Tai, with the bevy of ingredients required to make it in the background. On the right is Rum Dood’s Falernum #2.

We’ve got a long post for you this time! Consider it an apology for my being absent for so long. As promised, I’m doing the Don the Beachcomber Mai Tai, talking about how I made my own falernum syrup and rock candy syrup, and revisiting the Trader Vic’s Mai Tai after someone pointed out that I had made a mistake in my previous post. So let’s get started!

I mentioned in my previous Mai Tai post that there are two drinks that have credible claims to being the original Mai Tai, one made by Don the Beachcomber in 1933, and the other made by Trader Vic in 1944. Both drinks are quite different from each other, so the best explanation I’ve found so far is simply that Don Beach first used the name Mai Tai, but Trader Vic is the one that invented the cocktail that would become famous and widely known by the Mai Tai name. This is a debate that has been going on for decades, with many books and articles being written about it, and one that I don’t want to become more involved in. That being said, I am very game to try out both cocktails!

One thing that can be said in favor of Trader Vic’s recipe is that it’s much simpler than Don’s. The hardest thing to find for Trader Vic’s recipe is probably just the orgeat (almond) syrup, which can be found at any Italian grocer. Don the Beachcomber’s Mai Tai, on the other hand, has eight ingredients (not counting garnishes), including a few drops of Pernod, and a dash of falernum syrup.

I hadn’t heard of falernum before I started doing research on the history of the Mai Tai. It’s a syrup, either alcoholic or not, that’s primarily flavored with lime, cloves, ginger, and almond, and is a necessary ingredient in many Tiki drinks. Of course, I’ve had a hard time finding a liquor store that even carries any bitters in my town, so finding a store that carries falernum would most likely be impossible. Luckily, the internet came to the rescue! The Rum Dood has a recipe for homemade falernum on his site which I decided to try making. His recipe has a base of Wray and Nephew’s Overproof White Rum and Lemonhart 151 (neither of which I had one hand), steeped with lime zest, ginger, cloves, and anise stars, then diluted with simple syrup, almond extract, and lime and lemon juice. I did make one change to his recipe, in that I did not add the citrus juices directly to my syrup, but instead opted to add the citrus juices as I add the syrup to a drink. Lemon and lime juice will both oxidize over time and ruin the flavor of the syrup, so leaving them out greatly extends the shelf life–important when you’re just one person who now has an entire 750 mL bottle of the stuff, and when drinks rarely call for more than a half-ounce at a time. The downside is that I need to add tiny amounts of lemon and lime juice: for every ounce of falernum, I add one teaspoon of lime juice and ¼ teaspoon of lemon juice. When a recipe calls for a quarter-ounce of falernum, you’re measuring lemon juice by the drop.

So, now that I had made the syrup, I felt ready to take on the Beachcomber Mai Tai. That is, until I checked the ingredient list again, and saw that I needed grapefruit juice and Pernod. Isn’t that just the way it goes? I have nearly every other anise-flavored spirit that there is (in preperation for a future post, stay tuned for “The Great Anise Roundup”), and this recipe would call for the one that I don’t have. I still really wanted to try out my newly-minted falernum though, so I tried out the recipe that The Rum Dood put on his page, the Captain’s Blood. There should be a post about that in the near future. So, after picking up a bottle of Pernod (bringing the number of anise-flavored spirits in my collection to eight) and some grapefruit and mint leaves the next morning, I was finally ready to take on the Beachcomber Mai Tai. Finally.

So after all of that, what do I think about the drink? It’s okay. Apparently this drink disappeared off of Don the Beachcomber’s menu not long after it was introduced, and it’s not that hard to see why. It’s a decent drink, perhaps good even, but there’s nothing that impressive about it. After piling all of those ingredients into the shaker I would’ve expected more from it, that’s all. This drink is primarily rum, and you can taste the rum quite clearly. On the other hand, I wouldn’t say that rum is the predominant flavor–the lime juice probably takes that spot. The falernum is definitely there, adding a bit of an herbaceous spice to the drink, but it isn’t that noticeable either. The Cointreau is nowhere to be found, as it cannot compete with the stronger flavors of the citrus juices in the drink. Though as I sit here sipping it, I am finding myself enjoying it more as time goes on. I think that the one thing that this drink lacks is any sort of sweetness to it. It’s a bit tart from the lime juice, and the heavy molasses flavor of the dark rum is there, but there isn’t much sweetness to round it out. This might be a weakness, but it could also be seen as a strength: for the first few sips I felt myself longing for a bit of sweetness to round the drink out, but as the glass became more empty, I didn’t really find myself missing the sweetness anymore, or just enjoying the much lower levels of sweetness. That will make this a drink that’s easy to finish, though I’m not sure that’s a good thing either: with 2 1/2 ounces of rum in it, this drink packs a wallop! I should add, when I had my brother sample this drink, he remarked that it tasted of an unripe peach. At first I thought that made no sense, since no peach has been near this drink, but upon reflection, I think that’s bang-on. It does have the flavor of an unripe peach to it (though without the unpleasant crunchiness that a real unripe peach has).

Final thoughts? It’s a decent drink, but not very impressive. Of the two Mai Tais, I prefer the Trader Vic’s recipe. Would I make this one again? Perhaps, but most likely not. It asks for a lot of ingredients to make a drink that’s only decent. Actually, leave out a few ingredients and you’d have a Captain’s Blood, a similar cocktail that I much preferred.

Don the Beachcomber Mai Tai (from http://www.melindalee.com/recipes/don-the-beachcombers-mai-tai/)

1 1/2 ounces, Myers’s Plantation Rum (I used Captain Morgan’s Dark Rum)
1 ounce, Cuban Rum (I used Appleton Estates)
3/4 ounce, fresh lime juice
1 ounce, fresh grapefruit juice
1/4 ounce, Falernum
1/2 ounce, Cointreau
2 dashes, Angostura Bitters
1 dash, Pernod

for garnish:
one slice, squeezed lime
one pineapple spear
one mint sprig

Pour all the liquids into a cocktail shaker. Fill it with ice and shake for about 30 seconds. Pour it all (including ice) into a 16-ounce double old-fashioned glass. Garnish with lime slice, pineapple spear, and mint sprig.

Of course this doesn’t end my Mai Tai adventures. Apparently when I did my Trader Vic’s Mai Tai post, I didn’t do it quite right. I blame it partially on the site that I got the recipe from, but mostly just on me doing some poor research. To make a proper Mai Tai you need rock candy syrup in addition to the orgeat syrup, and the rums that you use is important. Luckily Dean Rogers told me what I did wrong in the comments, and added a couple of links that had information about the original Mai Tai. Now, the 1944 Mai Tai called for Seventeen-Year-Old Wray Nephew Jamacian Rum, which isn’t available anymore. A few sites (see http://beachbumberry.com/how-to-make-a-mai-tai/ in particular) do say that a 50/50 mix of dark Jamaican and Martinique rum is a very close approximation to the original drink, so that’s what I’ve settled on for my Mai Tai. Martinique rum was another ingredient that I had some trouble finding, but I eventually found a bottle of Clement Rhum V.S.O.P. that does the job nicely. I think I’m going to take a break from Tiki drinks for awhile; I’ve gone from two to nine types of rum in my collection over the space of a few weeks!

If you go to the Beachbum Berry site I just linked to, you’ll find the author protesting the various colored Mai Tais that he’s received through the years; All apologies to that author, but my Mai Tai is blue. If you want to send me a bottle of Orange Curacao so that I can use that instead of the blue stuff that I have, be my guest. Until then (or until I find a source of Orange Curacao myself), my Mai Tais will have to remain blue. And since they’re just for me, that’s good enough.

The rock candy syrup was yet another can of worms. Some sites say that it’s a super-saturated solution of sugar and water (where simple syrup is merely saturated), some say that it’s simple syrup that hasn’t been properly heated to stabilize it (heat and time cause sucrose (table sugar) to break down into glucose and frutose, making the syrup sweeter and less prone to crystalizing), some mention the inclusion of vanilla, and I’ve even found a couple of references that say it’s merely the syrup left over from making rock candy. So what’s a gal to do? It appears that Trader Vic’s Rock Candy Syrup does have vanilla in it, so I decided that mine would too. I decided that I’d simply make a super saturated sugar syrup and settle for that. I boiled some water, and kept adding sugar until it was saturated. After it was cooled, I added about a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a tablespoon of lemon juice. Sugar doesn’t like to crystallize in the presence of an acid, so the lemon juice keeps the syrup stable. Some might say that this means that I’ve not actually created rock candy syrup, but it’s good enough for me. (I have seen a couple of crystals form in the bottle already, so I suppose I could’ve added a bit more lemon juice.) I did end up with a specific gravity of 1.43, which I thought was pretty good (a 2:1 sugar:water simple syrup has a specific gravity of 1.33). Once cooled and bottled, it was a very, very thick syrup. I even had some left over syrup that I can dilute or use in the creation of other things (I used some when making my falernum).

So does adding the rock candy syrup and changing the rum affect the flavor that much? Well, yes, it does. It’s still recognizable as the same drink, but it is noticeably different. The proper Mai Tai has a more full-bodied rum flavor that’s immediately noticeable on the first sip. The rum is very smooth, having an almost brandy-like quality to it. There is a lot of lime flavor in this drink, and isn’t quite as sweet as the drink that I made in my last Mai Tai post, probably because this one includes more lime juice. The drink that I made last time had a very strong almond flavor, which the proper Mai Tai doesn’t have. The proper Mai Tai has a more complex flavor to it, but I think it could benefit from another 1/4 ounce of orgeat perhaps. Is a “proper” Mai Tai better than what I posted last time? Probably. At the very least, it’s more too my liking.

1944 Trader Vic’s Mai Tai (Modern Recipe) (from http://beachbumberry.com/how-to-make-a-mai-tai/)

1 oz. Martinique Rum (I used Rhum Clément VSOP)
1 oz. Dark Jamaican Rum (I used Captain Morgan’s Dark)
1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice
½ oz. Orange Curacao (I used Blue Curacao)
¼ oz. Orgeat Syrup
¼ oz. Rock Candy Syrup (Extra-thick Simple Syrup with Vanilla Flavor)

– Add all ingredients to cocktail shaker with two cups of ice. Shake well for ten seconds then pour into an old fashioned glass. Put the squeezed lime into the drink and garnish with a sprig of mint.