SUMMER TIKI SPECIAL 2016

SUMMER TIKI SPECIAL 2016
Featuring the Mai Tai and Singapore Sling
With Comedian Katie Massa
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It’s August!  What better time for lounging by the pool and getting drunk as a Hawaiian sunset?  We’ve been away for a while, but before this long hot summer passes into misty memory, the Drunks have brought you an extra special, extra-extended parade of TIKI, damn it!

We plumb the Pacific depths of the only genre of cocktails spawned from a theme restaurant.  Learn how Don the Beachcomber unwittingly founded the Tiki movement in pre-WWII California, and how competitor Trader Vic took it nation-wide from — believe it nor not — Oakland.   Then learn the history of the MAI TAI, the flagship tiki cocktail, and the SINGAPORE SLING, an outside-the-Polynesian-triangle addition to the tiki pantheon.

Matt Shaw also tells us about his distillery tour of Scotland.  Yes, someone let Matt Shaw loose in the land where they make scotch.  Katie Massa tells us how People are Horrible™. Buck expounds on what it means to get “Tiki Drunk.”   We solve the urgent riddle of Zsa Zsa Gabor: alive or dead? And we play “Name That Sex Act: Trump Edition.”  (NSFW as always.)

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Or listen directly here!

BUT FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS!  THIS GODDAMN BOOK!
Before we go too far, this is the flat-out amazing Tiki book we referenced during the show, Smuggler’s Cove by Martin Cate and Rebecca Cate.  It goes deep into the kelp on the true origins of all the Polynesian cocktails you sort-of know and think you probably would love if you could only try one.   It also contains the ORIGINAL MAI TAI recipe we tried.  (We’d post it here, but we don’t want to deny Martin & Rebecca their hard-earned book royalties.)   If you love Tiki as much as you love life itself, or even slightly less, go buy it right now!

And if you need your bad self some good Tiki mugs, we used this plucky little set.

DRINK ALONG AT HOME!
The Mai Tai!

• 1 oz (2 tablespoons) dark rum
• 1 oz (2 tablespoons) amber rum
• 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
• 1/2 oz (1 tablespoon) Cointreau (or triple sec or Curaçao)
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
• 1 teaspoon orgeat syrup  (or 1 drop pure almond extract)
• 1 teaspoon superfine granulated sugar
• Dash of grenadine
• Garnish: an orange slice, or Lime rind and mint sprig

Shake all of the ingredients with ice, pour into a highball glass with a straw.  Or a tiki glass, or a Tiki mug if you want to go full-Tiki.

Note: Martin Cate suggests you add the juice of half a fresh lime after the pour, to keep it from over-liming the whole drink.  YMMV.  There’s also some debate over the proper garnish.  Apparently the classic Mai Tai uses a mint sprig with the lime rind, while the more modern Tiki-slinger can go with an orange slice, or any of the usual Tiki umbrella/fruit combos.

DRINK MORE AT HOME!
The Singapore Sling!

• 1 1⁄2 ounces gin
• 1⁄2 ounce cherry heering
• 1⁄4 ounce Cointreau liqueur
• 1⁄4 ounce benedictine
• 4 ounces pineapple juice
• 1⁄2 ounce lime juice
• 1⁄3 ounce grenadine
• 1 dash bitters

Shake all ingredients in a shaker with shakable ice.  Strain into a highball glass or Tiki mug.  Garnish with whatever festive Tiki regalia you have at your disposal.  (But anything involving pineapple never hurts.)

FINALLY, THE COCONUT!
From the Gentleman Callers of Los Angeles