The Original 1944 Mai Tai
1 1/2 oz White rum
3/4 oz Orange curaçao
3/4 oz Fresh lime juice
1/4 - 1/2 oz Orgeat Syrup
1/2 oz Dark rum
Garnish: Lime wheel, Mint sprig
Add the white rum, curaçao, lime juice and orgeat syrup into a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice and shake to combine.
Strain into a double Old Fashioned glass filled with finely crushed ice (if available). Gently pour the dark rum over the top trying to float it on top.
Garnish with a lime wheel and mint sprig.
1953 Royal Hawaiian Mai Tai:
½ oz Curaçao Liqueur (Triple Sec)
1½ oz Gold/ Amber Rum
1 oz Dark Rum
¼ oz Lime juice
1½ oz Pineapple juice
1½ oz Orange juice
¼ oz Orgeat syrup
1 teaspoon maraschino cherry juice (red) or grenadine for color
Garnish: Orange slice, pineapple, red maraschino cherry
Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice and shake to combine.
Strain into a large whiskey glass filled with finely crushed ice (if available).
Garnish with a wedge of pineapple, an orange wheel, and a maraschino cherry.
Tiki culture and it’s quintessential cocktails all started in 1933 when Ernest Beaumont-Gantt opened a Polynesian-themed bar and restaurant in Hollywood called Don the Beachcomber. The restaurant featured Cantonese food with a decor of flaming torches, rattan furniture, floral leis, and carved tiki masks and wooden sculptures of Polynesian gods.
This was also the first restaurant to ever focus an entire drink menu on mixing rum with flavored syrups and fresh fruit juices, which they originally called "Rhum Rhapsodies", but were later called Tiki cocktails. These drinks were usually served in fancy glasses, hollowed out pineapples, or drilled coconuts, and sometimes even giant fish bowl sized communal glasses with long straws for sharing.
Perhaps the best known and most popular Tiki cocktail ever is the Mai Tai.
It was originally invented by another restauranteur namedTrader Vic in Oakland California in 1944. Don Beach later accused Trader Vic of stealing the recipe from him, saying that his punch, the Q.B. Cooler, which he invented in 1933, was suspiciously similar. But even if it was inspired by the Q.B. Cooler, they’re very different drinks and the Cooler has almost twice as many ingredients. Vic Bergeron later wrote in his book, "anyone who says I didn’t create this drink is a dirty stinker."
The Mai Tai became so popular that within a few years of its invention, the world ran out of the aged rum called for in the original recipe, so most recipes today call for a mix of light and dark rum.
In the beginning, the Mai Tai was a simple and rum forward drink, but In 1953, a cruise company hired Vic Bergeron to oversee their cocktail menus at their hotels in Hawaii. He reworked the drink adding orange juice and pineapple juice to make it feel more Hawaiian and to sweeten the recipe, so it’d be more tourist friendly.
The Hawaiian version became even more popular than the original and now most people think that’s what a Mai Tai is supposed to taste like. Both versions are absolutely delicious, although they’re so different that they probably shouldn’t both have the same name.