Top Five Tiki Drinks | How to Drink

Escape the confines of your quarantine with these five tiki drinks, little vacations in a glass!

Tiki, as a midcentury American bar phenomenon, has always been about pretending to be someplace you aren't. And since we're all stuck indoors this holiday weekend, I felt like it was a great time to talk about tiki drinks, and introduce you to a few of my favorites. As I say in the video, Tiki is a weird thing. Yes, Tiki borrows heavily from the very real cultures of the Pacific Islanders, but the version of tiki I'm talking about here is a saccharine fiberglass molded ersatz Walt Disney Studios post war rumpus room invention that has more in common with golf carts and canapés than it does with island vistas and active volcanos. I think it's important to draw that distinction, and I hope I do it well in the video. By and large these drinks do. not come from, or have any relationship to, the cultures they're appropriating, and that can easily be problematic, BUT, I like to think that if you have that awareness you can use bar tiki as a doorway to curiosity and interest and learn the real histories of these real people.

These are all drinks I made on the show previously, but i'm dusting them off here and updating the recipes I used back then a bit, and hopefully introducing some new viewers to the delicious fantastic drinks that bear the name "Tiki".

Mai Tai
.5 oz. -or- 15 ml. Orgeat
1 oz. -or- 30 ml. Lime Juice
.5 oz. -or- 15 ml. Curaçao
.5 oz. -or- 15 ml. Simple Syrup
1 oz. -or- 30 ml. Jamaican Rum
1 oz. -or- 30 ml. Demerara Rum
Shake over crushed ice
open pour into double rocks glass
Garnish with sprig of mint and overturned lime half

Jungle Bird
2 oz. -or- 60 ml. Pineapple Juice
.25 oz. -or- 8 ml. Demerara Syrup
.75 oz. -or- 45 ml. Campari
1.5 oz. -or- 45 ml. black strap rum
Shake over ice and strain
Garnish with Pineapple leaves

Halekulani Cocktail
.5 oz. -or- 15 ml. Lime Juice
.5 oz. -or- 15 ml. Orange Juice
.5 oz. -or- 15 ml. Pineapple Juice
.25 oz. -or- 8 ml. demerara simple syrup
half teaspoon grenadine
1.5 oz. -or- 45 ml. Booker's Bourbon (cask strength)
Shake & Strain into coupe
Garnish with Flamed Angostura Bitters

Singapore Sling
2 oz. -or- 60 ml. London Dry Gin
.5 oz. -or- 15 ml. Lemon Juice
.5 oz. -or- 15 ml. Pineapple Juice
.25 oz. -or- 8 ml. Benedictine
.5 oz. -or- 15 ml. Cherry Heering
Shake & Strain
Top with Seltzer-

Painkiller
1 oz. -or- 30 ml. Orange Juice
1 oz. -or- 30 ml. Creme of Coconut
4 oz. -or- 240 ml. Pineapple Jucie
2 oz. -or- 60 ml. Rum
Shake and open pour
Garnish with Grated Nutmeg

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#mixology #Tiki #Summer #Bartending

[thomastaylor]

I just watched the educated Barfly, who, upon spilling his Fair Harvard, said "Oh, I pulled a Greg!". You are now part of the lexicon. What an honor.

[crossthreaded]

I absolutely love the idea that tiki is larping for mid century Americans

[overagetoddler]

It's like Tex-Mex. It's its own thing now.

[brycevo]

Welcome to the Tropical Hideaway, you lucky people, you. If we weren't in the show starting right away, we'd be in the audience too.

[AndrewTrembley]

The bartenders at Jungle Bird in San Juan, PR were the first folks I encountered who distinguished Tiki drinks (invented by mostly mainland American bartenders) and Tropical drinks (originated by local bartenders at tropical and subtropical vacation destinations).

They're among the leaders in decolonizing Tiki.

[jeffjohnson]

Thank you so much for this. I’m an avid tikiphile, and it regularly frustrates me how often I encounter people who believe that tiki culture is an evolution of Polynesian history and culture, when it absolutely is not. It’s a bar theme. Tiki is Hard Rock Cafe but with thatch and fruity drinks. And that’s ok. But it is not legitimately Polynesian, and it’s an insult to Polynesian people and culture to insinuate that it is. Polynesian people did not come to the mainland and open bars, using their own cultural motifs and symbols as decoration. White dudes appropriated those symbols and motifs, and there is nothing genuine about that. Is it fun? Yes. Do I love it? Yes. But is it genuinely Polynesian? Absolutely not. Tiki is artifice at its core, and people - especially elitists within the tiki community - need to grasp that. Thank you for NAILING what tiki actually is and isn’t. It’s as appreciated as your mixology expertise.

[spookerd]

Sipping on a Mai Tai, watching a 10 hour looped Youtube video of sunsets, and burying my toes in cat litter. It's not the beach but it's close (even factoring in the cat shit and angry cat).

[RobotRampage]

Idea for a video/series:
“Cocktail Roulette”
Using what you have in the bar, whether it be spirits, mixers, odd and ends that maybe wouldn’t usually go into a cocktail, put a number to each of them. Separate mixer numbers into one hat, spirits into another and so on. Pick out as many numbers as you see fit, and make the best cocktail you can out of it. I may have over explained it, I just want to see Greg somehow make a cocktail from cookies, gin and Mountain Dew or something like that😂

[MrIWannaLaugh]

At 0:47, you mentioned you wished 'Tiki' focused more on the cultures from which it draws inspiration. My dad and I ventured to Indianapolis recently for my birthday, and stopped into The Inferno Room; which prides itself on showcasing authentic antique artworks and sculptures expressly from Papua New Guinea, and pays homage to the forefathers of the genre. An immersive getaway experience to say the least, it was my first expedition to a tiki bar. -If ever you happen to be lost in this neck of the Midwest, The Inferno Room is my foremost recommendation; absolutely the place to be!

[xenostra]

Take a shot everytime he says "this is my favorite drink ever" in every video

[nate]

Drinking game: take a shot whenever in a video, Greg calls a Jamaican rum "funky"

[MagnetHero]

My this couldn't be more timely. Thanks to your videos, in the last month and a half since I moved out on my own I have purchased Smuggler's Cove, many different rums, made my own syrups, and over the last week have been enjoying a tiki drink nightly. While I haven't made anything you've listed as a top five (give me time and I'll get there) I did make as my first drink a Pearl Diver based on your episode. Utterly fabulous. So this is my thank you. Thank you for putting out such great content and inspiring my own home bar for the love of tiki.

[TDwulf]

I've made 10+ cocktails from your channel in the last month. All of them are amazing.

[Matthew-ired]

Is my favourite episode you've done in a long time. I love the history lesson, I love the classic drinks, and I love that you're more chill.

[saxon]

The wife had been asking for a Mai Tai for a long time. Finally managed to get all the ingredients. Only thing I didn't manage to get was El Dorado 8 year but the store had the 3 year. The drink still turned out fantastic. Thanks, Greg!

[tatianapulido]

Seasonally appropriate. Tiki cocktails=less stir crazy from quarantine

[zachhughes]

Well, vocabulary word of the day with ersatz. Thanks Greg, I’m keeping that one.

[JurisMana]

Maitai means "good" in Tahitian (Reo Tahiti/Maohi) - Never heard anyone in Polynesia criticizing Tiki Drinks. First of all, not a lot of people knows it is actually not drinks invented in the south Pacific, but most of all, I think it is more like understood (maybe wrongly) as an "hommage". There is a possibility that the "Tiki glass" can be sometimes taken as offensive by some Pacific Islanders, but not the drinks in themselves

[TheWastelandWizard]

Would love to see you tackle the Blood and Sand, Teddy Roosevelt's favorite drink and mine too. Scotch, Cherry Heering, Sweet Vermouth, a splash of Blood Orange and Lemon to brighten it is the way I make em and they're my go-to drink now.

[spuppy]

Regarding coconut cream (aka coconut milk), it never comes from coconuts naturally. Basically it's coconut meat (the white hard stuff when a coconut is mature) mixed into water and strained. It's like any other nut milk - soy milk, almond milk, etc.
You're right that coconut water from young coconuts is a different thing, but mature coconuts also have this. Young coconut meat is soft and fleshy, and is delicious when scraped off the inside of a young coconut. It doesn't have a lot of flavour but the texture is kind of gel-like.