6 Notes on “Don the Beachcomber’s Mai Tai”

1. Hey! After eat­ing and drink­ing almost week­ly at Don the Beach­combers in Calil­for­nia when grow­ing up I can attest that your mai tai isn’t even close to what I observed being whipped up at the bar over many years. Try again!

2. Ron, this recipe is from the book Beach Bum Berry Remixed by Jeff Berry. I’d love to hear about the recipe you encoun­tered. Care to share?

3. if you leave out the grape­fruit, the recipe is Don the Beach­comber’s Test Pilot, an amaz­ing and per­fect drink. My under­stand­ing is that this “mai tai” recipe appeared and dis­ap­peared ear­ly, and the sub­se­quent Mai Tai with orgeat, by Trad­er Vic, is what we now know as a mai tai. Well, those of us who send back any­thing deliv­ered with pineap­ple juice.

   It is too bad this drink has a con­fus­ing name — it is worth your time to try it out. Just don’t expect a Mai Tai!

4. What is Meyers’s Plan­ta­tion rum? Are you refer­ring to the pop­u­lar dark rum from Dia­geo? I’m aware of the Plan­ta­tion prod­uct line from Pierre Fer­rand, and there is also Myer­s’s Plat­inum (white) rum. I’ve seen a sim­i­lar quo­ta­tions on a num­ber of cock­tail recipe sites — per­haps this is the way it’s writ­ten in the orig­i­nal source? Could it be a dis­con­tin­ued prod­uct? Dig­ging around a lit­tle, I learned that “Plan­ta­tion” (or Estate) can refer to a sea­son­al method of mak­ing rum that is rarely used today (http://www.robsrum.com/RumBasics.html).
   It’s just that rums can be so vari­able and dis­tinc­tive, and I’d like to get as close as I can to the orig­i­nal inten­tion of the “oth­er” Mai Tai. Thanks for the infor­ma­tive site.

5. Wrong recipe. Should be rum, triplesec, lime, orgeat, sug­ar.

6. Oops, I was think­ing of Trad­er Vic’s recipe. My bad, dis­re­gard the ear­li­er com­ment.