Post #500408 by The Gnomon on Tue, Dec 22, 2009 10:03 AM

Holy crap! It looks like the only decent ingredients you have available are lime and simple syrup and even they could be questionable.

Myers's has corky overtones to it that I personally do not enjoy in dark rum. Bacardi is about as harsh as they come. Both of these rums I consider to be desperation rums, but as you say, that's all you have at your disposal.

If you don't have a measuring shot glass, you can just eyeball this, but to control the effect of the dark rum, you just have to do a little side experiment. Take a shot of your Bacardi Gold and add a half-shot of Myers's to it. Presumably that's not too much. Then just keep adding dark rum until it's as good as it's going to get. Whatever those proportions are, you need to mix up enough for your Mai Tais before hand if your blend has really odd proportions. That should take care of the dark rum flavor issue.

There was a time when TV used DeKuyper curaçao, but he abandoned it when the quality went down the tubes. He then went to Bols, which is what I use for the most part, but like deKuyper, Bols has gone downhill as well, so it is not like the Bols Orange Curaçao that VJB, Jr used himself. Hiram Walker is another curaçao that you'll want to avoid. It's pretty much just as bad as DeKuyper.

Torani seems to do well as a syrup for coffee, which means it doesn't have to be much good, which is fortunate for Torani since it isn't very good at all. You're still lucky to find storebought orgeat at all. If you can find Rose Water, Orange Flower Water, and lots of almonds, you might want to try making your own. Even if you do a lousy job, it's still going to be better than Torani.