Post #692479 by AdOrAdam on Wed, Sep 4, 2013 2:41 PM

Question: What goes in a mai tai?
Answer: Lime, rum, curacao, sugar syrup, orgeat, crushed ice, mint sprig & lime shell

Question: Which rum, curacao, sugar syrup & orgeat are best?
Answer: Well... that's where it gets complicated...

On 2013-08-30 09:18, TropicDrinkBoy wrote:
I like Martin's video and his instructions are fine but the color of his Mai Tai is ALL WRONG! I don't know why it looks like mango juice (yellow/orange) in the video...

Both Vals & Martin Cates mai tais end up 'mango' coloured.

For the purposes of research I've had a few high end & low end mai tais recently. My thought is:

The better mai tais I've had have been made using home-made syrups. They have been darker than mine. If you are using brown sugar syrup over white sugar syrup, it darkens the drink. If you are using orgeat made with brown sugar, this also darkens the drink.

I attribute the 'mango' colour to that. My mai tai pic on page 1 looks weak-ass compared to those in the videos but was tasty anyway. I used white sugar syrup & white orgeat.

For a while Im going to experiment, particularly with brown sugar syrups - I wonder if the better the syrups, the better the mai tai?