Fassionola? - Tiki Drinks and Food

HH Hurricane Hayward Grand Member (1 year) 16 miles from The Mai-Kai Joined: Jun 07, 2008 Posts: 1868	HH Hurricane Hayward Posted posted on Tue, Nov 18, 2014 1:41 AM PalmtreePat, I'm interested to know how your syrup-making experiments are going. Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to this thread, but I've had time to gather up some news on my research ... At Mike's suggestion, I decided to revisit the Special Reserve Daiquiri and make sure it's accurate. While I was at it, I thought I'd compare the Jonathan English red syrup head-to-head against the combination of Fee Brothers grenadine and Smucker's Red Raspberry Syrup. In the interest of time, I had to forgo the ice shell... The drink containing fassionola (left) is noticeably more red, and also has a slightly more intense fruit flavor. Tasting the syrups both straight-up and in the cocktails, I would consider them very similar. But the Jonathan English product, as artificial as it is, still works best if you're looking to duplicate the taste of these drinks exactly. The substitute is perfectly fine, just not quite as strong. I also made an interesting discovery at my local Total Wine store. They sell a 100% organic raspberry simple syrup made by Royal Rose that appears thick and dark and could be a fine substitute for the Smucker's (which lists high fructose corn syrup as its top ingredient). I mixed up a fassionola substitute using the raspberry simple syrup and Fee's grenadine and the results were just as good, if not better, than the batch with Smucker's ... Get more info on Royal Rose at http://www.royalrosesyrups.com (they also have a bunch of other interesting flavors) If you're leery of the corn sweeteners, this could be a fine alternative. It could probably be combined with a rich, homemade grenadine (along with perhaps some orange extract) to make an all-natural fassionola. It will just be tricky to get the same intensity you get with the bottled red fassionola. I also tinkered with the Special Reserve Daiquiri recipe after finding it a tad too sweet. There's not much room to improvise since the drink is so simple, but I got better results by swapping the amounts of lime and honey. Mike, try it with 3/4 ounce of lime juice and 1/2 ounce of rich honey mix and let me know what you think. I'll probably update the recipe on the blog soon. A few other quick tips: If you're not using the ice shell, you'll need to duplicate the chilling effect, along with the dilution caused by the ice. This also quells the sweetness. I would just add some crushed or cubed ice to the glass. Also, I'm fairly certain that this drink is pulse blended with crushed ice, not shaken, which also changes its consistency slightly. Since I posted this and other tribute recipes, I learned that all The Mai-Kai's cocktails are either pulse blended in a top-down mixer like Donn Beach used to do, or blended until smooth in a traditional blender (Derby Daiquiri, Floridita Daiquiri, etc.). Nothing is shaken. I would just strain the pulse-blended Special Reserve Daiquiri into a glass with an ice shell, or a chilled coupe with a few cubes. Okole maluna! The official blog of The Hukilau Featuring The Mai-Kai Cocktail Guide [ Edited by: Hurricane Hayward 2014-11-18 01:42 ]

PalmtreePat, I'm interested to know how your syrup-making experiments are going. Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to this thread, but I've had time to gather up some news on my research ...

At Mike's suggestion, I decided to revisit the Special Reserve Daiquiri and make sure it's accurate. While I was at it, I thought I'd compare the Jonathan English red syrup head-to-head against the combination of Fee Brothers grenadine and Smucker's Red Raspberry Syrup.

In the interest of time, I had to forgo the ice shell...

The drink containing fassionola (left) is noticeably more red, and also has a slightly more intense fruit flavor. Tasting the syrups both straight-up and in the cocktails, I would consider them very similar. But the Jonathan English product, as artificial as it is, still works best if you're looking to duplicate the taste of these drinks exactly. The substitute is perfectly fine, just not quite as strong.

I also made an interesting discovery at my local Total Wine store. They sell a 100% organic raspberry simple syrup made by Royal Rose that appears thick and dark and could be a fine substitute for the Smucker's (which lists high fructose corn syrup as its top ingredient). I mixed up a fassionola substitute using the raspberry simple syrup and Fee's grenadine and the results were just as good, if not better, than the batch with Smucker's ...

Get more info on Royal Rose at http://www.royalrosesyrups.com (they also have a bunch of other interesting flavors)
If you're leery of the corn sweeteners, this could be a fine alternative. It could probably be combined with a rich, homemade grenadine (along with perhaps some orange extract) to make an all-natural fassionola. It will just be tricky to get the same intensity you get with the bottled red fassionola.

I also tinkered with the Special Reserve Daiquiri recipe after finding it a tad too sweet. There's not much room to improvise since the drink is so simple, but I got better results by swapping the amounts of lime and honey. Mike, try it with 3/4 ounce of lime juice and 1/2 ounce of rich honey mix and let me know what you think. I'll probably update the recipe on the blog soon.

A few other quick tips: If you're not using the ice shell, you'll need to duplicate the chilling effect, along with the dilution caused by the ice. This also quells the sweetness. I would just add some crushed or cubed ice to the glass. Also, I'm fairly certain that this drink is pulse blended with crushed ice, not shaken, which also changes its consistency slightly. Since I posted this and other tribute recipes, I learned that all The Mai-Kai's cocktails are either pulse blended in a top-down mixer like Donn Beach used to do, or blended until smooth in a traditional blender (Derby Daiquiri, Floridita Daiquiri, etc.). Nothing is shaken. I would just strain the pulse-blended Special Reserve Daiquiri into a glass with an ice shell, or a chilled coupe with a few cubes.

Okole maluna!

The official blog of The Hukilau

Featuring The Mai-Kai Cocktail Guide

[ Edited by: Hurricane Hayward 2014-11-18 01:42 ]

Post #731681 by Hurricane Hayward on Tue, Nov 18, 2014 1:41 AM