Post #739350 by Hurricane Hayward on Sun, Mar 15, 2015 1:07 AM

Mike, looks like I'm due to revisit the Moonkist Coconut. I'll admit, it's quite some time since I've had one. Been busy lately dissecting all the drinks featuring Hamilton's rums from Guyana. I've got a lot of updates coming on those, including several updated recipes that folks might enjoy.

I'm definitely impressed with your discipline and dedication to rating all the drinks you make. I've done exactly the same thing for years. When I'm looking for something good, I just look in the files with the high ratings.

Re falernum, I think the consensus is that Fee Brothers is the best option to replicate what The Mai-Kai uses. Perhaps they use Fee, but it's definitely a rich and sweet falernum that's a bit different than Velvet. Beachbum Berry wrote in one of his books that the Fee recipe is very close to what Donn Beach would have used (and probably Mariano too), which seems good enough for me.

I lean toward Flor de Cana as a base Spanish-style white and gold rum (I actually stock all the golds: 4-, 5- and 7-year-old). It's step above Cruzan, Bacardi, Don Q and many others IMHO. Very solid mixer. The 2-year-old Cruzan is fine, but I prefer the old 5-year-old version and still have a few bottles left. Haven't tried the "new" 5-year-old "dark" from Cruzan but noticed it's a little pricey. For the same price, I'd stick with Flor de Cana. Other solid gold Spanish style mixing rums include Ron del Barrilito, Bacardi 8 and Bacardi Select. But those might actually have a bit too much flavor to use as a simple base rum in the Moonkist and some other drinks from The Mai-Kai. The well gold rum is Ron Carlos, a very cheap brand that's bottled in Florida from Cruzan stock.

I think what gives the Moonkist its nice gold rum flavor is the Barbados rum, most likely Mount Gay. (There are some other great Barbados rums out there to try, like Plantation, Cockspur, Doorly’s and The Real McCoy.) It's common for The Mai-Kai to use cheap white and gold base rums since you can barely taste them, and I'm sure that's cost effective. But then they'll use a great gold or dark rum, such as a Demerara, dark Jamaican or aged gold rum to add a signature flavor.

When mixing these at home, however, I wouldn't be afraid to experiment with better rums, as long as they're the same style.

On 2015-03-01 11:43, mikehooker wrote:
Ended up making three versions of the Moonkist Coconut last night. Will have to save Molokai Swizzle for another night (tonight?).

So I previously reported on the "What are you drinking now" thread that I preferred your Moonkist tribute recipe over the published Mai Kai recipe in Esquire as the rum and coconut proportions were much more balanced and using Cayman Reef, Flor de Cana and Fee's falernum earned the drink a solid 7 on my ten point scale. (I actually keep tabs on most every drink I make, with ratings, ingredients and measurements so if it scores low, I know what I did and can tinker later to try and improve, or if it scores 8 and above, it's something I put into regular rotation). Well since then I picked up Mt Gay Eclipse, Cruzan light and Velvet falernum so I wanted to mess around a bit. I started off making two cocktails, both with Mt Gay and Cruzan, exact proportions of everything, but one with Fee Bros and one with Velvet. While I've been preferring Velvet in many of the spicier drinks I've been gravitating to lately, I had a feeling the sweetness of the Fee's would be the winner in this drink. And by a very slight margin, it was. In a blind taste test Chelsea felt the cocktail with Velvet tasted "boozier," which makes sense since it is a liqueur, but with such a small amount (1/4 oz) I don't think it adds that much actual alcohol content, but may sway the flavor in that direction. So the Fee's won out but the drink wasn't as good as we remembered when we rated it a 7. So I made another one, this time with Fees and the Cayman Reef. It was the best of the three but still not quite on par with the Flor de Cana version. I'm out of Flor de Cana or I would have made one more version to the exact spec that earned it the 7 rating just to verify my initial findings. Looking back over the past couple months, I think a lot of the drinks that I would normally use de Cana as my white aren't quite as good with Cruzan. I figured they would be mostly interchangeable and I think I remember you mentioning at some point that Cruzan is what the Mai Kai uses in their well for white. Is that so? When you make this, what are the rums and falernum you prefer? I'm thinking I need to go back to Flor de Cana as my base white.