Pre-preparing mai tai?

Hello.

I'm having a party on Saturday, and I'd like for all my guests to get a Mai Tai—but I don't want to spend all night mixing them. Has anyone ever pre-made this drink, say, a picther's worth, a few hours before guests arrived? I know it's not ideal, but if it doesn't compromise flavor too much, it seems like the best bet. Thanks very much.

The local tiki Joints in this area premix the lime Juice, Orgeat, Orange Curacao and light rum mix in volume and load it into plastic pour bottles - the dark rum is mixed in at the pour over the crushed ice -

I like em! Interested to see what the rest of ya think!

In my extremely limited experience, I've found that fresh mixing tastes different depending on how/when you do it..

I say this calls for EXPERIMENTATION!

Make up 2 drinks worth of "pre mix".. then wait a few hours, and drink em. Then mix some fresh. Drink them.

If you can still make notes, note which you liked and which you didn't.. :)

Part of the fun for me is to constantly be mixing drinks at parties.. (though I'm only starting to delve into island drinks.. I've been making sours, spritzers, gin andtonics, etc, since I was about 6..)

Pre-mixing is a challenge....

Here is what I do (your millage may vary):

Squeeze all of your limes into a pour container about 2ish hours before the party. Take a peice of plastic wrap and lay over the juice so that it is actually laying on the juice and not just covering the container (you don't want air getting to the juice).

Mix in a second pour container everything else by ratio. If you want to make a pretty presentation at the bar, mix everything but one rum.

Then during the party you can pour your lime juice and your mix (and your rum if you left one out) and make Mai-Tai's as fast (or slow) as you want. Line up your glasses, pour your lime, pour your mix, Flip (you can stir if you want, but stir hard), garnish and serve.

PS - This is what I mean by flip

sounds perfect C & A - I like the flicker photo expose too!- whats the vintage/mfg on those cool mai tai glasses in the photos? - I like those.... and want some! Those mai tais look delish!

I like the blue walls, shows off the tiki decor nicely. The glasses and garnish look great also. thanks for posting. Gives me inspiration to make a mai tai. Thanks for the link...

Here's how you Pre-Prepare for Mai Tais :)

On 2007-07-26 19:28, jpmartdog wrote:
sounds perfect C & A - I like the flicker photo expose too!- whats the vintage/mfg on those cool mai tai glasses in the photos? - I like those.... and want some! Those mai tais look delish!

Thank you, it was fun putting it together too! The glasses are from Hukilau 2005, you will probably have to cruise ebay to find them now.

(You could PM Tiki Kiliki and see what she has up her sleeve....)

On 2007-07-26 22:18, WooHooWahine wrote:
Here's how you Pre-Prepare for Mai Tais :)

Since when are mai tais made with rum and beer? :wink:

On 2007-07-27 08:31, arriano wrote:
Since when are mai tais made with rum and beer? :wink:

That's the 'other' recipe that people keep refering too.......

Having pre-mixed cocktails setup is great for taking pressure off the main bar, but i think you should still have a bartender mixing drinks for your guests. Its a great show, and to me the drinks are better, maybe due to aeration happening when the drinks are mixed with ice in a shaker, the sound of ice in a shaker, the look of a drink in a proper glass & having the smell of a mint garnish. All the senses are at work here! And you will definitely talk to all your guests. I miss having kick_the_reverb making a reverb crash, dr. z making a beach bums own, Al-ii making his mai tais, & martiki making anything! Good Times....

just my two cents.

TBird.

[ Edited by: Tiki Bird 2007-07-27 08:57 ]

On 2007-07-26 16:38, jsr99 wrote:
if it doesn't compromise flavor too much

remember, the crushed ice adds a fair amount of water into the mix... be sure that the finished product is shaken as well.

-Z

C & A

Your combination of St. James xtra old, Appleton 12 year and senor curacao in your photoset happens to be one my favorite mai tai ingredient combos. Lately I've been using La Favorite Vieux instead of St. James. Try it sometime it's yummy!

[i]On 2007-07-27 08:31, arriano wrote:

Since when are mai tais made with rum and beer? :wink:

Only in Southern Cali :wink: WooHoo! :)

....

[ Edited by: Mr. NoNaMe 2009-05-20 10:21 ]

I wanted to post this here too, as it is applicable:

A couple weekends ago I had a birthday party (I turned 30 this past week) and I wanted to make Mai Tai's for my guests. Well, I wasn't going to take the time to mix up 20 drinks individually, at least not by measuring every ingredient for every drink. Instead, I pre-squeezed the limes about 2 hours ahead of time (20oz from 16 limes) and stored the juice in an empty Orgeat bottle. I then mixed the rums (I used 20oz of Pyrat XO & 20oz of Brugal), 10oz Curacao, 5oz orgeat, and 5oz rock candy syrup together in a separate container. For each drink I poured 3oz of the rum mixture, and one ounce of lime juice into the shaker with the crushed ice, shook and served normally with garnish. It worked VERY well, and produced extremely consistent drinks that tasted great!

I would think that if you wanted, you could keep a pre-mixed bottle of rum, Curacao, orgeat and SS in your fridge, and then just squeeze one ounce of lime juice to make yourself a Mai Tai.

As a side note, not all of the drinks got used that night, so I mixed the left over lime juice in with the rum. I had one drink the next day that tasted fine, but over the next couple days it definitely went downhill. I'm certain that this was due to the lime juice oxidizing. I'm thinking of making up a batch of rum mixture so that I can test my theory about being able to just leave them all together for a few months in the fridge, and still have it come out tasting fine. I'll let you all know what I find!

Chris

On 2007-09-16 23:39, Kona Chris wrote:
... I'm thinking of making up a batch of rum mixture so that I can test my theory about being able to just leave them all together for a few months in the fridge, and still have it come out tasting fine. I'll let you all know what I find!

Chris

You can pre-mix the rums in one container and then pre-mix the other stuff in another container. The fresh lime is the only ingredient that doesn't mix and hold well. If you don't mind the bottled lime, you can put that in your mix and keep in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks. Fresh lime is always better, but not always available or convenient.....

On 2007-09-17 11:40, Chip and Andy wrote:
You can pre-mix the rums in one container and then pre-mix the other stuff in another container. The fresh lime is the only ingredient that doesn't mix and hold well. If you don't mind the bottled lime, you can put that in your mix and keep in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks. Fresh lime is always better, but not always available or convenient.....

Any particular reason why you wouldn't mix the rums along with the curacao and the sweetner all at the same time? I can't think of any reason why their flavors would change appreciably over time. All are shelf stable already, and a mixture of all of them should taste the same 2 hours, 2 days, or even 2 months later, I would think. Personally I would never recommend using bottled lime juice, simply because I don't like the taste at all. I'd rather not drink, than have a drink with bottled lime juice.

Chris

I do mine in the same manner as C&A - I make my 50/50 blend of Appleton Estate 12 year old and Saint James Hors D'Age in it's own bottle (Labeled " Special Mai Tai Rum Blend") and my mixture of Senior Curacao of Curacao, Orgeat and Rock Candy Syrup in another container. My lime is ALWAYS fresh-sliced and squeezed. Since I can only shake one drink at a time in my old Boston Shaker . . . I just use 2 ounces of my rum mix, one ounce of my Curacao mix and one ounce of fresh lime. Shake, shake, shake and pour into a Trader Vic's Mai Tai glass and garnished with a lime/mint sprig 'island'. I do it this way for my guests as I regale them with the Mai Tai Story and follow up with an actual "$100 Mai Tai" - what a show!
To me, the two-bottle pour + a fresh squeeze is more personal than an assembly line large-batch drink - but that's just me . . . and since I'm an Old Fart . . . I can get away with it! So there!

On 2007-09-17 14:06, Kona Chris wrote:
...Any particular reason why you wouldn't mix the rums along with the curacao and the sweetner all at the same time?....

Im sure you could. Last time I tried it got cloudy looking by the next day. It was probably the sugar syrup as I brew my own, but thats just a guess.

The only reason I don't mix everything is that I like to have something to do behind the bar even if it is just pouring a couple of things together. Makes it feel like a real cocktail that way.

But you probably don't want to listen to me because I drink.

A lot.

On 2007-09-17 15:33, Chip and Andy wrote:
Im sure you could. Last time I tried it got cloudy looking by the next day. It was probably the sugar syrup as I brew my own, but thats just a guess.

My completely uneducated, gut-natural guess is that the simple syrup interacted with the acids in the lime juice. The citric acid could do a number on many things...

My guess would be to mix everything except the lime ahead of time and squeeze the lime into a bottle as late as possible. Refrigerate the lime juice, but not the other mix because you'll want that at room temperature to get the right ice meltage.

The "plastic wrap over the lime juice so it doesn't oxidize" is also a key component, allowing one to squeeze several hours ahead of time. Or fill a bottle right to the tippity-top so that some lime juice spills out when you cork it.

Very helpful thread. I am going to try what I saw at the last party I attended (as I thought it worked well). Pre-mixed Mai Tai in a spouted crock (serve yourself). There was ice to fill your own glass, then hit the spigot for instant Mai Tai...then throw in the fresh mint, pre-pared fruit sticks and straw. Everyone seemed quite happy and the glasses were small so nobody got too wasted. :)