Crowd-Pleasing Tiki Recipe: Blue Hawai-Tai Cocktail

I had a lemon to kill and I’d been thinking about revisiting this hybrid Mai Tai / Blue Hawaii cocktail that I developed a few years back. It leans sweet, so feel free to pull back on the simple syrup, but I do still think this works and can be a crowd-pleaser for cocktail newbies. Blue Hawai-Tai by Kevin Crossman1 oz Lemon Juice½ oz Orgeat½ oz Simple Syrup½ oz Blue Curacao1 oz White Overproof Jamaican Rum½ oz Aged White RumCombine all ingredients in a shaker with crushed ice. Shake and dump into a small snifter glass. Giffard is an amazing orange liqueur that also happens to be blue, strongly recommended. Any overproof Jamaican rum would do fine here, demonstrated in this case by the Monymusk. If you like it more punchy than use one that’s 100% pot still, like Worthy Park Overproof or Rum Fire. For the white rum, use one with a bit of age and ideally at least some pot still components to remind you that a Mai Tai started with an aged rum. My old bottle of Denizen 3 works great, as…