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Barrel Aged Mai Tai - Batch II

So we tried to do the barrel aged Mai Tai in an 1l barrel - and the taste was really good. The only problem was, that the leftovers, of "diverse angel shares" were... not worth the effort. What angel share you ask? Well, first the barrel was leaking out of the spigot. It was leaking slow and sticky - but anyway.
Another serious reason for the angel share was the tasting [sorry!]. 
This cocktail really has to be seriously tasted. This is ok for a large barrel, but for one liter barrel, it is a real problem...

Anyway - batch no.2 is on its way. I did some amendments:
I was always curious, why "Trader Vic" called for a dollop of French garnier orgeat in his original Mai Tai recipe. Almond syrup and dollop doesn't really properly align in my sense. But then it stroke me: what is orgeat: a syrup made from almonds, sugar and often a hydrosol [usually orange flower water]and water... guess which ingredient has all ingredients except of the water? Yes - marzipan. And yes, I can for sure imagine a dollop of marzipan. Even if Vic didn't used marzipan - or something very similar, we can use it - different than almond syrup, you can find marzipan in different qualities - inclusive whole natural [even organic] qualities.

In my original batch, I used also Cointreau. While this brand is great [and it is aged anyway, which leads "magically" to the required orange curacao], I still had a couple of bottles of Marie Brizard orange curacao laying around. And why not using it?

And instead of preparing rock candy syrup, I will go the easy route and use directly caster sugar [and half dissolve it with the liquors.

That is all about. 

The rest what we do is: waiting! It will be a 5 liter barrel - so it will definitely need longer than the 6 weeks of the 1l barrel. We will see...

I will post some pictures and more information later.

Any comments?

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