Happy Friday one and all, to the waning days of summer. I’m clinging to the warm days as much as I can, since I much prefer summer/warm early fall days to the cold, dark and short days of winter, when I’ll be longing for warmer climates. Until then, I plan on researching/finding all kinds of warm weather drinks to keep me sane. This week’s is one in three different variants: The Honolulu. It appealed to me because all the ingredients sound excellent and I’m always looking for more “tropical” gin based drinks. Another is the name. It reminds me of visiting Hawaii last year, and my desire to go back and spend more time exploring. Anyway, enough about that, let’s mix this up:

Honolulu:

2 oz. Haywards Old Tom Gin (I used Gordon’s London Dry)

.25 oz. Fresh lime juice

.25 oz. Fresh pineapple juice

.25 oz. Fresh orange juice

.25 oz. Simple Syrup

2 dashes Angostura bitters

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass. Add ice and shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon peel

Fairly muted nose, some of the fruit juices come through, but not a whole lot, given there’s only a half ounce compared to the two ounces of gin.

Not as gin heavy as I would have expected. In fact, I get more bitter/sour notes up front. I emphasize some, because it is minimal, and rather fleeting. Because those flavors are muted with enough simple syrup sweetness to keep them in check after a few seconds of the aforementioned bitter and sour. So I touched on it earlier with the limited gin aroma, I get the same but with the flavors here. Despite it being the heaviest ingredient by ratio, is almost undetectable. I get some of the stronger juniper flavors coming through towards the end, which I rather like. Granted I used a London Dry so it has stronger flavors than an Old Tom has, which is what is called for here. But that leads me to believe the Old Tom would be completely undetectable flavor wise, which may in fact be the point. Being that this is a hot weather based drink, stronger booze flavors may not be in one’s best interest. Instead opting for a more subtle and refreshing approach

The finish is the aforementioned juniper notes with the slightly sweet orange/lime/pineapple mixed in.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and kind of wished I had some of these when I was in Honolulu last year. As mentioned above, it is very refreshing, and knocks it out of the park in terms of something I would look for at a beachside cocktail bar.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)