When I started writing about the Hurricane cocktail, my idea wasn’t about posting another Tiki drink recipe but seeing how many variations there are.
The Hurricane is an iconic and refreshing tropical cocktail. It combines passion fruit and orange juices with tropical flavours and rum.
From my experience dealing with patrons, there are a few recipes out there, all of which are fruity, have a reddish colour, and sometimes have very different ingredients. I came across people asking to have Hurricane made according to the recipe they believed was right, insisting and occasionally arguing about having it done the “right way.”
The question is, “What is the right way?”. Do I put white or dark rum, what amount of alcohol, what juice/syrups should I use, or is it supposed to be red or orange? When we get the order, the first thing I believe we should do is to make it according to the recipe on the menu. But wait, what if the drink is not on the menu? Then we go with the formula we believe the Hurricane should be made with, especially if a server is ordering it. So what if the patron or person you are making the drink for is unhappy? Are we going to argue and show them the Beachbum Berry’s Grog Logbook and ask them to read it before pretending they know everything about making drinks? Sure, we can do that, but is it the right way? Absolutely not!
The drinks should be made the way the customers or friends want them to be made. No questions, No arguing!
We don’t know where they saw the recipe on the Internet and what cocktail book they have read. The bottom line is that we are not making drinks for Bartenders but for customers/friends. Don’t make them uncomfortable, swallow your pride, and “Just do It.” 🙂
Here are some recipe requests I was asked to make over the years.
Hurricane Recipes?
2 oz dark rum
1 oz sweet and sour mix
3 oz orange juice
Grenadine
Shake with ice, strain in an ice-filled glass.
2 oz dark rum
1 oz sweet and sour mix
1 1/2 oz orange juice
1 1/2 oz pineapple juice
Grenadine
Shake with ice, strain in an ice-filled glass.
3/4 oz white rum,
3/4 oz dark rum
3/4 Apricot brandy
1 oz Sour mix
Splash Grenadine
Shake with ice, strain in an ice-filled glass
The original hurricane cocktail is credited to Pat O’Brien’s bar in New Orleans during the 1940s. It’s said that the drink was created to reduce the large stock of rum.
The original Hurricane was straightforward and required just three ingredients.
Hurricane Cocktail
Classic Tki Drink. Two recipes are listed below. The original and the most widely known one.
Ingredients
Original Recipe*
- 4 oz rum (dark rum or equal parts dark and white)
- 2 oz passion fruit syrup (or fassionola syrup)*
- 2 oz lemon juice
New Classic Recipe*
- 2 oz. light rum
- 2 oz. dark rum
- 2 oz. passion fruit juice
- 1 oz. freshly squeezed orange juice
- ½ oz. fresh lime juice
- 1 tablespoon simple syrup
- 1 tablespoon grenadine
- Garnish: orange slice and cherry
Instructions
1. Original Recipe - Beachbum Berry's Grog Log
Shake with ice and strain into tall iced-filled glass. *Scale down to a 2:1:1 ratio if there is too much alcohol.
2. Shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and strain into a hurricane glass filled with ice. Garnish with a cheery and orange slice.
Scale down the alcohol to 1 oz each if there is too much alcohol.
This recipe also has variations:
- substitute orange juice with 2 oz pineapple juice
- add 1/2 passion fruit puree instead of P. fruit juice.
Notes
*1 - Simple, yet delicious.
*Fassionola syrup is long-forgotten syrup. Donn Beach invented it in the 1930s. The exact recipe is unknown, but all attempted recreations of the original have one thing in common: passion fruit juice. The most used ingredients are:
Passion fruit, orange, guava - POG juice, cherry, apple, pineapple, strawberries, hibiscus dry flowers. Who needs Grenadigrenadines a much better option than the store-bought grenadigrenadine
*2 - The second recipe was posted on:
