The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess

I would have like to hear more about the passion fruit syrup.  I’ve never used it or even seen it around.  Is it a typical bar product that can be found in liquor stores? It sounds like something I have to look for in a grocery store in between the pinto beans and the Jumex.

Thanks Robert!  If I can find the passion fruit syrup, I’m gonna give it a try.  Keep up the good work!

Looks like Robert was using the good stuff that Trader Vic bottled until late last year, which had 11% passion fruit in it.  Now they sell an entirely artificial syrup that is no longer usable.  Funkin and Perfect Puree both sell excellent passion fruit purees that, when mixed with simple syrup to taste, will give you a VG passion fruit syrup.  Less expensive is to buy Goya frozen passion fruit pulp (sold at Latino markets), and mix the defrosted pulp 1:1 with simple syrup.  Other good brands of ready made passion syrup:  Tessiere, Finest Call, our Auntie Lilikoi (sold online from Hawaii).

Okole maluna!

Check out your local Asian market (preferably a larger one) for a product humorously named, “Passion Juice.”

It’s a very good product that’s made of passion fruit and sugar.  I know the Beachbum has used it in Boston before, and I’m pretty sure it met his approval.  It’s certainly worth the adventure, as are ALL of the Beachbum’s books!

An aside: Robert, where’d you get that awesome juicer?

Yes, the Passion Fruit Syrup I’m using here, is an older bottle of the Trader Vic product, and is a brand that Beachbum Berry “used” to approve of, until they did the “Grenadine” trick on it and removed all of the product which you would otherwise have expected to be in it…

As for the juicer… that comment comes up in almost every show I use that juicer in :-> It’s an “Ebaloy”, and can periodically be found on eBay, which is where I got mine. I love it. If I had the where-with-all to produce my own products, something very close to this juicer would be one of the things I’d produce. Perhaps the only change I might make to it is trying to incorporate some way to get more of the oils from the skin to get extracted at the same time. I’ve got another, older, juicer that I think does a good job at that.

Thanks for the tip on the Goya beachbum. $2 at Stop and Shop (I’m in the Boston area also).  I’m making this drink for a party I’m having tomorow… so I was desperate for Passion Fruit.  Also, Stirrings has a Passion Fruit Mint Mojito mixture, which does have Passion Fruit, but doesn’t actually have mint on the ingredients… at $10 it was 5x the price of the goya and I wasn’t sure how minty it was.

Any other rums if Goslings isn’t availible?  My standard dark mixing rum is Rhum Barbancourt 8 year (I’m out and it can be hard to find sometimes); its an agricole, which is my personal favorite type of rum.

Aloha Owen; you can sub any dark Jamaican rum for the Goslings, such as Myers’s, Coruba or Appleton Extra.  But I agree, it’s hard to top Barbancourt 8 year!

Especially when the 5-star reserve is on sale at the NH liquor store for $14.99!  Oh how I wish I had bought more than one bottle… oh well, looks like its $18.99; great price for a great rum.

Not living in the US, I don’t think I can easily get any of the above passion fruit products in any neighbourhood stores. I just checked the local supermarket and had no luck finding passion fruit puree or pulp. So what about starting from scratch with real passion fruits? Any thoughts on how to make a good syrup out of that?

Also, I don’t suppose Rubicon brand passion fruit juice would make any kind of decent base for a syrup? Technically it seems to be a “Passionfruit Juice Drink”, so not “juice” as such.

Alex, fresh passion fruit makes a delicious syrup (mix the extracted juice with equal parts simple syrup), but here the fruit is so expensive that it just isn’t worth the trouble.  If you can buy it cheaply where you live, then by all means do so!

I’m not familiar with Rubicon, but if it’s cut with other fruit juices and added sugar, odds are it will not make a good syrup…

Thanks! I’m sipping a delicious Hurricane right now, with home-made syrup. I don’t know where you draw the line on expensive, but at my local supermarket here in Sweden, passion fruit (the smaller, dark purple kind) cost the equivalent of 75 cents a piece or thereabouts. Crunching the numbers, I’ve concluded I get 3 ounces of syrup for around $1.50 plus a little elbow grease. Fairly pricy if you’re going to be making a lot of Hurricanes I suppose, but I can live with it. And I’ll know it’s top quality home-made syrup

I’d actually like to see one of you bartending gurus elaborate on home-made syrups sometime. I used to think of syrups as something that must be ordered through speciality stores, but I’m not so sure anymore. What kind of criteria must a syrup fill to be a good “bartending-grade” ingredient, anyway? I suppose there are some you can’t easily make at home (eg. Orgeat - please correct me if I’m wrong here), but the rest… oh, the possibilities!

Two brands of passion fruit syrup that I’ve used in making Hurricanes are Monin and Fee Brothers.  Fee Brothers offers both a golden and a red.  You can order it from their web site, and as for the Monin, it’s available at Whole Foods, as well as many coffee supply houses.  On the subject of the Hurricane, I’m reminded of a great line that I often “borrow” from New Orleans mixologist Bobby Oakes, who either ran or used to run the bar at Arnaud’s French 75 Bar in New Orleans.  It seems tourists used to come to his bar, seeking the Hurricane, which is a Pat O’Brien’s specialty (but not what it used to be, due to mass production).  Bobby notes that when tourists ask for a Hurricane, “I have a pat, flip answer.  It’s that I—I proudly don’t make Hurricanes, it’s the house drink of anotherbar, and they don’t make them there either.”

Dear Beachbum, thanks for the advise on the puree, I found the funkin Passion online at Mondoliquor and made up a syrup with it, I also tried to play with the recipe and did the following 2 oz of dark rum, 1/2 oz funkin passion puree (not syrup), one table spoon demerrara sugar and one oz Lemon Juice.