“C’mon. Quit bein’ a pollyanna.”
“You won’t be jabberin’ so tough with a G-Man in your mug.”
“We’re in New Orleans, pal. The liquor capital of America. Rum runners come right up the Pontchartrain. Europe, the Caribbean, Mexico, booze from all over. And it’s everywhere. Waitress gotta flask up her sleeve, cabbie’s gotta bottle under the seat. Heck, its these people’s livelihood. Used to be on the up and up, too, before those teetotaling bastards pulled this prohibition.”
“Luckily it’s not tea we’re looking for, eh?”
The two men shared an anxious chuckle as they strolled inconspicuously through the French Quarter; Up Royal Street till they came to St. Peter where they saw the door.
“S’gotta be the place, right? But how we gonna get in?”
“Just leave that to me”, the first man said approaching the door. Hesitating, a brief moment of nervous gravitas washing over the man, the door cracked before he could even knock. Instinctively he leaned in and whispered the passwords, “storm’s brewin’”.
At that time the establishment would’ve been known as Mr. O’brian’s Club Tipperary. Technically it was a speakeasy, but in the Big Easy the topic of booze never went unspoken. Way before the obstinate abstainers got their 19th century undies in a bunch New Orleans was already a thriving Mecca of cocktail culture. As the premier port city of the south New Orleans was teeming with saloons able to offer spirits from around the world. So ingrained in the culture and economy of the town was liquor consumption that New Orleanians saw the Volstead Act as a personal affront. And in the city where, “a wink will get you a drink”, citizens did everything they could to undermine the sober authorities.
Think of it like when the first U.S. states legalized medical marijuana. All of a sudden a whole lot of people came down with anxiety, or insomnia, or that ol’ bum knee. Stoners across the U.S. zipped the bottom half of their cargo pants back on and made their way to the weed doc to get that sweet sweet medical card. We all know it now and they all knew it back then. New Orleans never stopped drinking despite lawmakers best efforts.
It’s said that 10,000 laws were broken in New Orleans alone the first year of prohibition. Cars sold curbside booze, speakeasies openly hid in office buildings, and “soft drink stands” sold bathtub hooch to the less fortunate. Heck, if you slid a buck under any window in New Orleans it’d open a minute later with a demitasse of liquor and a mixer on the side. They called that a “small black”, and that’s true.
Alas, the mouse finally outran the cat and on December 3 1933 the Club Tipperary opened its doors as a legal liquor establishment, Pat O'Brien's Bar: Home of the Hurricane!
Ladies and Gentlemen, grab a hold of that stop sign bending in the feter band winds and hunker down, we’re about to venture into the eye of the storm.
~~~
Repealing of prohibition didn’t spell an immediate return to business as usual. Highly sought after scotches and brandies were hard to come by. But with easy access through the gulf and up the river liquor merchants were lousy with Caribbean rum. Tavern owners would be strongarmed into purchasing multiple cases of rum for the opportunity to procure a small amount of whiskey. The perceived problem came in how to unload all this rum on patrons who just spent a decade without their Sazeracs and Vieux Carres. To do this they found, years before Mary Poppins, that a spoonful of sugar does indeed help the medicine go down. Implementing the old velveeta on the broccoli technique Pat O'Brien's head bartender Louis Culligan came up with the idea of adding lemon juice and passion fruit syrup to a bunch of rum. Honestly, they didn’t expect much but a way to hide the rum flavors that hadn’t quite caught on in the U.S. market yet. Turns out their subterfuge was in vain. People loved it.
But why stop there? Why not make every drink a double and relieve yourself of twice the rum? Louis Culligan eschewed the old 3 of strong 4 of weak mantra boasting a whopping 4 oz of rum in his new concoction. An argument can be made that for those unable to travel to the islands New Orleans drinking culture and this drink in particular helped repopularize rum in America.
And what modality of glassware could accommodate such a prodigious libation? The gulf coastal people of Louisiana are no strangers to tropical storms. To protect an oil lamp’s flame from the windy inclemency tall glass chimneys were affixed to what became known as hurricane lamps. These chimneys ranged in size and took the form of a bulb at the base tapering upwards and flowering out like a blunderbuss. Modeled after these chimneys, the new hurricane glass was larger than any other and added a flare to the drink that was supposed to be a gimmick, after all. As a souvenir Pat O'Brien's branded hurricane glasses soon became just as much a commodity as tasting the original recipe itself.
For such a simple tipple the Hurricane holds a rare place in tropikidom, being born of necessity rather than profit. What a deliciously diabolical dalliance. Let’s make a drink.
~~~
We’re going to cover two recipes here, the classic and the modern. If I knew how many of these drinks had conflicting origins or myraid variations before starting Pod Tiki I may have stuck to recreation over recitation. I swear, these tiki drinks are driving me to drink.
Speaking of, let’s talk about rum, baby. I would venture to guess there was no standard style of rum originally used. Given the circumstances of the drink’s humble beginnings Pat O’Brien’s probably used whatever rum was foisted upon them by the liquor distributors. Notwithstanding, I think dark jamaica rum is a pretty solid assumption as it’s been a fav in the U.S. since, well, before there was a U.S. You’ll see recipes calling for navy strength, (which is based off the Jamaican style), or any aged rum. You want to go with something bold enough to cut through a heavy sweetness but given the 4 oz of rum per serving I’d forgo navy strength. Unless you are actually trying to recreate the sensation of being at sea during a hurricane. You guys know what I’m reaching for here. Myers’s Original dark is still my go to for earthy heavy molasses funk. Though I will say I have recently struck up a love affair with Coruba. It’s a bit sweeter and a tad less funky but is extremely flavorful and dark. Problem is it’s harder to find. I kinda understand why most in & outs don’t stock it, as it’s pretty much the same product as the more popular Myers’s. The latter of which is more expensive as well. Either one will do.
The next culprit in this troublesome trio is passion fruit syrup. Passion fruit truly is the unsung hero of a lot of tropical drinks. That fruit flavor you just can’t put your finger on but seems to pop up again and again in rum punches and house cocktails? That’s passion fruit. Of course you can always venture to make your own by boiling or steeping the fruit in simple syrup. For you fresh fruit nerds like me out there, replacing passion fruit syrup with a 2:1 mix of passion fruit puree and simple syrup works as well. But in these our cocktailian times there are plenty of good options for passion fruit syrup. If you can’t find a local brand by you, Monin has a good one for cheap. That’s what I used here. It has a ton of flavor, a nuance of spice bite, and is sweet enough without being overbearing.
Where the Venn diagram of the hurricane crosses into tiki is Fassionola syrup. The elusive ingredient is still a mystery as far as I can find. Sources say it was used in the original hurricane, while others say it was invented by Don the Beachcomber in the early 1930’s and the recipe subsequently taken to the grave. The timelines are congruent, but if Don invented it in California how did it get to Louis Culligan in New Orleans? Is this a case of simultaneous invention, or perhaps individual bartenders each had a version of a similar mixture later made famous by tiki? Either way, the argument is moot. For the original is gone forever. That is, until Jeff “Beachbum” Berry finds the recipe written-in-invisible-ink-on-the-back-of-a-portrait-of-a-palm-tree-in-Pasadena- leaning-against-the-wall-at-a-yard-sail-at-the-home-of-the-great-nephew’s-cousin’s-ex-girlfriend’s-step-dad’s-storage-unit. He always seems to figure it out. So, I’m putting the call out for you, Jeff. Help us find this lost elixir. For now, all we know is that a passion fruit, orange juice, grenadine mixture is often suggested. More on that later. My guess is that a mixture of fruit and syrup and grenadine was made in order to get drinks out more rapidly, something Don Beach was known for. I mean, can you imagine getting an order for 2 Zombies, a Mai Tai Swizzle, Planter’s Punch, and 3 Hurricanes? Making them all each ingredient at a time like we usually do as shadetree mixologists would surely excite the ire of waiting customers losing their buzz by the minute.
Lastly, but certainly not leastly, we will need some fresh lemon juice.
Pretty straight forward on this one;
4 oz Dark Jamaica Rum
2 oz Passion Fruit Syrup
2 oz Lemon Juice
Add all that to a shaker with about a cup of ice and Shake da-ting now, badda-badda shake da-ting, now...sorry, my 90’s come’s out when I drink hurricanes. Pour unstrained into a hurricane glass add ice to fill and garnish with skewered cherry and lemon wheel.
Badda-bing! You really can’t go wrong with this simple yet effective potion to stave off those tropical depressions. Yes, it’s sweet, it’s supposed to be, that’s where the funky dark rum offers balance. Lemon juice adds a freshness rounding out the sharp sweetness of passion fruit syrup. Certainly not a session drink I would put this right up there just under a zombie in terms of intoxication.
But wait! (He said pointing a finger to the sky), there’s more. I’m not gonna call this the modern version, because the actual modern Pat O’Brien’s Hurricane is an abominable sanguine saccharine palaver of posterity. The grenadine heavy modern version has left me a suffering bastard on more than one occasion stumbling out of the Pat O’Brien’s in Orlando as a dumb twenty-something.
For that reason, I’m gonna call this variant the Tiki version, as at first it strongly resembles a Planter’s Punch; But the passion fruit, orange juice, grenadine mix is actually a tip of the cap to what some think was the Fassionola mix used by Don the Beachcomber.
I’ve spent weeks tirelessly sampling slight differences in hurricane recipes, much to the chagrin of my waistline, to find what I think is the perfect tiki hurricane. In true tiki fashion this recipe calls for a mix of rums. I suggest Plantation 3 Star for your light as it maintains the qualities of higher end rums at a reasonable price. Here we go:
2 oz Dark Jamaica Rum (Myers’ Original Dark)
2 oz Aged Light rum (Plantation 3 Star)
1 oz Lime Juice
1 oz Orange Juice
1 oz Passion Fruit Syrup
½ oz Simple Syrup
1 tsp Grenadine
Shake your bodyline with ice and dump unstrained into that big ass hurricane glass. Add ice to top if needed and garnish with skewered lime wheel, cherry, orange wheel, and mint. Oh, and don’t forget the umbrella. It is a hurricane, after all.
There it is, folks. But there are a few more things I wanna bring up before we go drunkenly into this good night. I’ve used the speakeasy framework before to open Pod Tiki. It could be perceived as lazy writing on my part, but I really wanted to relay how blatantly New Orleans held out against prohibition. The Hurricane was born of a culture that epitomizes what drinking should be. People there drink and enjoy it, but also get shit done and live productive lives. I believe it’s the outsiders and tourists that have turned Folly chasing Death around a broken column of Life, into Stupidity chasing Regret around a coed flashing her boobs.
I miss the days, though, of opening episodes with personal stories. So, let me drop a few on ya here. There was indeed a Pat O’Brien’s in Orlando, FL where I grew up. And as a part of what I’ll call “The Pod Tiki research years”, let’s just say I’ve been a few times. The bar was modeled after the original in New Orleans complete with the iconic flaming water fountain and beautifully landscaped courtyard adorned with vines and palm trees and tropical plants. In one corner there was a round booth tucked into some overgrowth to form a sort of grotto. As a group of friends including myself were sitting there enjoying our drinks the manager came over and informed us we would have to move tables because a high profile guest needed the privacy of the spot we were in. As we were shuffling out of our seats Kid Rock and his entourage came around the corner to take our place. He was actually super apologetic and cool about kicking us out of our seats. Bought us a round and let us hang out and drink it as well as took pictures with some of our group. As we thanked him for the round and moved on he sat there with a blonde on his knee and another beside him, a few hangers on around the table and security standing by. Bawitdaba, buddy. Bawitdaba, indeed.
Another time I was there with my buddy, we’ll call him Nick, ‘cuz that’s his name. He offered to buy a round and asked me what I wanted while heading off to the bar. I answered just not something too sweet. Of course, he returned with a giant hurricane. Red, cloyingly sweet. That mixture of syrup, grenadine, and so-so rum that creates a medicinal taste. But, loathe was my twenty-something self to refuse a free drink. We walked out to his car still sipping out of the novelty large hurricane glasses, finished them, and headed home. About a week later, when my headache finally subsided, Nick started hearing a disturbing knock under his car. This persisted for weeks till he eventually took the vehicle to a mechanic, who informed him the sound his car was making was actually two giant hurricane glasses that had been rolling around under his seat. A testament to the quality of the glassware, if nothing else.
The last thing I want to mention is the idea of the Hurricane being the most famous drink associated with a city that’s been devastated by hurricanes. In this age of cancel culture and the Washington Football Team, is it disrespectful? I’ve balanced upon a few social justice soap boxes in my day, but here’s why I think the hurricane earns a pass. New Orleans has been beset by mother nature since the pirate days. Much like the islands the people in Florida and up around the gulf coast accept tropical storms as a part of life. You haven’t truly experienced the tropics till you’ve seen a palm tree bend down and touch the ground. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging the natural acts of God that affect us. Much like a 21 gun salute at a military funeral uses the weapon that most likely caused the tragedy to honor it, when you raise a hurricane glass to toast New Orleans you are paying homage to an American city that has persevered throughout the ages. And that pretty much proves the point of the opening act of this podcast. For people that can stare down a hurricane and still stand tall in the aftermath, their not gonna let a few sober sally’s from the government tell them they can’t have a drink, by God. And that’s death taking a shot at folly for once!
On that note, my name is Tony and this has been Pod Tiki. Thank you for listening and please always drink responsibly.
Credits: Remixed by Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, Liquor.com, The Original Hurricane Recipe article by Moody Mixologist, Wikipedia, The Historic New Orleans Collection, whereyat.com article by Burke Bischoff, Rum Stories: The History of the Hurricane by Paul Senft.
