There’s Magic in This Strange Combination

Today we make a tribute to a tribute. This is the Dark Magic. It's a cocktail that combines several of the flavors I enjoy the most in tropical cocktails, including coffee, pineapple, and rum. And the origin of the drink I'm sharing today is the Mai Kai's Black Magic, which I've never had in person. And like all recipes from the Mai Kai, they're all secrets. We don't know the recipe. But Jim Hurricane Hayward has a tribute recipe at AtomicGrog.com. And even more info on the origin of this drink and how it came to be from its creator, Mariano Liquodini. Now, the recipe that Jim shares has bitters, multiple secret mixes, coffee, honey, grapefruit, lime, orange juice, and then rum. And the rum that it used to use is called Kahala Bay. And while that rum has been discontinued, you can buy the Mai Kai's own rum nowadays, but you have to snag a bottle of that in person. To be absolutely clear here, the recipe that I'm making here today is not an attempt to replicate the Mai Kai or even the tribute recipe, but it's my take on something in the same ballpark. And I will be using at least a few ingredients that are not called for in the other recipes, whether that's the official one we don't know or the tribute recipe. One of those ingredients is pineapple juice. And if you didn't know this, pineapple juice just happens to pair beautifully in a cocktail with coffee. And that brings me to today's sponsor, which I am beyond excited to share with you. Today's video is brought to us by Cometeer Coffee. I love coffee, but I don't love weighing beans, grinding beans, and then waiting to brew a batch of coffee. Sometimes I want it now, but I also don't want to sacrifice the quality or the taste. Cometeer has invented an entirely new way to make coffee. The coffee is precision brewed at 10 times the strength and then flash frozen to lock in peak flavor and freshness. It's sourced from some of the best roasters and producers in the world. I'm talking about Counter Culture, Equator, and James Hoffman Square Mile. This little capsule is endorsed by about a dozen barista champs and Michelin star chefs. And you can make any drink, hot coffee, ice latte, espresso style, in seconds. With no machine, Cometeer ships frozen on dry ice directly to your door in these little recyclable capsules. All you have to do is melt it. That's it. For hot coffee, just pop the frozen puck into your mug and add eight ounces of hot water. Watch how fast it melts. Whether you drink yours black or add a little bit of cream, it's perfect every time. For an ice latte, I add milk to some ice and then I drizzle the thawed coffee on top and you get that incredible effect. Seriously, it tastes like an ice latte from a coffee shop. You don't need an espresso machine and you don't need to take a lot of time to make it. Same thing for ice coffee. Ice and water first, capsule on top. Too strong? You can add more water. Not strong enough? Next time, use less water or you can add more coffee to it right now by opening up another capsule. My favorite is the Ember Espresso from Frozen Gold. It has that chocolate and nutty flavor that I love in my coffees. But maybe the best thing is just the variety. You can try a new roast or origin depending on your mood and you know that the quality will be unmatched and it will always be fresh. I love trying new coffees but I don't want to be stuck with a couple pounds of beans for something that I'm just not into or something that goes stale before I can drink it. But everything, and I mean everything I've tried from Commetteer, I have enjoyed. And the coffee you see in front of me, Commetteer was kind enough to send to me for today's video. But hold on, don't go Nate. Give me one second. These are all boxes of Commetteer that I already had in my freezer that I purchased myself because I have been enjoying Commetteer since February 2021. I checked my emails for the date. I tried these when they first launched and I've loved them ever since. Now if you haven't tried Commetteer, you can get $20 off your first order at commetteer.com slash make and drink or by visiting the link in my description. All right, let's go back to the dark magic now. Well a typical Commetteer capsule you would add about eight ounces of water. This is more concentrated. I used three ounces of water for one capsule and I won't be using all of it in the drink, but we want it to be super strong, similar to espresso. Now you have tons of options here for the rum, but I'm using Plantaray Stiggins Fancy Pineapple Rum and Plantaray OFTD. The pineapple rum does contain sugar. I believe it's about 20 grams of sugar per liter. So it's not too sweet, but the recipe is kind of adjusted and set up for that. But the only syrup you need here, the only sweetener outside of the juices is cinnamon. So you can adjust that to your preference. So let's make the dark magic. I'll be using my drink mixer, but you can always shake this one. I'm going to start with two dashes of Angostura bitters, two dashes of chocolate bitters, half an ounce of lime juice, three quarter ounces of orange juice, one ounce of pineapple juice, three quarter ounces of a cinnamon syrup. And I have instructions on how to make this underneath the recipes in the description. One ounce of our commentary coffee that's been diluted by three ounces of water, two ounces of the Stiggins Fancy Pineapple Rum, and then three quarter ounces of OFTD rum. Now there is a little bit left in the tin because of the foam, but don't worry about that yet. For the garnish, I'm adding a slice of pineapple, some pineapple fronds, and a spent lime shell with a sugar cube soaked with 151 rum. This step's optional, but we can light this on fire and it looks pretty cool. Since we had all that coffee and pineapple, there's a lot of foam. And if I had a real bar, I would serve it to you like this with the tin on the side, like an old school ice cream shop. So there you go, dark magic. It is important that we all recognize that the fire is just for show. And in this case, the fire is just for a thumbnail picture on YouTube. You can totally skip fire and cinnamon. Oftentimes cinnamon, the fire, depending on what you use to make fire, will ruin a drink. So skip that step if you're not trying to put on a show. So let's try it. Cheers. Pineapple and cinnamon might be the sleeper best combination of flavors in tropical cocktails. You get pineapple juice, obviously, and then you get the pineapple flavor from the rum as well. Paired with a hefty amount of cinnamon. If you're not a huge fan of cinnamon and you want to reduce it, I've made this a couple times before using a vanilla syrup, kind of splitting that. Problem is the vanilla just didn't really come through and the cinnamon didn't either because there's so many other bold flavors in here, including that pineapple, including the coffee. Pineapple and coffee also go together well. Coffee and cinnamon go together well. So mixing all those things up together with bold flavorful rums, in my opinion at least, it just works. You can mix up the rums here too using darker rums, heavier rums, Jamaican rums. Really whatever you think is going to work best in those cocktails. There are so many just amazing pineapple cinnamon cocktails out there. Off the top of my head, I'm trying to think about which with the Rongo Rongo is an excellent one. There's several from Jason Alexander. There's the Iron Ranger, which uses bourbon, another like bourbon pineapple cocktail. It's delicious. So many things out there that mix certain parts of these ingredients together. Maybe not all of them at once, at least not that I can remember, but putting them all together, it just works. And the chocolate and Angostura help sort of balance out the sweetness there too by giving just a little bit more depth, a little more complexity that would be missing otherwise. So the Dark Magic is a big, bold, powerful, flavorful cocktail. If you're looking for like one drink, one like big drink that has all the flavors you love, then you should give this a try using commentary coffee, using a really strong coffee or an espresso can go in here as well. Just be a little cautious with your coffee too. I first made this using just straight commentary coffee. It was, it was great. It, I mean, it, it got me wired, but, uh, the coffee was just too strong. So you do need to dilute it a little bit, play around with the different varieties of coffee. You could do a light rose, you could do an expressive dark rose. There's just so many options there. It's one of the reasons I love commentary so much. So if you enjoyed this video, please give it a like below consider subscribing to the channel. If you try this, let me know in the comments below or on Instagram. Otherwise, if you want to support this channel more, go check out my Patreon page and I'll see on the next one.