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Tropical

Banana Daiquiri Take #653

Boozy banana smoothie

Method
Blended
Style
Tropical
Glass
Tiki glass
Time
5 min
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Banana Daiquiri Take #653 cocktail

Ingredients

Serves
  • No Gold Rum? Light Rum — cleaner and sharper — the drink loses some body and colour

  • No Light Rum? Gold Rum — a little oak and caramel where light rum is clean — fine anywhere the drink isn't meant to be crisp

  • 15mlLime Juicefreshly squeezed
  • 7.5mlDemerara Syruprich, 2:1

    No Demerara Syrup? Simple Syrup — clean sweetness with none of the molasses depth — fine in a sour, a real loss in a tiki drink

  • a dashAngostura

    No Angostura? Old Fashioned Bitters — close to Ango, with the same spicy notes — just not the standard bottle

Garnish
Banana dolphin with a cherry, and an orchid

Make it well

Blended, properly.

1

Grab a liquidiser for this one

2

Cut your banana in half, saving the stem end (we're going to make a dolphin)

3

Into the liquidiser, add your spirits (minus the ) and half the banana with a scoop of and until slushy

4

Pour into a glass or a mug and top with a of bitters and a straw

5

Garnish with anything you like

6

It's great to drink at this point! If you want to add the dolphin, here's how:

7

Using the top half of the banana you've saved, split the stalk in half to form a mouth. Hold it open with a cocktail cherry. Cloves work well for the eyes.

8

If you're really going for it, use Pineapple fronds to make the fins - you might just need to cut into the banana first.

On the palate

On the nose it's frosty and fresh, you get the rum and a hit of banana. On tasting, really, it's a banana smoothie with a hit of rum at the end. This is a beach bar cocktail from your holidays! A really fun one but dangerous. The rum is cleverly disguised here. An absolutely delicious drink for summer, BBQs and holiday vibes.

Where it came from

This cocktail was featured on the menu at the Archipelago bar in Washington DC when it opened, and has remained a firm favourite ever since. The name is the joke and the point. Take #653, as in take 652 wasn't quite there either. Banana daiquiris have a reputation problem and it's mostly deserved, earned over decades by slush machines and syrup that has never been near a banana. The fix is the obvious one: use an actual banana, use a rum you'd drink on its own, and stop there.

The bartender’s note

One drink, one story, one bottle worth buying.

Thursday evening, so you have time to shop. No more than that.