This weekend a group of friends and I attended the Jimmy Buffett and The Coral Reefer Band concert at PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, NC.
For our concert tailgate I decided to mix up a batch of Trader Vic Punch. It’s a fairly simple recipe that calls for a lot of fresh squeezed juice, funky Jamaican dark rum, and a light Puerto Rican rum.
Trader Vic Punch
Ingredients:
– 24 lemons
– 24 oranges
– 6 ounces orgeat syrup
– 6 ounces sugar syrup
– 1.5 fifths light Puerto Rican rum (Plantation 3 Star)
– 1.5 fifths dark Jamaican rum (Hamilton Jamaican Pot Still)
Instructions: Squeeze juice from lemons and oranges saving shells. Mix juice with other ingredients. Chill in fridge till party time, then pour into punch bowl filled with ice cubes and cut-up sections of lemon and orange shells. Garnish with mint leaves. (Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log)
Preparation: Having attended the Miami Rum Festival earlier in the week, I was left with a short preparation time before the concert. My local produce store had a poor selection of lemons so I modified the recipe by substituting 50% of the lemons for limes. I also didn’t have enough Puerto Rican rum on hand so I substituted Plantation 3 Star Rum which is a blend of Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad rums instead.
Once mixed, the punch was quite tart and fairly strong. This would not be a problem if drinking 6 ounce pours but during our tailgate my friends would be drinking all day so I decided to modify the recipe further. I doubled the amount of simple syrup and orgeat to 16 ounces of each and added extra ice. These alterations helped smooth the citrus bite and helped create a more balanced cocktail. This cocktail worked great for our large group and I will definitely lean on this recipe for a party punch in the future.
