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Kapuhona: Turning Sex on the Beach into a Craft Cocktail

Sex on the Beach is one of those cocktails that everybody knows. Yet, it’s hard to imagine a craft bartender or discerning drinker treating it as a serious culinary cocktail. Lore has it that a Florida bartender invented the drink to try to sell peach schnapps by capitalizing on the spring break party scene. And that remains the demographic for the cocktail: college town night clubs!

The original recipe was vodka, peach schnapps, grenadine, and orange juice. Today, it’s most typically made with vodka, peach schnapps, cranberry juice, and orange juice. Some recipes use both cranberry juice and grenadine.

Making this into a craft cocktail could be as easy as ensuring a premium vodka and peach liqueur is used alongside handcrafted grenadine and fresh pressed orange juice. That said, the cocktail still suffers an identity crisis. Its reference to the sensual, the beach, and the fact that it’s a tall pinkish orange drink all feel “tiki,” but there’s nothing tiki about the original. The answer: Kapuhona (the forbidden cove).

My version uses white rum with a bit of aromatic high ester Jamaican rum for a little funk, Roman and Winter Orchard Peach Liqueur, two dashes of Fee Brothers Old Fashioned Aromatic Bitters, pomegranate juice, fresh squeezed orange juice, and a splash of orange blossom water. My ingredients are consistent with the original except for switching out the vodka for rum and adding bitters. Pomegranate may seem like a radical departure from the original recipe, but it must be remembered that true grenadine is a pomegranate-based simple syrup that also has orange blossom water in it.

Kapuhona

A craft tiki take on the Sex on the Beach

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Course Drinks

Equipment

• shaker tins
• jigger
• hurricane glass optionally a collins glass

Ingredients

  

• 1 1/4 oz white rum
• 1/4 oz Smith & Cross Jamaican Rum
• 1 oz Pomegranate juice
• 1 oz Orange juice fresh squeezed
• 2 dashes Fee Bro. Old-Fashioned Aromatic Bitters Substitute with Bitter Truth Decanter Bitters
• 1 oz Orange Juice fresh squeezed
• 1 splash Orange blossom water
• 1 wheel Dehydrated orange wheel to garnish

Instructions

 

• Prepare glass by filling it with shaved or cracked ice.
• Add 1 1/4 oz white rum, 1/4 oz Smith & Cross Jamaican Rum, 1 oz Pomegranate juice, 1 oz Orange juice, and 2 dashes Fee Bro. Old-Fashioned Aromatic Bitters to shaker tin with ice and shake to chill.
• Double strain into the prepared glass.
• Add more ice if needed and top with 1 oz Orange Juice.
• Add 1 splash Orange blossom water and 1 wheel Dehydrated orange wheel to garnish.

Notes

The Smith & Cross Rum is optional. It’s not aways easy to source. If you opt not to use it then use a 1 1/2 oz pour of white rum. Appleton Estate is my recommended choice of rum if you choose to omit Smith & Cross. Barbancourt White Rhum is my choice if you incorporate the Smith & Cross.

Orange blossom water is also optional but it adds aromatic depth to the drink.

Keyword cocktails, rum, sex on the beach, tiki