Li Hing Mui Cocktail - Recovering from Failure

I think of home once in a while and will crave stuff that I had growing up. It’s been a really long time since I had li hing mui and wanted to try and make a cocktail with because I had some powder from a while ago. It’s funny how the red version became something that I distinctly associate with Hawaii. I can still get the red kind of li hing mui in Chinatown in Chicago, but many of them aren’t as good as the kinds in Hawaii.

Figuring I wanted to also use some equipment that I have, I wanted to pressure infuse it using my whipping siphon so I don’t have to wait for a long infusion. Pressure infused stuff is kind of weird because it generally doesn’t extract much of bitter compounds, but it generally uses far more ingredients than you would in a normal infusion. I did a complete shot in the dark and started with a ratio of 4 ml : 1 g of booze and li hing mui powder. Filled it with vodka and it was awful. So salty and after straining, I doubled the amount of booze so it’s closer to 8:1 and even then it’s still fairly strong. I’ll play around with the ratios more next time, but it’s a good place to start.

Kept thinking of flavors to complement li hing mui. The first that comes to my mind is mango and anybody that grew up in Hawaii would see that in dried or pickled mango using li hing mui as an added flavor. Other ones that came to mind were pineapple and the sour candies like the belts or watermelon gummies. My first idea was to play with a cocktail I’m already familiar with, the Blue Hawaii that I’ve made for the Ravenclaw cocktail. Since it’s mostly pineapple juice, I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to add mango to it, right?

NOOOPE. I used Harry Yee’s recipe as a basis for it and I think it’s a great recipe. However, I thought of making 50/50 pineapple and mango juice. Measured the fruit by weight and blended them together and I stupidly forgot how much pectin is in mango so the mixture was just more like a paste rather than juice.

Playing around with the first cocktail, I added far too much li hing mui dram to it and it tasted too salty. Being annoyed and stubborn about not wanting to throw it out right away, I left it on the counter for a while to think if I should dilute it more and make it drinkable. I didn’t, but eventually came back and noticed that first version was blended and it started to separated to two layers.

Did some quick research in some of my books and found that alcohol can do some separation of fruit pulp higher in pectin. The bad thing is that the stuff you don’t want floats which makes it really hard to remove. I measured out rum and vodka, added it to the pineapple and mango puree, made and measured in lemon and lime juice as well to keep the whole clarification thing going.

After leaving the mixture in my fridge for about two days (one day was fine, but I was too lazy to make it on one night), the pulp separates out pretty well. Scooping out all the pulp is annoying to do and some mixes back in, but for low tech clarification, I wasn’t complaining.

I remeasured out the clarified juice and continued to build a cocktail and eventually was able to make something taste pretty good. Downside is that this really is a one-off recipe that I will never make again. The clarification wastes quite a bit of pulp, but I did learn some things while making this. The mango flavor is not really present once it’s clarified, so I might have to scrap mango altogether unless if I get Pectinex Ultra SP-L.

Recipe: 2 large cocktails

12 oz pineapple/mango puree
6 oz water
3 oz vodka
3 oz white rum (Bacardi)
1 oz lime juice
1 oz lemon juice

In a tall narrow container, combine all the ingredients above. (I have one of these carafes from St. Germain, few years ago during the holidays at one of the booze shops, they were selling sets that came with the carafe at the same price as a regular bottle.) Cover and let sit overnight in the fridge.

After scooping out the pulp, you should have about 12 oz left of the clarified stuff and that makes about 2 cocktails. Like I mentioned, very low yield and a lot of waste. I just saved the boozy pulp to eat after work for dessert.

6 oz of clarified fruit and booze mixture
Scant 1 oz of simple syrup
1 oz of orange curacao (I recommend the one from Senior & Co. legit good curacao, but hard to get.)
0.5 oz of li hing mui dram

Like a Blue Hawaii, but just pour all the ingredients over ice in a hurricane (or hurricane-like) glass and serve.