Make your next drink at home a memorable pour with a signature drink from two of Kuala Lumpur’s top bars – rum den JungleBird and intimate Japanese watering hole Bar Shake. In tune with our last DIY cocktail story, listed here are some time-honoured creations that are easy-to-make but requires a precise balance of flavours.
Joshua Ivanovic, JungleBird
“An easy drink to make at home with readily available ingredients is our namesake JungleBird. The drink is big and bittersweet with a healthy amount of rum,” says Joshua Ivanonic. Furthermore, the Junglebird cocktail is the only internationally renowned classic cocktail with Malaysian origins, with some seasoned mixologists even referring to it as a national cocktail.
Recipe
What you need:
Aged rum – 30ml
Navy rum – 20ml
Campari – 30ml
Fresh lime juice – 15ml
Fresh pineapple juice – 50ml
How to make it:
Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker and fill with good quality ice. Shake hard until the tins frosts over slightly. Strain over ice into a large goblet glass or a highball glass. Garnish with pineapple, orange and two pineapple leaves.
Trader Vic’s Mai Tai, JungleBird
“The Mai Tai has always been a favourite of mine to make at JungleBird,” says Ivanovic. “It’s a timeless classic, depicting the tiki-era perfectly. When the drink is made as close to the original 1944 recipe as possible, is makes for a very well balanced drink.”
Recipe
What you need:
Aged rum – 50ml
Orange curacao – 15ml
Orgeat syrup – 10ml
Fresh lime juice – 25ml
Rock candy syrup – 5ml
How to make it:
Put all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker and fill with good quality ice. Shake hard until the shaker frosts. Strain over ice into a large rocks glass or a double old fashioned glass. Finish with a pineapple, lime and cherry garnish.
Osamu Kinugawa, Bar Shake
Osamu Kinugawa’s saketinis are a popular item at Bar Shake. The man behind the bar shares with Robb Report a fool-proof two-ingredient cocktail influenced by his creation called Japanese sangria, a drink which uses pear to enhance the natural sweetness of the rice used in sake.
Recipe
What you need:
One whole pear
Sake – 720ml
A large glass pitcher or punch bowl
How to make it:
Peel and slice the pear into bite-sized chunks and put into a large container such as a glass pitcher or punch bowl. Next, empty a bottle of sake of your choice into the container and leave it covered overnight in the fridge, allowing it to sit for at least one night before drinking.
