Tiki Talk with Ben Willis: Lava, Rum, and a Flaming Finish

Real lava… turned into something you can actually hold.

A wild tiki recipe that brings the fire, and a drink that’s made to impress.

Ben Willis dives in with Tiki Talk. Listen now. Stream Mega Rock anytime on the MegaRockPA app or at MegaRockPA.com

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Transcript

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It's Friday afternoon, and it's time to light the torches for Tiki Talk on Mega Rock. Ben Willis with ya. One of the most iconic images of Pacific Island tiki design arguably is the elephant in the room, the volcano. You can't miss it, I'll tell you what, when one is present. Drawing, of course, from real life, considering that the Ring of Fire surrounds the Pacific and dots it with volcanoes of all shapes and sizes, and that famously Hawaiian culture reveres Pele, the goddess of fire, lightning, wind, and volcanoes, who is said to reside in the crater on Kilauea, which, by the way, if you haven't seen the eruption of Kilauea happening recently, check it out, it is terrifying and beautiful. The volcano absolutely shows up in Tiki aesthetic and design. You'd be hard-pressed to find a large tiki establishment back in the day, whether it be a bar or even the exterior fountains at an apartment complex that would have included something like a lava rock fountain, or even a fake volcano that may or may not erupt on Q. And still to this day, it is a favorite project of those who can take it on, adding somewhere a volcano in your tiki bar. And the volcano even works its way into cocktails in the tiki world, not least of which the Volcano Bowl, which is a multi-person shared drink, serves two to four. I would not suggest you take on the volcano bowl as a single person. This recipe comes to us by the way of Jeff Beach Bumberry, the famous tiki cocktail archaeologist, who unearthed this one and says it is as such: take six ounces of white grapefruit juice, two ounces of fresh squeezed lime juice, three-quarter ounce of grade A maple syrup. Only the good stuff, not the fake stuff, please. An additional half ounce of simple sugar syrup, three ounces of Damerara rum, two ounces of a gold Jamaican rum, and one ounce of gold Puerto Rican rum. Put all this into a large shaker with a heaping scoop of crushed ice shaken until well-chilled. Pour unstrained the entire contents into a tiki bowl filled with big ice creams, scoop some more crushed ice, and if you really want to add a flare and some fire to your volcano bowl, this is how you do it. Take one of your spent lime shells, flip it upside down, float it like a little boat on top of the drink. Take a little crouton of bread as a wick, drop a few drops of lemon extract onto your crouton, light that very carefully on fire, and there you go, your flaming volcano bowl. So until we meet on another island, somewhere out there, this is Ben Willis saying Aloha on Tiki Talk, and let's hear how things are going down at the volcano with the presidents of the United States of America on Tiki Talk on Mega Rock.