Spare me the details, I want to see the winners!

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ORIGINAL TIKI DRINK CREATIONS FROM TIKI CENTRAL MEMBERS

IT WAS A GREAT DAY to be in the San Francisco Bay Area. The sun was shining it’s summer rays, there were no clouds in the sky, and the air was sweet with the scent of blooming flowers.

But the real reason it was a great to be in San Francisco was because this was the day of the Official Tiki Central Drink Contest tasting and judging. A great day, and an even greater evening.

The Judges
As much as Mig and I wanted to make this an official
Tiki Central Event™, the sheer number of drinks, ingredients needed, and the amount of time to do the tasting meant we had to limit it to an invite-only occasion. So, after long deliberation we decided to make the gathering limited to just the Judges:

Weird Uncle Tiki
Expertise: Professional Wine Maker and Taster

Dean “TheJab” Curtis
Expertise: Tiki Central drink mixologist & connoisseur

Robin
Expertise: Professional Bartender, 8 years, the Mallard

MarTiki & Rebecca
Expertise: Drink connoisseurs, owners of one of the most well-stocked Tiki Bars in the Bar Area

Mig
Expertise: Tiki Central moderator and professional fun-time drink consumer and all around Merry fellow

Hanford Lemoore
Expertise: Tiki Central web server owner and operator and consumer of all things boozy

The Location
After much deliberation and coordinating, Martiki’s home bar the Foggy Grotto was chosen, partially for it’s convenient location to all the judges, partially because it’s an incredibly well-stocked bar, and partially because it’s a great looking Tiki Bar.

Judging
Although this was a gathering of Tiki Central members, every judge took the job seriously. Individually, each judge scored each drink of the scale of 1 to 10 in 4 categories:

Taste
Tikiness
Ease of Creation
Creativity

The scores from each category were averaged together, then mixed using the following recipe:

1 part creativity
1 part ease-of-creation
2 parts Tikiness
3 parts Taste

The resulting number represented the drink’s final score.

Water crackers and cold water were provided to the judges to help cleanse the palette between drinks. Tiki snacks we had the frozen Kahiki Pu Pu assortments, and a nice bar-quality snack mix.

Drinks were announced only by the recipe’s name (if given one) and not the name of the person who entered the drink. Some entries were submitted with colorful text, and in this case the recipe was read out loud verbatim. Judges were not allowed to judge their own drinks. The recipe was announced by the mixologist, and the judges were free to discuss the drink with others before giving final numbers. The numbers were collected by Hanford Lemoore, who entered them into the Drink-O-Matic computer tabulation system.

Mixing the Ingredients
The mixologist for the occasion was Mr. Martiki himself, assisted from time to time by Rebecca and an occasional judge. We were pretty-much faithful to every recipe, although there were a few substitutions made, and all the judges were notified.

When it came to the ingredients, Martiki, WeirdUnc, and TheJab really did an outstanding job at covering the bases. We had the rums pretty much covered, and if a substitute was needed, the Foggy Grotto had something quite comparable as a backup.

For lime juice and orange juice, we squeezed it fresh, seconds before it went into the drink. For the more exotic juices, Odwalla was chosen when possible. For the nectars Kerns was the choice. And for the few drinks that called for blends, not-from-concentrate carton juices were used. The nutmeg was grated fresh.

We had a total of 16 drinks entered with a wide variety of ingredients and a full spectrum of great flavors. We were able to make all the drinks except one due to the inability to substitute anything for Kava.

Go on and see The Winners ...