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Cocktail History
The Third Wave Swizzle is a modern tiki cocktail that was created by Ryan Lotz at Shore Leave in Boston, Massachusetts. The recipe is essentially a tiki twist on the popular Espresso Martini that was inspired by Don the Beachcomber’s style of mixing unique syrups with other ingredients. This one calls for a gin base and pairs it with honey, lemon, spicy ginger, and cold-brew coffee concentrate and serves them up in a swizzle format.
Cocktail Ingredients
To make this cocktail, you’ll need the following ingredients:
Gin: This is the base spirit. We went with Door County Distillery Gin because it is a classic juniper gin with notes of citrus. For a mocktail version of this drink, try Lyre’s Non-Alcoholic Dry London Spirit in place of the gin.
Honey Syrup: This is a sweetener made with honey and water. We made ours at home using Alex’s simple recipe.
Lemon Juice: This adds sweet and sour citrus flavors for balance. We prefer to use fresh citrus juice because it’s less bitter than the bottled stuff and tastes better.
Cold-Brew Coffee Concentrate: This is a coarsely ground coffee brewed with cold water for 14-18 hours.
Ginger Syrup: This is a sweetener made with ginger, white sugar, gum Arabic powder, and water. We made ours at home using Alex’s sous vide recipe.
Lemon Twist: This is one of the garnishes. It adds more fresh citrus aroma and flavor.
Coffee Beans: This is the other garnish. It adds fragrant coffee aroma.
Tasting Notes
The Third Wave Swizzle features herbal-tinged and sweet aromas of coffee, has a unique citrus-forward taste that marries sweet honey with spicy ginger, bold coffee, and herbal gin, and leaves with an interesting aftertaste of honey and coffee.
Our Opinion of This Cocktail Recipe: We both thought this drink was a wild ride, and while ginger and honey are certainly not a new pairing to most drinkers, the addition of coffee certainly is unexpected. Though we didn’t find it crushable in the classic tiki sense, we did truly enjoy the bold, flavorful, and overall unprecedented flavors it gave us.
Which of our palates is yours most like?
Find out if your palate is most similar to Alex’s or Kendall’s by answering five questions.
Which of our palates is yours most like?
Find out if your palate is most similar to Alex’s or Kendall’s by answering five questions.
Alex’s Take: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
“I have never tasted anything quite like the Third Wave Swizzle before. The designer of this recipe touts it as a tiki version of an Espresso Martini, and while it definitely has coffee in common, everything else about it is extremely different. I guess that’s what makes it tiki. The honey and ginger are a natural pair, per the Penicillin, but mixed with coffee, it makes an unprecedented blend. Gin’s herbal notes top it off while lemon balances it, but the aforementioned flavors are the star of the show. This drink’s blend of flavors make it the kind of thing that you taste, ponder, and then taste again and again and again trying to nail it down, so while the flavor isn’t exactly crushable it certainly does end up going down quickly.”—
Kendall’s Take: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
“I wish you could’ve seen the look on my and Alex’s faces when we tasted this drink for the first time. There’s no other way to describe it: It’s just a weird one… but not in a bad way. I had never tasted any coffee drink like it before, and that makes it hard to describe. It has an herbal quality from the gin (which a gin base in a tiki drink is unique in itself), a twinge of spice from the ginger, sweetness from the honey, and then the coffee explodes onto your palate. If you’re a coffee lover interested in a tropical-inspired take on the Espresso Martini, you need to add this to your must-try list.”
Recipe
This cocktail recipe was adapted from Easy Tiki: A Modern Revival with 60 Recipes by Chloe Frechette.
Add gin, honey syrup, lemon juice, cold-brew coffee concentrate, ginger syrup, and crushed ice to a tiki or hurricane glass.
Stir for 5-10 seconds.
Garnish with lemon twist and coffee beans.
Ingredients
Directions
Add gin, honey syrup, lemon juice, cold-brew coffee concentrate, ginger syrup, and crushed ice to a tiki or hurricane glass.
Stir for 5-10 seconds.
Garnish with lemon twist and coffee beans.
Make It a Mocktail: Use Lyre’s Non-Alcoholic Dry London Spirit in place of the gin to try a booze-free version of this drink.
Tools & Glassware We Recommend
More Tiki Cocktails
If you like this tiki cocktail recipe, here are a few others we’ve tried that you may enjoy:
Donga Punch: A rhum agricole cocktail made with Don’s mix, lime juice, a grapefruit twist, a cinnamon stick, and an orchid blossom
Cobra’s Fang: A rum cocktail made with orange juice, lime juice, passion fruit syrup, Swedish punsch, grenadine, absinthe, pineapple fronds, and a snake-shaped orange peel
Something Tequila: A tequila cocktail made with pineapple juice, orange juice, lime juice, simple syrup, passion fruit syrup, a lime slice, a mint sprig, and edible flowers
Zombie: A rum cocktail made with velvet falernum liqueur, Donn’s mix, lime juice, absinthe, grenadine, Angostura aromatic bitters, and mint
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