Drink 166: Don't Shoot the Memessenger

Everyone knows that Adolf Hitler loved Piña Coladas.  His love was controversial though since the Piña Colada supposedly wasn’t invented until 1954 when the key ingredient cream of coconut was first created.  What these so-called “historians” don’t know is that Hitler used the recipe shown in our Mr. Boston guide.  Well not our specific copy, but you know what I mean.  The recipe calls for coconut milk instead of cream of coconut as is typically used. Adding to the confusion is that the drink was known in Weimar Germany not as a Piña Colada but as Der Gerfrorenananasweiblichgetränk.

We did not love this Piña Colada

Mrs. Bottle and I were both excited to try the Piña Colada, but not because it was Hitler’s favorite.  Rather, we like tropical drinks and no drink symbolizes the tropics more than the Piña Colada.  It has even been famously immortalized in song.  Unfortunately the drink as described in the Mr. Boston book is truly horrible.  I can see how being stuck with Gerfrorenananasweiblichgetränk could make someone angry. The main problem is that it calls for coconut milk instead of cream of coconut.  Coconut milk is essentially the juice from a coconut.  It isn’t sweet, isn’t creamy, and in my opinion isn’t very tasty either. 

The rest of the recipe calls for light rum and crushed pineapple.  You mix it in a blender with ice and the strain it into your glass.  This is an additional flaw, since the crushed pineapple gets mostly strained out, leaving you with rum and coconut milk.  We kept tasting it hoping it would somehow magically improve but it never got better.  Mrs. Bottle was as crushed as the pineapple but instead of letting it get her down she just found the inner resolve to make a tasty Piña Colada.  It is effort like hers that makes America great.

USA! USA!

She found a recipe on our can of Coco López cream of coconut and used that instead. Their recipe uses cream of coconut and pineapple juice instead of coconut milk and strained pineapple.  This drink was sweet, creamy, and delicious.  It also happens to be closer to the recipe we found in all of our other cocktail guides and as you might imagine we have quite a few.  In fact, we added one to our collection yesterday at the Borders going out of business sale.  We saved $0.60!   It was totally worth it.

Overall Rating for the Piña Colada

Taste: 1

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 –  9% Alcohol

Ingredients

3 oz Light Rum

3 tbsp Coconut Milk

3 tbsp Crushed Pineapple