Houston, We Have a Problem: The Tiki Melange

Jasper’s Starlight Tavern is a space-comedy comic strip created by Bob Salley and Jason Sparich, that focuses on the interactions the staff of an intergalactic space bar have with their patrons. In 2021 there was a Kickstarter to release the comic in a variety of formats including a compact, hardcover edition.

My copy of Jasper’s Starlight Tavern from the Kickstarter

Like an alluring neon sign, the cover of Jasper’s Starlight Tavern draws readers in with promises of vibrant and terrific artwork. In this department, JST delivers more than promised. The art by Juan Calle in conjunction with the coloring of Don Mathias are stunning. Every character looks distinct, each panel pops off the page with a rainbow of colors that emulate well produced cartoons.

The writing for JST, however, does not live up to its amazing art. The comic strip relies heavily on cameos of characters from popular or cult science fiction sources (usually films and television shows) to convey its humor. Specifically it is the presence of the guest character themselves that is each strip’s punchline; the cameo-ed entity rarely performs any (funny) actions at all.

The following page from JST illustrates up the comic’s style of humor:

The joke of the page is literally “we need an extra set of hands because there are a lot of vehicles in the drive through” and those vehicles happen to be spaceships from a variety of sci-fi sources (an Imperial Star Destroyer, a Borg Cube, the Satellite of Love, the Normandy, and so on). There is also Lobot, but they stand a drooling mess.

Of particular interest is the appendix of cocktails made specifically for the book titled “Interstellar Mixology Guide.” There’s no bartender or mixologist credited so one has to assume the writers created the recipes themselves. There’s eight cocktails: Dr. Zoidrosé, Tiki Melange, The Imposter, Mocha-Dimensional Madness, Galactic Committee, The Solitude, The Kraken Strikes Back, and the Ecto 1. Each drink is paired with a drawing of what the cocktail looks like in the JST universe, ingredients, and measurements. There are no directions of any kind for the cocktails. Stirred? Shook? Swizzled? With or without ice? Strained? Floated? These are all absent.

The Tiki Melange is the JST’s attempt at a tiki cocktail.

Tiki Melange

1.5 oz Kraken Spiced Rum.5 oz Oregeat [sic] Syrup (or Amaretto)1 oz Lime1 o Pineapple

Looking at the ingredients along with the artistic depiction, it is fairly obvious that this cocktail will not work with primitive Earth mixolo-technology and ingredients, but it is a curio and warrants a deeper dive.

Limited edition Kraken from the personal stash.

First the Kraken Spiced rum; this is not necessarily a bad call. Spiced rums get a lot of hate in the tiki community, usually under the guise of “you don’t know what is in spiced rum, it could be anything” and “you should be able to control what your drink tastes like.” To the first sentiment – pluck up a bottle of Kraken and look at its label: “rum with natural flavors and caramel colour.” Now pick up your bottle of Angostura bitters (the salt and pepper of the cocktail world) and read its ingredients: “alcohol, water, sugar, gentian, natural flavors and caramel color.” Natural flavors can mean anything, so why is it not acceptable in spiced rums but acceptable in Ango (and other bitters)? True, Ango has been around for a long, long, long time – but its still proprietary of what is in it and that is obfuscated. The best way to view spiced rum is to invision it as a rum that has built in bitters. Take a drink of spiced rum. Now you know what it tastes like. Now you know (control) what is going in your drink. For the Tiki Melange, one definitely does not want to use a pricier rum in the cocktail, and the Kraken imagery of tentacles go hand-in-hand with Lovecraftian cosmic horror.

Next, the amaretto or orgeat. These two ingredients are not interchangeable; their only commonality is they are both sweet and both have almond flavors. One is a syrup and the other is a liqueur: they achieve different functions in cocktails. One can walk into an establishment and order an amaretto sour and enjoy a fantastic drink. One would not order an orgeat sour as this would be an affront to all cocktails in existence. For best practice, treat the two as non-interchangable.

Finally the lime and pineapple. These are often found together in many tiki drinks, with the Jungle Bird being a notable example that uses both to balance its bitter Campari. The Tiki Melange is far from balanced.

Looking at the art work, there is no way these ingredients can achieve this look on their own. There are no directions, but because citrus is present, the best practice is to shake with ice and then strain. There’s no ice in the cocktail proper, so it is either getting its coldness from being shook with ice and/or the futuristic glassware being chilled. There is the slim, but possible, chance that the drink is dry shook and poured into a chilled glass. There is also a color gradient in the drink: brownish red on the bottom, yellow on top. That coloring is not from the square glassware, so is this cocktail floating its lime and pineapple on top of the orgeat and Kraken? Typically it is the other way around: the rum is floated on top. There is also a lack of foam on top of the drink, which would be present if the drink was shook with pineapple juice. With this aspect in mind, the cocktail was either stirred (with no ice) or left out for a length of time for the foam to disperse, both of which are horrible practices for this (or any) type of libation.

The Tiki Melange is a paradox, so the best way to tackle it is to make both versions: an orgeat Tiki Melange and an amaretto Tiki Melange.

The orgeat Tiki Melange has a brownish foam, with the pineapple dominating with the lime in a close second. The Kraken, surprisingly for having a fairly distinct taste, is absent from the flavor profile. There is a slight sweetness from the orgeat, but not much.

The amaretto Tiki Melange has a white foam, with the pineapple also dominating. This incarnation is more tart than the orgeat incarnation. Both have awful colors and should not be served in clear glassware.

Though the art depicts the drink without ice, but this cocktail needs to have ice in it to be even remotely palpable. The pineapple and lime are fighting for dominance in both versions as this drink is horribly unbalanced. It can be suspected that this cocktail is attempting to be an extremely stripped down version of the Royal Hawaiian Mai Tai.

Neither iteration of the Tiki Melange taste well. Unfortunately for folks who are adventurous and like to try new cocktails, the other exclusive cocktails featured in Jasper’s Starlight Tavern look to suffer the same fate. While the comic book delivers spectacularly with its artwork, it burns up in orbit with its humor and cocktail recipes.