7 Reasons Why You Should Juice Your Own Pineapple Juice
Plus! A delicious old-school tiki drink made with fresh pineapple juice and coffee liqueur.
Around this time every year, I start making tiki drinks.
Part of the pleasure of making tiki drinks is that they are often what I think of as project drinks. I accept the argument that this is the time of year for no-work, no-thought cocktails. But when it’s this hot out, I need something to focus on, something to take my mind off the weather.
Also, I just need tiki drinks, period.
Tiki drinks are projects in the way that building a shed is a project. You have to gather your tools and materials, read through some instructions, start working on the first step or two, maybe read the instructions again, then proceed with a couple more steps. But in the end, you’ve built something worthwhile. There’s a sense of accomplishment.
Tiki drinks require custom unusual syrups. They require trips to the liquor store to purchase unusual rums, along with time and effort picking through my own collection, reading labels and trying to figure out if I actually have a bottle of rum that qualifies as a “Cane AOC Martinique Rhum Agricle Viuex.”
Tiki drinks also require fresh juice — lots and lots of fresh squeezed, fresh pressed juice.
In particular, tiki drinks require pineapple juice. And I like to juice pineapples myself.
Often, when I tell people this, they think I am crazy. How long does that take? How do you even…do…that? Can’t you just buy pineapple juice at the store?
Well, yes. But it wouldn’t be as good. It wouldn’t be as tasty. The texture would be wrong. The drink wouldn’t be right.
Also, juicing a pineapple takes much less time and effort than you might think, even if you lack a juicer. All you need is a blender, a strainer, a knife, a bowl, and perhaps a bottle to store the juice in.
Indeed, to demonstrate how easy it is, I actually timed myself juicing a pineapple this week, just to see how long the process actually took. The entire process — including getting out tools, bottling the juice, and putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher — took just 11 minutes.
How much time have you spent mindlessly scrolling through social media today? Or trying to decide what to watch on Netflix? I say this because I care about you: Spend that time juicing a pineapple instead.
That’s my mission today: I’m going to try to convince you to juice a pineapple, with a list of reasons why it’s better than the alternative. And then we’re going to go through how to efficiently juice a pineapple — and take a look at a delicious, coffee-inflected, old-school tiki drink that demonstrates just how good a cocktail with freshly juiced pineapple juice can be.
Se7en Reasons Why
The short version of this argument is that juicing a pineapple is fast, easy, fun, and makes your drinks taste and feel better. But let’s break this down a little bit more.