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Here are the ingredients you need to make the Blue Hawaii drink! Its ocean-tinted hue is thanks to blue curacao liqueur.

Blue Hawaii Drink
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Here’s a bright blue drink that’s as beautiful as the ocean: the Blue Hawaii! This one is as classic 1950’s as it gets, from the crushed ice to the drink umbrella. Both vodka and rum feature in this sweet tart drink, along with a secret ingredient that brings in its ocean-tinted color.

As a blue drink lover myself, this one What ingredients do you need for the Blue Hawaii? You’ll need to grab a few special ingredients, but it’s 100% worth it.

Blue Hawaii drink ingredients

The Blue Hawaii is a tropical cocktail made with rum, vodka, blue curacao, and pineapple juice. It was invented in 1957 by a bartender named Harry Yee in Waikiki, Hawaii. A sales rep asked Harry to create a drink with his company’s product, blue curacao. Yee whipped up this drinks and named it after the song Blue Hawaii. Here are the Blue Hawaii drink ingredients you’ll need to whip it up at home:

A note on tiki culture and appropriation: Unfortunately, bartenders in the 1950’s created drinks that popularized a faux Hawaiian tiki culture, which did little to value actual Hawaiian people and culture. Since Tiki culture is built on appropriation, we won’t exalt the virtues of that phenomenon.

Blue Hawaii vs Blue Hawaiian: what’s the difference?

Is the Blue Hawaii cocktail the same as a Blue Hawaiian? Actually, the two drinks are different. The Blue Hawaiian cocktail is an adaptation of the Blue Hawaii that’s more like a piña colada. It’s made with white rum, pineapple juice, Blue curacao and cream of coconut. It’s blended with ice for a frozen consistency and tastes sweeter.

Blue curacao

Use fresh citrus for the best Blue Hawaii

The Blue Hawaii drink is often made with sour mix in a bar or restaurant setting. Purchased sour mix can be intensely sweet and artificial tasting, and usually makes for an overly sweet drink. For our spin on the Blue Hawaii drink, we wanted to use fresh squeezed citrus for maximum fresh flavor. Here’s how to do it:

  • Use fresh lemon and lime juice, with simple syrup. It’s easy to do, and results in bright, beautiful fresh flavors.
  • Or, use homemade sour mix! We have a great recipe for a sweet and sour mix with fresh lime and lemon juice. (You can use leftovers for a whiskey sour or margarita.)

About blue curacao

Blue curacao (pronounced Cure-ah-souw) is key to the Blue Hawaii drink and it gives it its beautiful ocean-tinted hue. It’s an artificially-colored orange liqueur invented in the 19th century by Dutch settlers on the island of Curaçao. There are several colors of Curaçao, the most popular of which are clear and blue. Blue curacao is flavored with the Laraha orange peel, a type of orange that grows on the island.

  • What does blue curacao taste like? It has a sweet orange peel flavor, with subtle bitter finish.
  • Curaçao is actually one of two categories of orange liqueurs: Curaçao and Triple Sec. Curaçao is the original orange liqueur and is typically sweeter than Triple Sec, a dryer style of orange liqueur and what’s typically used in a margarita.
  • What else can you use it for? Mix up a Blue Margarita, Blue Lagoon, Aqua Velva, or the Blue Long Island.
Blue Hawaii drink with drink umbrella

Notes on the vodka and rum

There are lots of variations on the Blue Hawaii: every bar and restaurant makes it differently! While all Blue Hawaii drinks include rum, you’ll find some with both rum and vodka. We used both here to make it a more interesting drink. But you can certainly use all rum if that’s all you have!

White rum is the most common for this drink: it has a crisp, straightforward flavor. While you could also use aged rum (añejo rum), note that it may give the drink a green-ish tinge. Steer clear of dark rum, since the flavor profile is different and it muddies the color of the drink.

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THE Blue Hawaii Drink

Blue Hawaii drink
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4.3 from 4 reviews

Here are the ingredients you need to make the Blue Hawaii drink! Its ocean-tinted hue is thanks to blue curacao liqueur. 

  • Author: Sonja Overhiser
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Cook Time: 0 minutes
  • Total Time: 5 minutes
  • Yield: 1 drink 1x
  • Category: Drink
  • Method: Shaken
  • Cuisine: Cocktails
  • Diet: Vegan

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 ounce* white rum
  • 1 ounce** vodka
  • ¾ ounce blue curacao
  • 2 ounces pineapple juice
  • ½ ounce lime juice (or use 1 ½ ounces homemade sour mix for the lime, lemon and simple syrup)
  • ½ ounce lemon juice
  • ½ ounce simple syrup
  • Crushed ice, for serving
  • For the garnish: pineapple wedge, cocktail cherry, drink umbrella (optional)

Instructions

  1. Place the rum, vodka, blue curacao, pineapple juice, lime juice, lemon juice and simple syrup in a cocktail shaker. Add 2 handfuls of ice and shake until cold.
  2. Strain the drink into a hurricane glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with a pineapple wedge and cherry.

Notes

*For conversion to tablespoons, 1 ounce = 2 tablespoons

**If you prefer, use 2 ounces rum and omit the vodka. 

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More pineapple juice cocktails

The final major component of the Blue Hawaii is pineapple juice! This tasty juice gives it a sweet tart, tropical flair. There are lots of great drinks that use pineapple juice to bring beautiful fruity flavor. Here are a few pineapple juice cocktails to use up your bottle:

About the authors

Alex & Sonja

Hi! We’re Alex & Sonja Overhiser, authors of the acclaimed cookbooks A Couple Cooks and Pretty Simple Cooking—and a real life couple who cooks together. We founded the A Couple Cooks website in 2010 to share seasonal recipes and the joy of home cooking. Now, we’ve got over 3,000 well-tested recipes, including Mediterranean diet, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, smoothies, cocktails, and more!

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5 Comments

  1. Jordan Smith says:

    Definitely green. Think it could be blue with lots more blue curaçao than indicated by the recipe but I’m not sure my teeth would thank me for adding any more sugar, so green is just fine. A lovely shade of green it is too!






  2. Abigail Asirifi says:

    great recipe. i need more






  3. Chelsea says:

    Tastes great but mine looks a lot greener than the one pictured.

    1. Brooke says:

      Same here! Much greener. I also needed it to blue.

      Pineapple (yellow) and blue curaçao (blue) =green.

      Great recipe though, tastes great but definitely not the color “blue” pictured.






      1. xod says:

        The one I made was extremely blue so you guys must’ve messed up.