Saturn
Gin blended with passion fruit, orgeat and falernum to a smooth, pale slush.
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
Glass
Vessel
315 ml of liquid, served without ice, inside the 400 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
4 steps · 1m 35sCombine the 45 ml London dry gin, the 15 ml fresh lemon juice, the 7.5 ml passion fruit syrup, the 15 ml orgeat and the 7.5 ml falernum in a blender with the 225 g water.
Blend for 30s, just long enough to bring it to a smooth, pale slush.
Pour, unstrained, into a Collins glass.
Wind a long strip of lemon peel loosely around a cocktail cherry, pin it with a pick, and set it across the rim.
The garnish is the point named on the drink: a long strip of lemon peel wound loosely around a cocktail cherry on a pick reads as a ringed planet floating on the surface, which is what gave the renamed drink its name.
Common pitfallBlended too long, the crushed ice melts past a slush into a thin, watery gin drink with none of the body orgeat and falernum are there to give it. A short blend on a genuinely full scoop of ice is what keeps it textured rather than diluted.
Keeping and make-ahead
This drink is made to order.
About
A gin tiki drink built by a California bartender for the engineers who tested an experimental rocket plane, renamed after its pilot died and its successor mission flew, and rediscovered decades later from a commemorative glass.
The bartender J. "Popo" Galsini built the drink at the Kona Kai resort in Huntington Beach, California, where Douglas Aircraft engineers working on the experimental X-15 rocket plane drank, and named it the X-15 in their honour 1. After the X-15 test pilot Michael Adams was killed in a crash in October 1967, Galsini renamed the drink Saturn, for the rocket that would carry the Apollo programme to the moon three weeks later 1.
Under its new name, the drink went on to win the International Bartenders Association's World Cocktail Championship in 1967 2. It is gin-based, an unusual choice for a tiki drink of the period, when rum was the default, and it carries no rum in it at all 2. Its garnish is part of the design: a strip of lemon peel wound around a cherry to suggest a ringed planet floating on the surface, in keeping with the drink's name.
The recipe fell out of circulation after Galsini's competition win and was not generally known until the tiki historian Jeff Berry found it recorded on a commemorative bartenders' guild glass and published it in Beachbum Berry Remixed 1. Berry's published version is the one generally followed today, and it is the one this page follows.
- 1The X-15, Saturn, and the Finer Points of Bad Behaviorcold-glass.com
- 2Saturn Cocktaildrunkardsalmanac.com