Tiki
21 recipes
This Field Manual holds 21 recipes in the tiki family. Tiki drinks blend more than one rum, more than one citrus and at least one syrup.
The rums are layered on purpose: a light rum for the body, an aged or dark one for depth, sometimes an overproof float that sits on top and is tasted first. Orgeat and falernum are structural, not sweeteners, and swapping either for simple syrup collapses the drink. Crushed ice is part of the specification because dilution is doing work here, which is why a mai tai served over cubes tastes wrong within a minute.
Base Spirit
Difficulty Level
Bahama Mama
The Bahama Mama has no single documented origin and no named creator. It emerged from the tiki and Caribbean bar culture of the mid-twentieth century and spread through resort
Banana Daiquiri
The Banana Daiquiri is the frozen daiquiri’s tropical firstborn, blended in the Caribbean resort era and built on the one fruit that blends thicker than ice cream. It is the drink
Doctor Funk
The Doctor Funk is the only drink in the tiki canon named after a real physician. Dr Bernard Funk practised in Samoa in the late nineteenth century, where his patients included
Don’s Special Daiquiri
Don’s Special Daiquiri is what Donn Beach did to a daiquiri, which is to say he split the rum, added two sweeteners instead of one, and blended it with crushed ice until it
Fog Cutter
The Fog Cutter is Trader Vic’s second most famous creation after the Mai Tai, and his own menu note remains the best description it has ever had: “Fog Cutter, hell. After two of
Hurricane
The Hurricane is Pat O'Brien's New Orleans drink from the 1940s: dark and white rum, passion fruit syrup, fresh lime and orange, and grenadine, over crushed ice in a glass shaped
IBA Tiki
The IBA Tiki is the newest and most elaborate drink on the official list: nine ingredients, two rums, three sweetened modifiers and a slice of fresh ginger muddled in the base. It
Jet Pilot
The Jet Pilot was created at The Luau in Beverly Hills in 1958, a jet-age rebuild of Don the Beachcomber's wartime Test Pilot. The rename tells you everything about the era: tiki
Jungle Bird
The Jungle Bird was created in 1978 at the Aviary Bar of the Kuala Lumpur Hilton, reportedly as a welcome drink for arriving guests, which makes it one of the last true classics
Mai Tai
Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron mixed the first Mai Tai in Oakland in 1944, and the story goes that his Tahitian guests took one sip and declared it maita'i roa ae: roughly, out of
Missionary’s Downfall
Don the Beachcomber’s menu was built on rum and thunder, and then there is this: fresh mint, pineapple and peach blended into something so green and gentle it barely seems
Navy Grog
Grog is the oldest rum serve there is. In 1740 Admiral Edward Vernon ordered the Royal Navy's daily rum ration cut with water and lime juice to keep his sailors upright, and the
Painkiller
The Painkiller was created at the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands in the 1970s, a bar named for the fact that arriving boats had no dock and
Pearl Diver
The Pearl Diver is Don the Beachcomber at his most baroque: a drink whose secret weapon, hidden for decades inside the coded “gardenia mix”, turned out to be butter. Honey,
Piña Colada
The Piña Colada is Puerto Rico’s gift to the pleasure principle, created, by the strongest of the competing claims, by Ramón “Monchito” Marrero at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan in
Rum Runner
The Rum Runner was born from necessity and named for outlaws. In the early 1970s, John "Tiki John" Elber, manager of the Tiki Bar at the Holiday Isle in Islamorada, Florida Keys,
Scorpion
The Scorpion is one of Trader Vic's most enduring creations, developed at his Oakland bar in the early 1950s and built around a principle that defined the tiki movement at its
Strawberry Daiquiri
The Strawberry Daiquiri is the most ordered frozen cocktail on earth and the most casually ruined. It is the resort-era blend of the Cuban classic with summer’s berry, built
Three Dots and a Dash
Three Dots and a Dash was created by Donn Beach at Don the Beachcomber in 1944 and named after the Morse code signal for the letter V, the Allied symbol for victory during the
Tia Mia
The Tia Mia is the Mai Tai crossing the border. Ivy Mix built it at Leyenda, her pan-Latin cocktail bar in Brooklyn, by splitting the sacred base between Jamaican rum and mezcal
Zombie
The Zombie was created by Donn Beach at Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood in 1934 and became the most infamous drink in the tiki canon almost immediately. Beach kept the recipe