Combine in a tall (12- to 16-oz) glass:

• 1 ½ oz aged, light-bodied rum (such as Cruzan Single Barrel or Flor de Caña 7-year-old)
• 1 oz Linie Aquavit
• ½ oz Grand Marnier
• ½ oz rich simple syrup (made by stirring 1 cup demerara or other raw sugar and ½ cup water over low heat until sugar has dissolved, letting it cool, and bottling it)
• 1 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
• 3 dashes Angostura bitters
• Fill with shaved ice, stir until the glass frosts, add more ice, garnish with a sprig of mint.

Mix one up and test it out!  If you stumble upon any tweaks that make it even better, please share in the comments!

The Spinnaker Swizzle: An All-New Tiki Drink for Summer (Esquire)

In case that Tropical Blizzard recipe snuck by you, it was

• 1 oz Blue Curacao
• 1 oz Coconut Rum
• 1/2 oz Apple Juice
• 1 1/2 oz Orange Juice

Let it snow!

The Painkiller is an easy drink to prepare and requires only a few key ingredients. You can do some substitution on this one, but it really needs Pusser’s Rum to carry the heavy and distinct flavor in the Painkiller. Without it, you’re drinking a Pina Colada with a splash of orange juice.

• 2 oz Pusser’s Rum
• 4 oz pineapple juice
• 1 oz cream of coconut
• 1 oz orange juice

Fill your favorite tiki mug with ice, pour in the rum and juices, and sprinkle fresh nutmeg on top. Of course, rum can be added depending on how powerful your Painkiller needs to be!

Origin of the Pusser’s Painkiller (Pussers.com)

Most Test Pilot recipes you will find online can be attributed to Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log, a fantastic collection of Tiki cocktail recipes from Tiki’s heyday in the 1930’s and 40’s. This is the must-have book for any home tiki bar.

Courtesy of the Grog Log, the Test Pilot recipe:

Test Pilot

• 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
• 1/2 ounce Falernum
• 3 teaspoons Cointreau
• dash Angostura bitters
• 1/8 teaspoon Pernod
• 3/4 ounce light Puerto Rican rum
• 1 1/2 ounces dark Jamaican rum

Blend with 1 cup crushed ice for 5 seconds, then pour into double old-fashioned glass. Add more crushed ice to fill. Garnish with a wooden oyster fork with maraschino cherry skewered on prongs.

Source: Grog Log by Jeff Berry

As with any traditional cocktail, there are a number of substitutions that can be made to give the Test Pilot a different flavor. Some will substitute lemon juice for lime juice, while The Cocktail Chronicles substituted Herbsaint for Pernod and was pleased with the result. Some Test Pilot recipes do exclude the Pernod and bitters, but you do lose a lot by taking those out.

The flavors really come together with the Test Pilot to create an excellent drink.

The Original Trader Vic’s Mai Tai

The true originator of the Mai Tai remains unknown to this day. I’ve read that Trader Vic won a case in court proving him to be the originator of the Mai Tai, but cannot say for sure. However, to many, the Trader Vic Mai Tai remains the popular ‘original’ Mai Tai.

The legend of the Mai Tai is that Victor Burgeron invented the cocktail while hosting a group of friends. The drink was so popular that one of his guests exclaimed, “Maita’i roa!” (meaning ‘out of this world!’), giving the new drink its name.

• 2 ounces of 17-year old J. Wray & Nephew Rum over shaved ice.
• Add juice from one fresh lime.
• 1/2 ounce Holland DeKuyper Orange Curacao.
• 1/4 ounce Trader Vic’s Rock Candy Syrup.
• 1/2 ounce French Garier Orgeat Syrup
• Shake vigorously.
• Add a sprig of fresh mint

Serve either combination with an umbrella and/or maraschino cherry. In the interest of balance, I will post the original Don the Beachcomber recipe soon.

It’s a throwback, as all New York cocktails are these days, but from what cocktail historians would deem more “recent” history: the 1930’s. That’s when Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, as Donn Beach, started serving dolled-up rum drinks at his Polynesian-themed restaurants, kicking off the decades-long “tiki” phase of American drinking. Along with the Mai Tai and Zombie, the Navy Grog was part of his holy trinity of tiki drinks. “These are truly classic cocktails,” Mr. Miller said. “They’re bright, refreshing, with tastes that really pop in your mouth. They’re relics that people should get to know.”

The Recipe

The Navy Grog recipe is a relatively simple one. As with with the Zombie, it is one stiff cocktail.

• 1 ounce Demerara rum (El Dorado Dark)
• 1 ounce dark rum (Gosling’s Black Seal or Captain Morgan)
• 1 ounce light rum (Cruzan Estate Light or Bacardi Carta Blanca)
• ¾ ounce freshly squeezed lime juice
• ¾ ounce freshly squeezed grapefruit juice
• 1 ounce honey syrup (2 parts honey with 1 part warm water, then cool)
• ¾ ounce club soda

Shake all liquid ingredients except club soda together with ice in cocktail shaker. Strain into Collins glass or your favorite tiki mug filled with ice, top with soda and garnish with fresh fruit or flower.

The Zombie Ingredients

• 1/2 oz light rum
• 1 1/2 oz golden rum
• 1 oz dark rum
• 1/2 oz Bacardi 151 rum
• 1 tsp orange juice
• 1 tsp sour mix
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1 tsp fine sugar

Pour all ingredients (except the Bacardi 151) into your favorite ice-filled tiki mug or collins glass.  Pour the 151 on top of the cocktail with a spoon, letting it rest on top.  Garnish with mint leaf or fruit.  It’s a stiff one – good luck staying in your stool if you manage to finish three.

For added fun and singed eyebrows, the 151 can make this Zombie a Flaming Zombie.  Simply add an open flame to the above recipe and stand back.