Tiki drinks have had a major resurgence in the 21st century. Although the uninitiated may still think of those neon-colored, sickly sweet, umbrella-topped concoctions served up at all-inclusive Caribbean resorts as tiki drinks, cocktail aficionados recognize the genre as the exotic forerunner to the craft cocktail movement of the past few decades.
True tiki drinks — the kind concocted by Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic in the 1930s and ’40s — are complex, balanced and strong. But the secrecy involved in their original recipes, combined with a lazy cocktail culture that prioritized ease and efficiency in the latter half of the twentieth century, led to such drinks giving way to the dreaded “umbrella drinks” as the de facto tropical drink style of bars everywhere.
That is, until Jeff “Beachbum” Berry came along. A screenwriter-turned cocktail historian-turned author-turned restaurateur, Berry is almost solely responsible for rescuing tiki culture from obscurity thanks to his dogged pursuit of original recipes from Don, Vic and other mid-century masters of mixology. Berry has published those recipes — gathered from sources such as old notebooks and the mouths of surviving bartenders who worked during tiki’s golden era — in several books, starting with Beach Bum Berry’s Grog Log in 1998, as well as on his comprehensive Total Tiki app.
Today, Berry operates Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29 in New Orleans, one of the world’s premier modern tiki bars and restaurants, where he serves up some of his favorite classic drink recipes along with several originals. But if you can’t make it to the French Quarter to sample these drinks in person, here are three of Berry’s unearthed tiki drink recipes — all originally created by Don the Beachcomber in the 1930s and ’40s — that make use of one of the genre’s key ingredients: sweet and smoky Demerara rum.
