With Free the Tipple (2018), Art Boozel (2021), and Dressed to Swill (2022), Jennifer Croll has established herself as the de facto master of the homage cocktail. Diving deep into each subject, Croll susses out each person’s passions, what they stand for, their worldly contributions, what makes them iconic, and distills (pun intended) all their elements into a representative cocktail.
Cover for Buzzworthy.
Continuing in the same vein as Free the Tipple which showcased cocktails inspired by women across a variety of disciplines, Croll’s newest book, Buzzworthy, focuses on fifty female authors, both old guard (such as Jane Austin, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf) and new school (such as Sally Rooney, Amanda Gorman, Rupi Kaur). Buzzworthy doesn’t just focus on literary fiction authors (though they do comprise the majority of the book), but highlights women authors who write poetry, genre fiction, graphic novels, (which is extremely appreciated), and non-fiction.
Croll uses an introductory approach to not only present authors to readers, but to the art of mixology as well. The beginning of Buzzworthy gives a run down on equipment, ingredients, and measurements, providing all the key instructional components for readers regardless of mixology skill level to consult in order to realize all the cocktails presented in the book.
Each recipe in Buzzworthy contains an ingredient and measurement list, instructions, and also a short biography about each writer along with the rationale behind the recipe. For example, Terese Marie Mailhot’s cocktail is berry-centric, using a berry syrup with strawberries and blueberries for garnish, which corresponds to her memoir’s title, Heart Berries. Her cocktail is actually a mocktail, using Lyre’s American Malt faux-bourbon as its base spirit. Creating a non-alcoholic drink aligns with Mailhot’s biography that mentions her alcoholic father.
The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Glass from Strong Water in Anaheim. Photo taken by Michele Brittany.
There’s a total of fifty cocktail recipes to explore in Buzzworthy that run the gamut of simple to complex in difficulty, using a variety of spirits, but also plenty of mocktail and low ABV options as well. An example can be found in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s cocktail which calls for grenadine, lime, lemon, and orange juices, bitters, club soda, and a shot of Campari. This is a fizzy and fresh drink with the bitterness normally found in Campari-forward drinks being greatly subdued. With so little alcohol there’s no burn, making a pleasant, long-sipping experience.
The Amy Tan. Photo taken by Michele Brittany.
The Amy Tan is another Campari cocktail that takes a hint of inspiration from a daiquiri by using white rum, simple syrup, lime juice, and muddled raspberries. The ruby red colour gives this drink an elegant appearance while its fruity aroma projects a candy smell, like a liquid Jolly Rancher. The white rum (Flor de Cana used for this article) muddled with the raspberries are a perfect combination.
The Shelia Heti. Photo by Michele Brittany.
Aside from the Pisco Sour, there’s not too many pisco-centric cocktails out there, so it is a treat to see Shelia Heti’s homage cocktail that uses pisco, muddled basil, lime juice, and simple syrup. In essence a gin-basil smash, this libation comes through extremely crisp, the basil almost straying into mint territory. Another smooth cocktail with a wine-like aroma notes from the pisco.
Buzzworthy concludes with a reading list suggesting one to a handful of publications of each author along with a one sentence overview and/or synopsis.
The illustrations by Rachelle Baker that correspond to each author and cocktail are fun to look at and perhaps on the chic side. Each author is represented accurately but in a stylized fashion while each cocktail illustration provides an end result for experimenting readers to shoot for. The beginning of Buzzworthy has a piece that features an orange cat with a white blaze that is adorable to look at and it’s a shame the feline didn’t make an appearance at the end of the book to, well, bookend it.
Cropped image of the cheers illustration in Buzzworthy by Rachelle Baker. This piece rules so much.
While the illustrations depicting each author are fantastic in their own right, the best art piece in Buzzworthy is the second cat piece that shows two fashionable ladies toasting with cocktails they just made. This illustration is so fun with a few hidden gems in it, such as the aforementioned orange/white blaze kitty peering at an open copy of Buzzworthy which was no doubt consulted by the two women to make their libations. This piece sums up the entirety of Buzzworthy: creating cocktails, honoring (author) women, and having a fabulous time doing so.
The bars and cocktail lounges of New York City ushered in the craft cocktail renaissance in the mid aughts. Many of the vanguard establishments central to this movement have had books published detailing not only their ethos to mixology, but showcasing many of their recipes as well. Death & Co. has their Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails (2014), Apotheke has Apotheke: Modern Medicinal Cocktails (2020), Cienfuegos has Cuban Cocktails: 100 Classic and Modern Drinks (2015), and so on. The folks at iconic and influential NYC speakeasy Please Don’t Tell (PDT) have, of course, their own book, The PDT Cocktail Book: The Complete Bartender’s Guide from the Celebrated Speakeasy (2011).
PDT book from my personal collection.
Flipping through the pages one will see a plethora of inventive, intoxicating libations accompanied with pop-art style illustrations.
Corresponding artwork for the Cinema Highball.
However, one might do a double take of the recipe on page 90 for the Cinema Highball: a rum and Coke variant made with movie theater buttered popcorn infused rum.
Cinema Highball recipe.
A cocktail that captures the theater-going experience of grabbing a handful of popcorn, stuffing it all into one’s mouth and then chasing it down with a titanic cup of Coke (Hey! Free refills) all while the previews are still going on? It HAS to be made.
The recipe is fairly simple, with most of the effort going into making the popcorn rum. Per the directions the ingredients are:
1 750 ML bottle of Flor de Caña Silver Dry Rum
1 oz fresh popcorn
1 oz clarified buttered
Popcorn, rum, and ghee.
If the Flor de Caña sounds a little pricy to be used in this fashion go with a Bacardi Silver, that way if the end result isn’t successful a nice bottle of rum wasn’t squandered.
Though this cocktail uses a fairly nice rum, for the popcorn the opposite is needed. Unless a movie theater is super close by and a bag of popcorn can be easily obtained, the best route to go instead is the most unhealthy, syntheticy, buttery, popcorn imaginable. This isn’t a place for organic, artisan popcorn – it’s trying to re-create a movie theater experience afterall. The popcorn used here is from Dollar General and is probably as bottom of the barrel as one can get (note the “gluten free” in air quotes),
The final component is the ghee. More so than the popcorn, this is what is going to give the rum the movie theater butter popcorn flavour. Smelling ghee is just like smelling the butter squirter at the concession stand.
Get a glass pitcher and pour the rum into it. Follow this by an ounce of popcorn. The best way to determine an ounce of popcorn is to look at the bag it came in. The popcorn used here comes in an eight-ounce bag, so eye-ball an eighth of the bag. This doesn’t have to be exact though, error on the side of more popcorn. As stated above, the ghee is what is going to provide most of the flavour.
The popcorn is going to get soggy and float to the top.
Give it a stir once or twice over the next hour. Little globules of synthetic butter will swirl around in the rum.
Close to an hour grab a sieve. A big one. Put a bowl under it to capture all the rum that will be pressed through.
After an hour a few popcorns will have sunk. There will be a nice “healthy” hue to the rum.
The butter will be concentrated on the top.
Dump the pitcher of popcorn rum into the sieve and use the sieve-stick to press as much rum out from the popcorn. Don’t press too hard though or the popcorn will actually smoosh through the sieve holes.
The popcorn leftover will be highly rum soaked. It’s not really salvageable for anything else and kinda gross if consumed.
Pour the rum through another strainer back into the (cleaned) glass pitcher. The extra strain will grab any small popcorn atoms that made it through the sieve.
Add the ounce of ghee, stir, and let it set for twenty four hours.
After a day all the ghee will have floated to the top. The rum will have a cloudy, yellow-ish colour.
Pour the pitcher into a glass bowl. The ghee will stay floating and congregate into little, buttery islands. Place into the freezer for four hours which will cause the ghee to harden.
After four hours the ghee will have frozen into manageable clumps that can be easily removed. Strain the rum into a bottle.
Once bottled, the popcorn-infused rum is ready to go!
Grab a high ball glass, add ice cubes, two ounces of rum and four to five ounces of Coke (or Pepsi, RC Cola, etc.) to taste. Use a bar spoon and give it a once or twice stir. Don’t over stir because it will release the carbonation from the soda.
The end result is, well, a popcorn tasting rum and Coke! It does legit taste like having a sip of soda after eating a handful of popcorn. There is definitely a popcorn odor to the rum which certainly adds a nice component. The popcorn texture is missing, which is part of the filmgoing experience, but can’t be helped. Infusing the rum with popcorn was probably unnecessary and the step could possibly be skipped and instead go straight to infusing with ghee. However, “ghee-infused” rum doesn’t have the same ring to it, so the popcorn has to remain. Actually eating popcorn while drinking a Cinema Highball, now that is a pleasant way to consume this cocktail.
Overall, not bad! The Cinema Highball doesn’t replace a traditional rum and coke and definitely doesn’t replace a Cuba Libre, but it does take minimal effort to make the popcorn infused rum. It would be a nice practice cocktail for mixologist beginners who have not dived into the realm of spirit infusions. The Cinema Highball is a novelty drink, but a fun and tasty one that definitely goes with watching a movie in the comfort of your own home.
What can be said about it? It comes in a tall bottle that refuses to fit in a liquor cabinet. It is vibrant yellow, blindingly so. Like licorice, Galliano has an “either you love it or loathe it” taste profile of anise and vanilla. It is definitely an acquired taste.
The liquor gained prominence during the Dark Ages of Cocktails in the 70s when executives at McKesson Liquor Co. concocted the Harvey Wallbanger, a cocktail made of Galliano, vodka, and orange juice. The Harvey Wallbanger was a hit and McKesson sought other ways to market Galliano.
Read the rest of this article to discover gold!
One of those efforts was an early 70s cocktail booklet published by McKesson that featured Galliano front and center in all of the recipes. Some of the recipes were new and unique to the booklet while others were riffs on established cocktails (Galliano Margarita, Galliano Manhattan, Galliano Daiquiri, etc.).
A variation that appeared in the booklet was a Galliano take on the tiki vanguard cocktail, the Mai Tai.
Galliano Mai Tai Recipe.
The Galliano Mai Tai calls for:
1 oz Galliano
1 oz White Rum
0.5 oz Lime Juice
0.5 oz Orgeat
0.5 oz Orange Curaçao
Put all ingredients into an ice-filled rocks glass, stir, and garnish.
The end result should look akin to this:
Galliano Mai Tai from the Galliano Recipe Booklet.
The Galliano Mai Tai is quite similar to the classic ‘44 Trader Vic’s Mai Tai save an ounce of rum has been replaced by an ounce of Galliano.
This drink is 29% Galliano.
That’s a lot of Galliano.
The spirits for this cocktail are fairly easy to obtain; nothing discontinued since the 70s. Galliano is Galliano and there is no substituting that in a Galliano Mai Tai. For the Orange Curaçao, Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao is a nice go to for Mai Tais.
Dangerously low on the White ‘Stache.
The Galliano Mai Tai calls for a white rum. Based on the recipe this poses the question: use a higher quality rum and increase the probability of making a good tasting drink, or error on the side of caution and use an inexpensive rum and build from there. For this cocktail, caution will be heeded and Bacardi Superior will be used over a higher quality rum, which would entail El Dorado 3, Plantation Three Star, or, as pictured above, Hamilton White ‘Stache.
The first step is to fill a rocks glass with ice.
Next, pour in one full ounce of Galliano. Bask in its yellow glow.
Add one ounce of Bacardi Superior.
Then half an ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice.
Pour in a half an ounce of orgeat. Liber & Co. is a great one to use.
Finally, add the half an ounce of the Dry Curaçao
Despite containing citrus, the recipe calls for the drink to be lightly stirred once or twice. This, of course, isn’t going mix the cocktail very well as it will keep the ingredients in layers.
The end cocktail is horrible. In an attempt to salvage it, it was dumped into a shaker, shaken, and repoured with additional ice. It failed.
Galliano is the dominate flavor, which is probably to be expected as this is the Galliano Mai Tai after all. The Bacardi doesn’t have much character to it, which allows the Galliano to dominate the drink. Using a rum with more character, such as a funky Jamaican rum or a Rhum Agricole, would clash with the Galliano. Using a higher quality white rum also would have been a bad idea as any uniqueness it would have brought would’ve been overpowered by the Galliano.
The taste is akin to absinthe-vanilla; it is sickly sweet and not a pleasant sweet that is found in other tiki cocktails. Adding simple syrup, which many Mai Tais call for, would have made this worse. The cocktail also leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.
A possible remedy for the Galliano Mai Tai would be to re-balance it. Cutting back the Galliano by at least half and also reducing the orgeat would help bring down the sweetness. Perhaps a better option would be to prepare a Mai Tai according to spec of preference and then add a splash of Galliano to it at the end.
The Mai Tai is not the best cocktail to have a Galliano riff done to it, but it might work in other tiki drinks that use absinthe or Pernod.
If you enjoyed this write up about a cocktail from a vintage cocktail book, check out other write ups I’ve done:
There’s something about lifestyle books from the late 60s to the early 80s that capture a distinct era through a bronzed lens. Images of homes, fashion, cuisines, and cocktails during this timeframe are forever immortalized in books tucked away in grandma’s curio cabinet or readily found dirt cheap on the shelves of used book stores and Goodwills.
The Bacardi Party Book is such an advertisement/pamphlet/cocktail booklet from this period. Published by Bacardi in 1973, the booklet contains twenty-nine recipes, from daiquiris to punches, from cocktails to entrees, that all feature Bacardi brand rums front and center: Bacardi Light, Bacardi Dry, Bacardi 151 (RIP dear 151), and Bacardi Añejo.
Down to party.
There is a variety of Bacardi-centric tiki drinks in the brochure: Bacardi Planter’s Punch, Bacardi Navy Grog, Bacardi Scorpion, and so on. The mai tai is perhaps the most iconic cocktail in the tiki pantheon, so this write up will focus on that specific recipe.
The Bacardi Mai-Tai calls for:
.5 oz fresh lime juice
.5 oz orgeat
.5 oz simple sugar syrup
.5 oz orange Curaçao
1 jigger of Bacardi Light
.5 jigger of Bacardi 151 or 1 jigger of Bacardi Dark or Añejo rum
Put into a glass half filled with ice. Stir once or twice and garnish.
Per the accompanying photo for the recipe, the end result should look like this:
Ngl, that looks pretty good!
Looking at the specs of the Bacardi Mai-Tai, the recipe is pretty much the original 1944 Trader Vic’s mai tai save that the rums are from Bacardi and are Puerto Rican instead of Jamaican and there is some differing ratios.
Brand new, unopened bottles just for this article!
Bacardi 151 was discontinued back in 2016 making the 151 iteration of the Bacardi Mai-Tai impossible to reproduce unless one has saved a bottle all this time. Don Q 151 would make an excellent replacement for a Puerto Rican 151 overproof rum. However, the Bacardi Mai-Tai offers an alternative recipe using Bacardi Añejo which is easily procurable. For the Bacardi Light, Bacardi Superior is the successor rum, which is also easy to obtain. Pierre Ferrand is a workhorse orange liqueur for mai tais so it will be a perfect choice for the orange Curaçao.
Ice, ice, baby.
Step one was is to fill a rocks glass half full of ice. As will be shown later, much more ice will definitely be needed.
Lime.
Next .05 oz of freshly squeezed lime juice is added.
Then .05 oz of orgeat. In this instance, Liber & Co., but any personal favourite or homemade will do.
Syrup. Notice the layers.
This is followed by .05 oz of simple syrup. Pictured here is rich Demerara simple syrup (2 to 1 ratio).
Orange liqueur.
.05 oz of Pierre Ferrand is added next.
Bacardi Superior.
Then 1 jigger of Bacardi Superior. Comparing the Bacardi Mai-Tai recipe to the Trader Vic’s original, 1 jigger is going to be 1 oz.
Bacardi Anejo / Bacardi 4. Layer of syrups at the bottom.
And finally 1 oz (1 jigger) of Bacardi 4.
There is probably not enough ice for the drink at this point, so definitely add more. Where the Bacardi Mai-Tai differs from the original Trader Vic’s mai tai (or any cocktail that uses citrus juice) is that it is built in the glass and stirred rather than put into a shaker, shook, and then poured. However, directions are directions, so the final step is the stir the Bacardi Mai-Tai – a gentle stir once or twice at that – and garnish.
I was out of mint so I instead used a spritz of mint that came in my Curiada/How to Drink Mai Tai box.
The end result is not bad, but it really needed to be shook. A once or twice stir of these ingredients is not enough to aerate the drink or homogenize it. It’s practically still a layered drink at this point, so the first sip is all Bacardi 4 and not much else. However, putting the drink into a shaker, giving it a quick shake, and dumping the cocktail back while adding some additional ice fixes this issue. Basically, skip building this mai tai in the glass and do it in a shaker.
Aside from the stirred/shaken snafu, the Bacardi Mai-Tai is pretty spot on! It lacks a bit of the funk that mai tais that use Jamaican rums (such as Smith and Cross) have. It is on the sweeter end of the spectrum by having a total of one ounce of syrups, but it still tastes pretty damn good! The neat thing about this mai tai is how easily obtainable the ingredients are. Unless one lives near a BevMo, Total Wine, or a really well stocked alcohol store, some brands of rum and other spirits can be hard to procure unless one shops online. Most Bacardis, on the other hand, are readily available at grocery and liquor stores, and at a much generous price point. For tiki neophytes who are just starting their bar, the Bacardi Mai-Tai is a great stepping stone without breaking the bank. Overall, this libation is a surprising success from the disco dark ages of cocktail culture.
In the decades since the dark ages of the 70s and 80s, cocktail culture has made giant strides into the greater pop culture arena. Nowhere is this more evident than the proliferation of themed cocktail books. Popular television shows and movies, such as Game of Thrones (Game of Thrones Cocktail Recipes by Dan Babel), Downton Abby (The Official Downton Abby Cocktail Book published by Weldon Owen), and Star Wars (The Unofficial Star Wars-Inspired Book of Cocktails by Rhiannon Lee) capitalize on both fan and cocktail enthusiast interest. Cocktail books that homage the literary world, such as Tim Federle’s Tequila Mockingbird and Mike Slater’s Lovecraft Cocktails, are also readily available.
Personal copy of Art Boozel
Jennifer Croll’s Art Boozel is a themed cocktail book, but it differentiates itself from the crowd by focusing not on artistic end products, but on the creators of art: painters, photographers, film directors, and so on. The recipes in Art Boozel are not of cocktails favoured/created by artists, but instead are brand new, unique creations that pay homage to their personalities, crafts, and legacies.
What Art Boozel accomplishes can be best exemplified by its entry on Banksy. The base cocktail recipe is fairly simple: Campari, lemon juice, Cherry Heering, and egg white. How it honours Banksy is that after the drink is poured/strained and has developed a nice egg foam on top, the next step is to place a stencil over the cocktail and mist bitters through it, mimicking Banksy’s distinctive street art style. Paired with this interactive libation is a rendition of Banksy, hooded and completely silhouetted in black. This isn’t just a cocktail, it is an experience, an act of creating and consuming art.
There are fifty-eight other cocktail recipes in Art Boozel, all celebrating different visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers from the past century. Some choice recipes include the Gerhard Richter, a drink that balances a few unusual pairings – blue curacao, apple brandy, gin and green chartreuse – into a rather smooth, robust libation that conceals a maraschino cherry.
Gerhard Richter
The Jeff Wall goes all in on orange with mandarin juice (and garnish), orange blossom water with gin and honey. The end result is a Tom Collins variant that is tangy and refreshing.
Jeff Wall
The Miranda July follows a similar path with gin, orange juice, orange Fanta soda, and Campari. The bitterness of the Campari is tempered down from the sweetness of the one-two orange combo.
Miranda July
A final example, the Roy Lichtenstein, challenges conventions with its vodka-margarita riff: vodka, simple syrup, Cointreau, lime and lemon juices. The formula works, the vodka allows the Cointreau to be the star of this show, and it is a must see.
Roy Lichtenstein
Each recipe is accompanied by a portrait created by Kelly Shami whose style is perfect at representing each artist in a fun, unique way. Every portrait also contains a rendition of the cocktail, which is extremely helpful and a huge step above cocktail books that lack photos to help guide folks along.
The majority of cocktails in Art Boozel are not aimed at beginners, as some have fairly esoteric or unusual ingredients. This is by design as Art Boozel aims to experiment and advance mixology while at the same time appreciating and honouring a variety of influential artists – some household names, others underground. With this in mind, Art Boozel is a stand out tome in a sea of themed cocktail books, inviting readers to check out interesting artists via inventive cocktails.
If you’re interested in checking out Art Boozel, the book can be found for purchase in the below links:
Jasper’s Starlight Tavern is a space-comedy comic strip created by Bob Salley and Jason Sparich that focuses on the interactions the staff of an intergalactic space bar have with their patrons. In 2021, there was a Kickstarter to release the comic in a variety of formats including a compact, hardcover edition.
My copy of Jasper’s Starlight Tavern from the Kickstarter
Like an alluring neon sign, the cover of Jasper’s Starlight Tavern draws readers in with promises of vibrant and terrific artwork. In this department, JST delivers more than promised. The art by Juan Calle, in conjunction with the coloring of Don Mathias, is stunning. Every character looks distinct; each panel pops off the page with a rainbow of colors that emulate well-produced cartoons.
The writing for JST, however, does not live up to its amazing art. The comic strip relies heavily on cameos of characters from popular or cult science fiction sources (usually films and television shows) to convey its humor. Specifically it is the presence of the guest characters themselves that is each strip’s punchline, though in fact the the cameo-ed entities rarely performs any (funny) actions at all.
The following page from JST illustrates the comic’s style of humor:
The joke of the page is literally “we need an extra set of hands because there are a lot of vehicles in the drive through” and those vehicles happen to be spaceships from a variety of sci-fi sources (an Imperial Star Destroyer, a Borg Cube, the Satellite of Love, the Normandy, and so on). Lobot from The Empire Strikes Back is present for an inexplicable reason; instead of adding anything useful or funny, he merely stands there like a drooling mess.
Of particular interest is the appendix of cocktails made specifically for the book titled “Interstellar Mixology Guide.” Sincere there’s no bartender or mixologist credited, one has to assume the writers created the recipes themselves.
The eight cocktails are:
Dr. Zoidrosé
Tiki Melange
The Imposter
Mocha-Dimensional Madness
Galactic Committee
The Solitude
The Kraken Strikes Back
Ecto 1
Each drink is paired with a drawing of what the cocktail looks like in the JST universe, ingredients, and measurements. However, there are no directions of any kind for the cocktails. Stirred? Shaken? Swizzled? With or without ice? Strained? Floated? These are all absent.
The Tiki Melange is JST’s attempt at a tiki cocktail.
Tiki Melange
1.5 oz Kraken Spiced Rum
.5 oz Oregeat [sic] Syrup (or Amaretto)
1 oz Lime
1 oz Pineapple
Looking at the ingredients along with the artistic depiction, it is fairly obvious that this cocktail will not work with primitive Earth mixolo-technology and ingredients, but it is a curio and warrants a deeper dive.
Limited edition Kraken from the personal stash.
First, the Kraken Spiced rum is not necessarily a bad call. Spiced rums get a lot of hate in the tiki community, usually under the guise of “you don’t know what is in spiced rum, it could be anything” and “you should be able to control what your drink tastes like.”
To the first sentiment – pluck up a bottle of Kraken and look at its label: “rum with natural flavors and caramel colour.” Now pick up your bottle of Angostura bitters (the salt and pepper of the cocktail world) and read its ingredients: “alcohol, water, sugar, gentian, natural flavors and caramel color.”
Natural flavors can mean anything, so why is it not acceptable in spiced rums but acceptable in Ango (and other bitters)? True, Ango has been around for a long, long, long time – but what’s actually in it is still proprietary and obfuscated. The best way to view spiced rum is to envision it as a rum that has built in bitters.
Take a drink of spiced rum. Now you know what it tastes like. Now you know (and can control) what is going in your drink. For the Tiki Melange, one definitely does not want to use a pricier rum in the cocktail, and the Kraken imagery of tentacles go hand-in-hand with the intended Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
Next, the amaretto or orgeat. These two ingredients are not interchangeable; their only commonality is they are both sweet and both have almond flavors. One is a syrup, the other is a liqueur and they each have different roles in cocktails. One can walk into an establishment and order an amaretto sour and enjoy a fantastic drink. One would not order an orgeat sour, as this would be an affront to all cocktails in existence. For best practice, treat the two as non-interchangeable.
Finally, the lime and pineapple. These are often found together in many tiki drinks, with the Jungle Bird being a notable example that uses both to balance its bitter Campari. Unfortunately, as will be shown, the Tiki Melange is far from balanced.
Looking at the artwork, there is no way these ingredients can achieve this look on their own. There are no directions, but because citrus is present, the best practice is to shake with ice and then strain. There’s no ice in the cocktail proper, so it is either getting its coldness from being shaken with ice and/or the futuristic glassware being chilled. There is the slim, but possible, chance that the drink is dry-shaken and poured into a chilled glass.
There is also a color gradient in the drink: brownish red on the bottom, yellow on top. That coloring is not from the square glassware, so is this cocktail floating its lime and pineapple on top of the orgeat and Kraken? Typically, it is the other way around: the rum is floated on top. There is also a lack of foam on top of the drink, which would be present if the drink was shaken with pineapple juice. With this aspect in mind, the cocktail was either stirred (with no ice) or left out for a length of time for the foam to disperse, both of which are horrible practices for this (or any) type of libation.
The Tiki Melange is a paradox, so the best way to tackle it is to make both versions: an orgeat Tiki Melange and an amaretto Tiki Melange.
The orgeat Tiki Melange has a brownish foam, with the pineapple dominating and the lime in a close second. The Kraken, surprisingly for having a fairly distinct taste, is absent from the flavor profile. There is a slight sweetness from the orgeat, but not much.
The amaretto Tiki Melange has a white foam, with the pineapple also dominating. This incarnation is tarter than the orgeat variation. Both have awful colors and should not be served in clear glassware.
Though the art depicts the drink without ice, this cocktail definitely needs to have ice in it to be even remotely palatable. The pineapple and lime are fighting for dominance in both versions, as this drink is horribly unbalanced. It can be suspected that this cocktail is attempting to be an extremely stripped down version of the Royal Hawaiian Mai Tai.
Neither iteration of the Tiki Melange taste good. Unfortunately, for folks who are adventurous and like to try new cocktails, the other exclusive cocktails featured in Jasper’s Starlight Tavern look to suffer the same fate. While the comic book delivers spectacularly with its artwork, it burns up in orbit with its humor and cocktail recipes.
Thanks to Jay Mize for edits and second set of eyes for this article.
Nisi Shawl’s “Street Worm” is the first in a series of stories starring Brit Williams, a young Seattleite who has physic powers. “Street Worm” details the first interaction between Brit and Elias Crofutt, who becomes a mentor to her in subsequent stories. Their initial encounter together does not go well, with Crofutt trying to explain Brit’s powers to her and Brit being rightfully defensive about the stranger. It’s a familiar scene that has played out in a variety of films and books (“You have powers!” “Leave me alone!”) but Shawl inserts in a subtle, unexpected bit of world and character building in the scene.
She has Crofutt drink a cocktail. Specifically, a Jungle Bird, which is a tiki libation.
In the world of dark fiction and horror, mixed drinks, let alone a tiki drink, make rare appearances. The dark literary genre typically adheres to the basics when it comes to drinkables: beer, wine, and blood (though an author may throw in the occasional whisky, but it must always be followed by a description of how it “burns going down”). The rarity of cocktails in dark fiction (and probably fiction as a whole) is fairly easy to comprehend: not all writers and their readers are mixologists and not all writers and their readers consume mixed drinks. Most writers and readers know what beer and wine tastes like, thus a “stick with what you know” rule of thumb is applied.
When a cocktail makes a literary appearance, it is something to take notice. A reader not familiar with cocktails may simply read past the reference and pay it no heed, but a reader versed in cocktails will begin asking questions. What kind of character orders this drink (character building)? What kind of setting serves this drink (world building)?
In “Street Worm” the Jungle Bird is first mentioned as follows:
One of the man’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “Don’t look so surprised! Didn’t you get our message? Aunt Eliza came down with the flu and sent me by myself.” He turned to the waiter as if just noticing him. “I’d like a Jungle Bird, if the bar’s open.”
“Yes, sir!” The waiter left, looking reassured.1
A few paragraphs later, the tiki cocktail arrives:
Fair enough,” he said again. The waiter returned carrying a glass round as the man’s belly, full of ice and an orangey liquid. A section of a pineapple ring gripped its rim. He left again after taking their orders: lasagna for Brit, which was what she usually had at lunch, and quail for her supposed uncle.2
A cocktail or a tiki enthusiast will instantly know what a Jungle Bird is, but to readers not familiar with it, the drink’s appearance comes off as an exotic libation, a proper noun that stands out in the sentence. Per Shawl:
I have never drunk a Jungle Bird. I don’t consume alcohol much because it gives me migraines. To be honest, I chose the cocktail because the name sounded good with the rest of the words I was using. I’m very picky about that sort of thing.3
For Shawl, the appearance of the Jungle Bird was purely for poetic and aesthetic reasons, and readers not familiar with tiki culture will certainly appreciate this aspect. On the other hand, those versed in tiki history will no doubt experience a different reading, as if reading a coded language exclusively for them.
They’ll no doubt recall the taste of the drink, prior instances of making the drink themselves, and even perhaps the history of the cocktail: it was created at the Aviary Bar at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton in Malaysia toward the end of the 70s.
Postcard of the Kuala Lumpur Hilton from the author’s collection.
The Jungle Bird is seen as the last cocktail of the classic tiki period, as the late 70s would see the tiki bar replaced with discotheques and hard drugs, and the 80s a low point in mixology with a move toward prepackaged and blended drinks. While tiki culture has certainly going through a resurgence in the past decade or so, the popularity of the Jungle Bird no doubt trails behind more iconic tiki drinks: the Mai Tai, the Zombie, the Painkiller, and the Navy Grog.
Regarding world building, what does the Jungle Bird have to say? Usually a Jungle Bird will be found in a tiki bar or a restaurant that specializes in Polynesian cuisine. The establishment Brit and Crofutt are meeting at is certainly not either: they are in the restaurant of the Hotel Monaco in Downtown Seattle, a venue that serves lasagne and quail. Crofutt ordering a Jungle Bird in this bar raises a lot of hypotheticals: is the Jungle Bird on the cocktail menu and perhaps a signature variation for this hotel’s restaurant? Is it an off menu cocktail that Crofutt really likes and he is crossing his fingers that the bartender knows how to make one? Is the bartender familiar with the Jungle Bird, or are they going to consult a resource before making it? The usage of the Jungle Bird in this scene sets off a chain reaction of hypotheticals that certainly shape the scene more so than if the characters simply had a wine, beer, or even a traditional cocktail such as a martini.
What does the Jungle Bird say about Crofutt? Is he into tiki culture, or perhaps was this a drink he stumbled upon and likes? Does he know how to make one? Has he built his own tiki bar? Is he ordering an offbeat drink in order to give an impression to Brit? What other cocktails does he like? Just as the Vesper Martini, shaken not stirred, says much about super spy James Bond, so too does the Jungle Bird says much about Crofutt. Shawl has graciously expanded on this particular character trait of Crofutt:
“I like the idea of Crofutt as a tiki-lover. It fits with my overall concept of his personality, as a delver into the unknown and a fan of nonwhite cultures. I will probably pursue this further.”4
The Jungle Bird says/asks much about the setting and the characters, but what does the text say about the cocktail proper? The way it looks and is garnished leads to another round of hypotheticals, specifically how the drink is made. Is it true to the original? Is it a variation? Is it an incorrect cocktail altogether that has had the Jungle Bird moniker slapped onto it by a novice bartender?
Prior, Shawl described the cocktail as “orangey,” served in a large, round glass, and garnished with a pineapple wheel. More questions are raised: where is the mint? Why a large, round glass instead of, say, a tiki mug or double rocks glass? What makes it orangey? Bottled pineapple juice or freshly squeezed? Again, these questions lead to more setting building and establishing.
Though Shawl does not partake in alcoholic libations, her description of the Jungle Bird is pretty spot on. The color of the Jungle Bird ranges from different shades of red due to the presence of Campari, a vibrant red and extremely bitter apéritif. The colors of the other ingredients used in the Jungle Bird (the syrups, rums, juices, etc.) will lighten or darken the drink.
The are a variety of ways to make a Jungle Bird. The traditional recipe is as follows:
0.75 oz Campari 0.50 oz fresh lime juice 0.50 oz sugar syrup 4.0 oz unsweetened pineapple juice 1.50 oz dark Jamaican rum
This original 1978 version, documented by Beachbum Berry in Intoxica!, is shaken with ice, open poured into a double old-fashioned glass or tiki mug and garnished with an orchid and a cocktail pick with a maraschino cherry, lemon, and orange wheels.5
Four ounces of pineapple juice is a lot of pineapple juice. Martin and Rebecca Cate rectify this imbalance in their Smugglers Cove book:
2.0 oz pineapple juice 0.50 oz fresh lime juice 0.50 oz Demerara sugar syrup 0.75 oz Campari 1.50 oz black blended rum
This incarnation is blended with crushed ice and opened poured into a tall glass like a highball or a Collins and garnished with pineapple fronds.6
Shannon Mustipher embraces the bitterness of the Jungle Bird in Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails by eliminating the sugar syrup:
2.0 oz pot still Jamaican rum 0.75 oz Campari 1.50 oz pineapple juice 0.50 oz fresh lime juice
This Jungle Bird is shaken with ice, strained into a Collins glass full of ice, and garnished with pineapple fronds and a scored lime wheel.7
There are, of course, even more variations of the Jungle Bird out there, specially among the YouTube cocktail channel crowd. These examples, however, demonstrate the foundational and core elements of what constitutes the legacy cocktail.
Knowing what ingredients constitute a Jungle Bird combined with Shawl’s descriptors and assumptions made from the variety of hypotheticals, a Jungle Bird as Crofutt orders can be approximated.
It is within reason to assume that the Jungle Bird is not a signature item on the cocktail menu for this restaurant. Going by the fact that the restaurant serves lasagne and quail, it’s also a good guess that this restaurant and bar is going to be more European focused. It probably contains a nice variety of scotches, vermouths, and vodkas, but perhaps stocked only with the necessities for rum. This means, for a dark Jamaican rum, it’ll have stocked a rum that’s fairly easy to obtain with a low price: it will probably be Myers’s. The bar will probably use canned pineapple juice, but probably juice their own limes so that they can accommodate other cocktails, such as margaritas. They probably will not make their own simple syrup, instead opting to buy pre-made. Of course, Campari is Campari, there are no substitutions.
With the above in mind, it’s now a question of balancing these ingredients to get the right amount of orangeness over redness for the Jungle Bird depicted in the story. It can be accomplished by adding one more ounce of pineapple juice:
0.75 oz Campari 0.50 oz fresh lime juice 0.50 oz Rose’s simple syrup 5.0 oz pineapple juice 1.50 oz Myers’s Jamaican rum
Photo by Nicholas Diak
For this Jungle Bird iteration, shake all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker. Open pour into a large Brandy snifter (to give it that round appearance) and fill with more crushed or pebble ice. Garnish with a pineapple wheel.
Photo by Nicholas Diak
This Jungle Bird, like the original 1970s version, is extremely generous with the pineapple juice, but manages to taste quite nice and will likely be satisfactory for Crofutt as a tiki cocktail consumed at a non-tiki bar.
If Crofutt does venture down the path of becoming a tiki enthusiast as Shawl wants him to be, the final question would be: how will Crofutt make his Jungle Bird? He will probably mimic the Smuggler’s Cove version. It would be his choice of rum that would be unique to him. There is only one rum out there that contains the signature “funk” that dark Jamaican rums have, but would also fit perfectly with the poetry that Shawl is aiming for in her text by using “Jungle Bird.”
That would be Doctor Bird.
1.5 oz Doctor Bird Jamaican rum 0.75 oz Campari 0.5 oz Demerara simple syrup 0.5 oz lime juice (freshly squeezed) 2.0 oz pineapple juice (canned or fresh)
Photo by Nicholas Diak
Crofutt will likely add all in ingredients into a shaker with crushed or pebble ice. He’d then open pour into a tall Collins glass and lavishly garnish.
Photo by Nicholas Diak
This would create a balanced Jungle Bird with top shelf ingredients, one that Crofutt would no doubt enjoy immensely.
Endnotes
1. Nisi Shawl, “Street Worm,” in Exploring Dark Short Fiction – Modern Masters #3: A Primer to Nisi Shawl, ed. Eric J. Guignard (Los Angeles, CA: Dark Moon Books, 2018), 82.
2. Ibid., 82-82.
3. Nisi Shawl, email message to author, September 3, 2019.
4. Ibid.
5. Jeff Berry, Beachbum Berry’s Intoxica! (San Jose, CA: SLG Publishing, 2002), 44.
6. #. Martin Cate and Rebecca Cate, Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki (Berkeley, CA: 10 Speed Press, 2016), 96.
7. Shannon Mustipher, Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails (New York, NY: Rizzoli, 2019), 36.
Cate, Martin and Rebecca Cate. Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki. Berkeley, CA: 10 Speed Press, 2016.
Mustipher, Shannon. Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 2019.
Shawl, Nisi. “Street Worm.” In Exploring Dark Short Fiction – Modern Masters #3: A Primer to Nisi Shawl. Edited by Eric J. Guignard. Los Angeles, CA: Dark Moon Books, 2018.
In 2020, boutique publisher Apollo Publishers released the small-sized hardback How to Drink Like a Writer: Recipes for the Cocktails and Libations that Inspired 100 Literary Greats. Within its pages is a chronological listing of famous writers, (such as Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie, Maya Angelou, and others) coupled with a cocktail recipe and a paragraph or two that contextualizes the drink to that particular author.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, father of the sword and planet genre and creator of the transmedia icon Tarzan, is counted as one of the many luminaries represented in the tiny tome. Burroughs’ entry is for a cocktail appropriately named the Tarzan Cocktail. The recipe for this libation from How to Drink Like a Writer is as follows:
1 oz rum 1 tsp Cointreau .5 oz lime juice .5 oz simple syrup
The directions are to shake all ingredients with ice, strain into a chilled coup glass and garnish with a lime wheel.1
Unlike other entries in the book, the contextualizing paragraphs for Burroughs’ cocktail are scant: it simply reads that Burroughs “designed this cocktail with the tropics in mind.”2 There is a foot note that indicates that the Tarzan Cocktail was lifted from an earlier publication, the long out of print 1935 book So Red the Nose or Breath in the Afternoon, which is similar to How to Drink like a Writer in that it also pairs cocktails with famous writers. The incarnation of the Tarzan Cocktail in this older book is slightly different:
1 oz Bacardi
1 tsp Cointreau
Juice of a half of a lime
1/3 tsp of Sugar
As with How to Drink Like a Writer, there are a few flavor text paragraphs for the cocktail, mostly focusing on anecdotes from Johnny Weismuller who portrayed Tarzan in around a dozen films and not much detail about the genesis of the drink proper from Burroughs.3
The question becomes, was this a cocktail that Burroughs created? Scott Tracy Griffin, a Burroughs expert and author of Tarzan on Film (2016) deduces that the legendary writer probably did: “As far as anyone knows, ERB created the cocktail. It’s possible someone else did it under his name (fully approved), but he loved his libations, so I would imagine that he did provide it.”4
Authorship of the Tarzan Cocktail established, the next question would be, in the same vein as to folks attempting to re-create James Bond’s iconic Vesper Martini, can one re-create the Tarzan Cocktail as Burroughs would have enjoyed it? The answer, sadly, is no. However, one can come fairly close.
Conceptually, the Tarzan Cocktail itself looks to be a mix of a traditional daiquiri (rum/lime/sugar) and the Cuban Sidecar (rum/lime/Cointreau). Comparing and contrasting the 1935 and the 2020 versions of the cocktail, the drink can be deconstructed and then reconstructed into a modern drink that would be in the same ballpark as Burroughs’ original, maybe even perhaps improved upon.
Lime: The alteration of using the juice of a half of a lime to half of an ounce of lime is a suitable change. A normal, whole lime can hold anywhere from .75 oz to over an ounce of a lime. The newer version standardizes the quantity and makes for a consistent beverage.
Simple Syrup: As with the lime, the updating of adding sugar directly to using simple syrup is an appropriate change. The practice of adding sugars to a drink has long been superseded by using simple syrups which is a mixture of sugar dissolved in water. Different ratios of water to sugar control how sweet the simply syrup is. The modern version calls for 1 part sugar dissolved in 1 part water which is standard. Different sugars can also be used in simple syrups, such as Demerara sugar. However, as will be shown below, since the end result of this cocktail is going to be on a clear side, one will want to use a white granulated sugar to create a colorless simple syrup to use.
Cointreau: No change here for this orange liqueur.
Rum: This is where the recipe hits a stumbling block: what rum to use? The modern version of the recipe simply calls for “rum” which of course can mean any rum. In the world of rums, this is a huge net to cast as rums differ from the country they are produced in (Jamaican compared to a Puerto Rican), if they are aged or not, what they are aged in, any spices added, and so on and so forth.
The original 1935 version from So Red the Nose narrows the rum selection down considerably to simply “Bacardi.” However, during the 1920s/1930s there were actually a plethora of different Bacardi rums in production:
Bacardi Carta Blanca Bacardi Carta de Oro Bacardi Añejo Bacardi Elixir Bacardi Anis5
Of these five rums which one was Burroughs most likely to use? A reasonable, educated guess can be surmised by looking at another cocktail book of the era, The Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930. This foundational cocktail book lists two recipes that overtly call for “Bacardi”: the Bacardi Cocktail (Bacardi rum/grenadine/lime) and the Bacardi Special Cocktail (Bacardi rum/gin/grenadine/lime).6 In an article for the Wall Street Journal called “Grenadine, True and False” Eric Felten writes about both the Bacardi Cocktail and the Bacardi Special Cocktail. He describes the Bacardi Cocktail as such: “In the years just after Prohibition, the Bacardi Cocktail — white rum, fresh lime juice and grenadine — threatened to unseat the king of cocktails.”7 This additional description clarifies (literally and figuratively) that the Bacardi rum used in these cocktails was white (clear), and therefore it rules out the Bacardi Carta de Oro and Bacardi Añejo which were gold, darker rums. The Bacardi Elixir was a plum-based spirit while the Bacardi Anis was licorice-flavored rum,8 so those can be ruled out as those flavors would not compliment these drinks. That leaves the Bacardi Carta Blanca being the Bacardi rum used in these drinks, and thus it can be reasonably deduced from The Savoy Cocktail Book that if a drink called for Bacardi, it was calling for Bacardi Carta Blanca. Thus, the Tarzan Cocktail would have called for the Bacardi Carta Blanca as well.
A clarified version of the Tarzan cocktail would read as follows:
1 oz Bacardi Carta Blanca
1 tsp Cointreau
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz simple syrup
This is where a second and more critical snag is encountered: Bacardi Carta Blanca does not exist anymore as it was superseded by the Bacardi Superior. The original proof of Bacardi Carta Blanca was 89 proof while the modern day Bacardi Superior is 80 proof and thus a lower alcohol by volume. This problem is also further compounded by the fact that the original Bacardi rums were made in Cuba, but because of the Cuba Embargo, they are now produced in Puerto Rico. This means that the Bacardi Superior of today not only has less alcohol than the original, but it has a slightly different flavor profile due to the shift in country of production.
There’s a few options to go from here.
The first is to use a Cuban-style rum. For non-Americans this should be easy by simply procuring a bottle of Havana Club 3 years. This is probably the best solution as it will provide the closest taste to Burroughs’ original cocktail, though at 80 proof, it will have a lower alcohol content.
In the late 2000s, Bacardi released their Bacardi Heritage rum as a throwback to their original Bacardi Carta Blanc. Produced at 89 proof, the Bacardi Heritage has both the branding and the alcohol content of Burroughs’ original, though not quite the same flavor. However, the Bacardi Heritage has been out of production for a few years now and much more difficult to procure.
The third alternative is to use Bacardi Superior. This rum is readily available and contains the same branding as Burroughs’ original cocktail, though the taste and the alcohol content will be off. However, this is as close to being in the same ballpark as possible. Using Bacardi Superior makes an excellent drink however, though a little on the sharp side.
The final alternative, especially for Americans, is to suss out a non-Bacardi, non-Cuban rum that would work well as a successor, and perhaps even elevate the cocktail from its original incarnation. A rum that fits this bill perfectly is the Hamilton 87 White ‘Stache. A clear rum with an 87 proof, this rum ups the alcohol content to the level Burroughs preferred while offering a smoother, richer taste as compared to the Bacardi Superior.
Photo by Michele Brittany
If one wanted to be bold and go past the 89 proof, other quality white rums that could be used would be the Diplomatico Planas and Probitas both at 94 proof.9 Burroughs would be quite impressed with the Hamilton.
Photo by Michele Brittany
Revised Tarzan Cocktail
1 oz Hamilton 87 White ‘Stache
1 tsp Cointreau
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz simple syrup
End Notes
1. Margaret Kaplan, How to Drink Like a Writer: Recipes for the Cocktails and Libations that Inspired 100 Literary Greats (New York City, NY: Apollo Publishers, 2020), 64-65.
2. Ibid., 64.
3. Sterling North and Carl Kroch, So Red the Nose or Breath in the Afternoon (New York City, NY: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1935), 27. https://euvs-vintage-cocktail-books.cld.bz/1935-So-Red-the-Nose-or-Breath-in-the-Afternoon/VI/.
4. Scott Tracy Griffin, email message to author, September 7, 2020.
5. Michelle Sugrue (Bacardi help desk), email message to author, September 9, 2020.
6. Harry Craddock, The Savoy Cocktail Book (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2015), 25.
Kaplan, Margaret. How to Drink Like a Writer: Recipes for the Cocktails and Libations that Inspired 100 Literary Greats. New York City, NY. Apollo Publishers, 2020.
