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.
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.
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.
