Tiki cocktails
8 drinks in Barello's library use tiki. Each one lists what it needs, so you can see at a glance which are already within reach.
What cocktail can I make with tiki?
Barello's library has 8 cocktails that use tiki. The ones needing the fewest other bottles are Painkiller, Hurricane and Jungle Bird. Every recipe below lists exactly what it takes, so you can see which are already within reach.
About tiki
What it is
A style rather than a spirit, and the only group here that is. Tropical, layered, usually rum-led but not always: the Saturn and the Suffering Bastard on this page are built on gin. What makes a drink tiki is the pantry, the ice and the theatre, not one bottle.
Where it came from
Hollywood, 1934. Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, who renamed himself Donn Beach, opened Don the Beachcomber after travelling the Caribbean, and invented an entire aesthetic to sell rum drinks. Victor Bergeron opened Trader Vic's soon after, and the two spent decades arguing over who invented the Mai Tai. Donn Beach was so secretive that he split his recipes across unlabelled bottles of Don's Mix, so no bartender he employed ever knew a whole drink.
Worth knowing
The tell is the pantry rather than the spirit: falernum, orgeat, allspice, passionfruit, grenadine that is actually pomegranate. The other tell is more than one rum in a single glass, each doing a different job, which is why a Zombie takes three.
The tiki list 8
Deciding what to buy? What every home bar needs counts which bottles open the most drinks, and the two-bottle table says which pairs genuinely combine.
Looking for an app that does this on your phone? We ranked the cocktail apps, including ours, by their real store ratings.
Work it the other way round. Tick every bottle you own, not just the tiki, and Barello lists what you can make tonight.
What cocktail can I make?