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Time for a Drink: Zombie Punch

Posted by Paul Clarke, October 30, 2009 at 6:30 PM

Let's start the weekend right--with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? Hit up the archives. Cheers!

Perhaps the only thing more frightening than the idea of zombies roaming the city in search of fresh brains is the concoction you'll find in front of you when you say "Zombie" in your average bar.

Once the pinnacle drink of the mid-century Polynesian phenomenon, the Zombie has been mangled beyond recognition in the decades since its 1930s debut. This is primarily the fault of the drink's creator, Donn Beach, who had such success with the Zombie at his Don the Beachcomber bar that he jealously guarded the recipe from rivals, using unmarked bottles behind the bar and compiling some ingredients beforehand so that even staff members wouldn't know what was in them.

At Don the Beachcomber, you could get an authentic Zombie, a powerful yet balanced amalgam of rum, juice and sweeteners. At other bars, eager to capitalize on the Zombie's popularity, bartenders would throw whatever ingredients they had on hand together, creating drinks that were powerful, no doubt, but typically far from the quality of the original that launched a thousand tiki mugs.

And this is the way it remained, until a few years ago when dedicated drink anthropologist Jeff "Beachbum" Berry managed to acquire a private recipe book from 1937 once owned by Dick Santiago, who worked at Don the Beachcomber in the 1930s. As Berry details in Sippin' Safari, one of the recipes inside was for the Zombie Punch—the way the drink was listed for its 1934 debut.

While it still has enough rum in it to pickle the undead, this Zombie is less likely to cause much of a fright at your Halloween party.

Zombie Punch

Adapted from Beachbum Berry's Sippin' Safari.

Ingredients

1 1/2 ounces Jamaican rum (Appleton V/X)
1 1/2 ounces gold Puerto Rican rum (Bacardi 8)
1 ounce 151-proof Demerara rum (Lemon Hart)
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce Don's mix *
1/2 ounce Falernum (Fee Brothers is a recommended brand, or make your own)
1 dash Angostura bitters
6 drops Herbsaint or Pernod
1 teaspoon grenadine
3/4 cup crushed ice

Procedure

Combine ingredients in a blender, adding the ice last. Blend at high for a maximum of 5 seconds. Pour into a tall chimney glass and add ice cubes until full. Garnish with fresh mint.

* Don's mix: 2 parts grapefruit juice to 1 part cinnamon syrup. To make cinnamon syrup: combine 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water in a saucepan over medium heat. Add 3 crushed cinnamon sticks and stir until sugar is dissolved and mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool, keeping the pan covered, for at least 2 hours before straining and bottling.

About the author: Paul Clarke blogs about cocktails at The Cocktail Chronicles and writes regularly on spirits and cocktails for Imbibe magazine. He lives in Seattle, where he works as a writer and magazine editor.

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Tags: Cocktail Concoctions, cocktails, drinks, Halloween, rum, Zombie Punch

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