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Don the Beachcomber — The Man Who Invented Tiki Culture · Into The Barchive

• ITB: To the bark where the past comes alive. ⁓ Sip the tails, let them drive Welcome to the Bar Welcome in Barkabus, and welcome back to Into the Barkive, the show where we take a deep dive into the stories behind the world's most iconic cocktails, spirits, and the people that made them matter. And today we're stepping into a world of rum, mystery, and escapism. A world that feels like a tropical dream, but was actually born in the middle of the Great Depression. This is the story of Don the Beachcomber. Yeah, the man who didn't just invent tiki drinks, he invented tiki culture itself. So we're going to explore his personal history and how he built the first tiki bar in America and the philosophy behind his famously complex drinks. ⁓ man. So along the way, we're going to make two of his most desirable and legacy-defining cocktails. Yep. The Navy Grog and the Dimerera Dry Float. Yep. Let's get into it. Let's get shaking. Our first drink is going to be the navy grog. So in this drink, we're going to use one ounce of some sort of lightly aged white rum. I've got the denizen five year that filters all the color out. Next, an ounce of a black pot still Jamaican rum. So something like a karuba, a Myers. I've got the Hamilton Black Jamaican pot still rum. Next is an ounce of Demerera rum. And here we have the El Dorado Five Year. So this one's made in Guyana. So we have an ounce of that. For the sweetener, we're going to add an ounce of honey syrup. So add that to our shaking tin. Next, now for the citrus, we'll do ⁓ three-quarters of an ounce of white grapefruit juice. If all you've got is paint, that's fine too. But traditionally you would use white grapefruit juice here. Typically, you're gonna have to buy it in a ⁓ bottle. ⁓ because white grapefruits are very seasonal. And then we will do or at least here in Tennessee, and then we'll do three quarters of an ounce of lime juice. And then from there we will add ice to our big tin. Like so. And then give it a shake. Alright, after we shake our cocktail, what I'm gonna do is add three quarters of an ounce of clubbed soda because don't want the cocktail to explode on me. So don't ever add a carbonated ingredient to your shaking tin. So I'm just gonna add that, kind of swirl it around to integrate it. Then I'm going to strain into my rock's glass. Now, the signature garnish and feature of a navy grog is an ice cone. So what you do here is you take shaved or crushed ice, and then using a mold, you poke a hole where you can fit your straw, like so, and then gently place it into your drink, and you have Your Navy grog. Cheers. The Demerera Dry Float Packs a punch. We're gonna take one ounce of a white age drum. into our flash blending tin. Half ounce of a five year dimarero rum. Quarter ounce of maraschino liqueur. Next to our citrus, one full ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice. And on to the sweeteners. We've got three quarters of an ounce of passion fruit syrup. And a little bit more roundness of sweetness with some Dimerera syrup. Quarter ounce. Add some pebble ice into our flash blending tin. And then flash wind. Great thing about this is we get to do something called a party pour. Into your rock's glass, nice tiki design one if possible. Add in your fluid and then top with some more pebble ice. And the great thing about this cocktail is you have a perfect garnish. You garnish with a topper of danger. OLF TDE for the win. And we now have our Dimerera dry float. Now that we've built the cocktails, let's build the context. Who is Don the Beachcomber? Well, before he was Don the Beachcomber, he was Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt. Whoa, Ernest Beaumont Gantt? Raymond Beaumont Gantt. Sorry, fourth name. Holy smokes. No wonder I would go by Don the Beachcomber if I'm doing tiki. Yeah, well, and I mean. That name doesn't exactly scream tropical escapism. No, it kind of does like, hey, I'm gonna have a hard whiskey and call it a day after my nine to five accounting job. Yeah, well, Don was actually born in Texas in 1907, and in many ways he lived a life that all sounds almost too cinematic to be true. He was born the son of a Texas oil man who had previously owned an hotel in New Orleans. Okay. During Prohibition, he worked alongside his grandfather as a rum runner, illegally smuggling rum into New Orleans. Okay, I'm starting to see some connections. And then when he turned 18, he squandered his college fund on a trip around the world for several years. Visiting locations around the Caribbean and South Pacific, soaking up the flavors, techniques, and cultural aesthetics that would later define tiki. But so we've gotten this guy who pretty much has it made. Money, you know, comfortable family life, prohibition hits, has this opportunity to still booze. Somewhat still taking some risk with rum running, but I mean access nonetheless, helping probably develop his palate or desire for certain styles, and then decides to go, sorry, mom, pop, granddad, I'm gonna use these funds and do something completely out of the ordinary and to hell with getting a degree. Yep, pretty much. Okay. And so after this like trip around the world where he spent his entire college fun Don returns to the United States in 1931. He's broke. All he has is a collection of Polynesian mass carvings and other like bricabrac. Okay, now it's really another string that's coming into frame now. Okay, keep painting. So he then works as a valet in Los Angeles. And so he You know, he's getting people's cars, he's meeting Hollywood celebrities, he's regaling them with his tales of his adventures in the South Pacific, and eventually he lands himself as a job as a technical consultant on low budget films. So all those artifacts he collected on his journeys became set pieces on these films. Okay. Very lucky in the moment for him. Taking advantage of stuff that he had. Good for him. Connection to the booze, though. Yeah, so by the time Corbish ends in 1933, Don's working in Hollywood, you know, working as a consultant on films. And instead of opening a traditional bar, because he wanted to own a bar, he decided to do something radically different. Instead, he created an escape. I would say he created the first tiki bar. ⁓ undoubtedly. So in 1934, Don opened a small bar in Hollywood called Don's Beachcomber Cafe. And it was unlike anything America had ever seen before. The space was filled with bamboo furniture, fishing nets, carved idols, dim lighting. It wasn't just a place to get a drink. It was immersive theater. You didn't just order a cocktail, you were transported somewhere else entirely. So now we're using this Hollywood background of his to set an atmosphere. So I'm going now going into an a an establishment that is that escape. Yeah. ⁓ wow. So so again, it's not just about the drinks, it's about the whole aesthetic. It's about atmosphere. And his tiki bar and what he called rum rap cities enchanted the Hollywood crowd and ignited a national craze spawning many imitators. And this ⁓ rum rhapsidies, let's go ahead and play off the alliteration. If I remember correct correctly, it is rum r-hum and rhapsody r-h, right? So playing off a little alliteration. Okay. Absolutely. That's how he described it on the menu. And and you know. His bar was so popular that he actually legally changed his name to Don Beach. And so, yeah. Again, going from a very ⁓ haughty, hoity, you know, ha name, four names to be exact, Raymond, ⁓ forgot you know from earlier, ⁓ to now Don Beach. That's it. Don Beach. That's it. And and so all of this is happening during the Great Depression. And so people didn't have money to travel, but for the price of a drink, they could pretend they were in Tahiti. And that illusion was everything. But what really set Don apart wasn't just the decor, it was the drinks. Yeah, this Polynesian like appropriation of like nets and antiquitems and things of that nature. is one thing to put you there. But it wasn't crappy cocktails. It was thoughtful ingredients from his time of doing some of that rum running. Yeah. Well, and what's interesting as part of the theater at the bar, Don Beach had a solitary bartender up front, pouring wine, polishing glasses, and making the occasional martini. The real work, however, occurred in a back room. Back of the house, baby. Behind the bar, where a team of Filipino bartenders whipped up Don's creations and sent these exotic concoctions through a small window where the bartender out front would serve it to the customer. Again, this this was an opportunity of like a magical allure. Like something's happening behind the scenes and you don't get to see it. But you order, next thing you know, A magical cocktail comes out. Right. It's that mystique. Absolutely. And and part of the reason for this design wasn't just about creating mystique and mystery for the consumer and the patron. It was protecting the secrecy of his drinks from potential imitators. So it was intentional. It's not like, hey, I'm trying to add to your my bartender. It was I don't want Joe from down the street to start mimicking my cocktails. Yeah, so you couldn't have someone who would belly up to the bar and just watch the bartender and ask questions. Yeah, ⁓ what specs are you using? Is it a salur? Are we doing three quarters, three quarters, that type of conversation? Exactly. And so because his imitators couldn't do that, eventually what they would do was hire his bartenders to poach his recipes. So Don went a step further and encoded all of his recipes so no one except him knew what it contained. Yeah, so this is the the part that is ⁓ so interesting when you start reading his recipe books or some of the earlier versions of the recipe books from from Don. It's like there was always a number, right? Is this where this thing comes in? Absolutely. So instead of writing out the full ingredient list, Don broke the cock Into coded components, things like Mix number two, Don's Spices, Thalernum number three. And you know, these aren't terribly descriptive names. They were intentionally vague pre-batched ingredients that only he knew how to make. This was the evolution of pre-batch. I mean, not a specific pre-batched cocktail, but definitely a pre-batched ingredient. Absolutely. So like. A na ⁓ one of Don's bartenders might know that a navy grog calls for mix A, Mix B, Rum one, Rum two, Rum Three, but they wouldn't actually know what was inside the mixes. It was a proprietary system. I imagine like when he's hi hiring a bartender, he's not even hiring a bartender. He just needs something that somebody that knows how to quickly measure. Like grab this thing, poor poor, you know, I I don't know if they were he was a j a jigger snob or not, if it was like three pours or whatever. But he I I don't think that he would not have used good bartenders, but the need for one may not have been there. Well, I mean, part of it was about speed. And hence that's where you come in with the flash blender, right? That you use in the Demorero drive float. So instead of like a Boston shaker and shaking. Quimp shaking with that pebble ice or shaved ice instead of going at, you know, thirty sacks worth of five sacks worth of a flash blend. Yeah. Throwing some eyes and then party pour. Party pour. Right? And so that sped things up along the way. And you know, different staff members were responsible for different parts of the process. So you might have one prepare syrups, another prepare juices, Another would prepare rum blends. So like, and my drink had three different rums in it. Yep. Instead of pouring one ounce of this, one ounce of that, it'd be like three ounce navy grub blend. Yep. Done. Grabbing those specific bottles, making it fast. And we've all been there at a busy cocktail bar. I don't I don't turn my nose up at a place that has been thoughtful enough that no, hey, I'm gonna use all of these liquors. Go ahead and pre-batch that blend and just have it ready for that bartender to do what they need to. Yeah. And I mean, especially tiki drinks that have so many ingredients that only make sense. But no single employee would have access to the full picture of the ingredient. So even if someone left to go to a competing bar, they could never recreate Don's drinks. It's always that one piece of that puzzle, right? That one missing piece out there. ⁓ absolutely. And and this is part of the reason why a lot of original tiki recipes were lost or at least muddled over time. When Don's empire expanded and then eventually his chain changed hands, those coded systems didn't always survive intact. But of course the secrecy was part of the mystique. Okay. ⁓ we've got a little bit more to go into his eventually we have to go back to the cocktails. Absolutely. So let's don't forget that. But some of those different mystiques is part of why so many of those tiki recipes were lost. Because when you ordered a drink at Don's Beach, combers, you weren't just getting this cocktail, you were getting something deliberately unknowable. Right? But where do we come back to knowing some of these recipes? Well, I mean, the key figure, of course, is Jeff the Beach Bumberry, who was a journalist and had been working in the Hollywood area, but then he essentially became a tiki archaeologist, uncovering what and decoding what is Don's Don's mix, what is Spices Number Two. And he did a lot of work to try to figure that out. And so I know in a future episode we'll be doing the zombie and we'll probably talk all about how Jeff Beachbumberry ⁓ uncovered the mystery behind Don the Beachcomber's most famous drink. Okay. Before we talk about Don's philosophy of tiki drinks, then do we d jump into our two cocktails and go through them? I think we can talk about the cocktails in context of what Of this. So then let's break this down. We've already got this thing baked into the tiki, this mystery baked into the tiki coat culture. So Don the Beats Comer's philosophy to tiki drinks, then he's built this restaurant decor, he's got this background. Tell me more. So even though the decor and the ambiance is all South Pacific Polynesia, the drinks are Caribbean. Yeah. Okay. ⁓ While Don had actually combed the beaches of Polynesia, his cocktails were built around the planter's pine. Yes. Right? What we talked about in our last episode. So using the same simple formula of one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak. But what Don did that was unique is that he layered in multiple juices, multiple sweeteners, multiple rums in the same cocktail. Which led to the infamous zombie, as well as the Navy Grog, the Demerara Dry Flute, the Rum Barrel, the Pearl Diver, the Missionary Stownfall. So, I mean, think about this. His approach to cocktails was revolutionary. At a time when most drinks were simple, two or three ingredients. Don was creating layered complex concoctions with five, six, sometimes ten components. Yeah. Again, his philosophy entered like like took this from a realm of hey cocktails are simple to con cocktails can be complex and still just as powerful. Yeah. So if you use again, we talked about the planner's punch in our last episode, but using that basic template, okay. So let's look at your Demerera dry float, for instance. Putting it up here. Let's go for it. Okay. So To show this philosophy of complexity, you've layered in two between different rums. So you have the white rum. Yep. The demarero rum. Yep. And then depending on what you decide to do with that shot of danger. So the shot of danger, let's before let's go ahead and just jump into that part. So it's your every cocktail is up to the consumers experience. Some people, when they drink this cocktail, choose to sip and then sip. Some sip, shoot, and then enjoy. Some sip, sip, sip, float, because it technically is a floater. It's a side shy. It's a sidecar, whatever you want. For me, I love the OFTD. Yes. There are parts of me at times I feel like I just want to sip and savor. There are other times that I just want to take the shot and and just enjoy the ride the rest of the way. But for this cocktail, almost always for this specific one, I take my sip, I take my sip, and then I pour to float because it calls and says by name the Demerare floater. Yeah. And so I will float. And that bad boy changes that cocktail as it starts to dilute throughout the sipping experience. Absolutely. Well, it's one of those things. If you drink the Demarero dry flute without that extra side of danger of the overproof rum, I feel like it skews to the sweet side of balance. Well, it is because it's ⁓ it's not two ounces of alcohol. In the original spec, if you don't have the side of danger, you are sub two ounces of what we would consider a base two ounce cocktail. And a quarter ounce of the alcohol is Luxardo Maraschino, which has sugar in it. Yeah. So, like on that drink where the dry in the dry float comes in is the shot dries out the cocktail. Whether you alternate it ⁓ I think it harkens back to our 1990s martinis episode, like with the porn star, is that you drink the martini, drink the sparkling, and that kind of resets your palate. You could do that or just pour it in. Yep. And whether you treat it as a float and let it stay there until the end or mix it, you got lots of choices. And the way that you go from this is you truly have a choice because I can let it float still. Sit from below, but if I actually want to punch, I can go in and drink from the side of the cup and get that floater, I mean, full force in the face. Yeah. Well, I I also think that maybe we need to take a moment to discuss what are overproof rums. Okay, so let's actually talk about overproof rums. Do we talk about that one specifically or just a mix of both. Okay, go for it. So, like Traditionally, when we think overproof rums, in our last episode, we talked about navy strength rums, which are clocking in at about 57% ABV. Overproof rums are going to be like your 151, right? So higher octane, you know, like back in the day, like your Bacardi 151 use to set things on fire and things like that. But if Aside from like a Bacardi 151, there are a lot of thoughtfully made overproof rums that are in that 151 range, like a Hamilton, a Lemon Heart that are flavorful Demarera-based rums. Well, Alexander Gabriel, who is the master blender and CEO of ⁓ Planarray, ⁓ worked with a team of tiki bartenders and historians to develop his version of an overproof rum that they have called OFTD. And this is for Planteray Plantation. Yeah, Planterray now. ⁓ and so it instead of being 151 proof, it would be 138 proof. So 69% ABV. Hey biggity. ⁓ but they ⁓ called it OFTD old fashioned traditional doc. Old fashioned traditional dark, that's not what I learned. I learned a different version of that. Well, what does OFTD stand for, Tim? I I thought or I was taught it stood for ⁓ fuck, that's delicious. That's true. So the OFTD, whether you call it by the official name or the colloquialism, was intentionally made as a overproof rum. It was thoughtfully created, not just something that to blow your face off. Yeah, so it was yeah, it's hot, but it's flavorfully hot. Okay. So OFTD. And now let's roll into Yeah, I mean ⁓ one last word on yours is not only do you have multiple rums, you have two different sweeteners. The passion fruit syrup and the dimera. So again, layer on layer on layer, you can play with multiple layer by ⁓ back in the day we I think in one of the episodes we called it split basing. You can split every ingredient in any cocktail to make it your own and that's what Don did like adding a a lemon and a lime adding a white grapefruit and a lime like these start to citrus plays a flavor just like different types of brum fill in different notes of the palate. Yeah and so on my navy grog like the what makes this drink so special is how the rums interact. The Jamaican rum brings the funk The Dimerera rum brings depth and molasses richness, and the lighter rum helps bring everything together. It's three different rums working together. Don famously said, and I'm probably gonna screw this up: what one rum can't do, three rums can. True. And so the idea is there is enough variety in the world of rum that, you know. you can build layers of flavor in a way that like with bourbon one of our favorite spirits the flavor profile window is while not all bourbons are the same the window is narrower yep right in terms of the spectrum of flavors rum the flavor spectrum is much wider the difference between a jamaican rum a cuban rum a rum agricole from right So by layering flavors you can and layering rums you can create lots of interesting flavors. On top of flavors, you can also have different types of presentations of cocktails too. Let's roll back to yours then. Yeah, so this is a fun way with the ice cone to you know make this drink look distinctive. And how did you make that ice cone? So well the first thing I did is I ⁓ use a shaved ice ⁓ I have a kitchen aid with a shaved ice attachment. So you freeze little disc of ice and it shaves it, not like an ice crusher, because I think a lot of times when people think about like snow cones that's like just grinding. I'm talking shaved ice, like you see this a lot in Hawaii. Yes. And so they would and I was in Hawaii in the fall and like We have shaved ice multiple times and it's literal shaved ice. And then I take a mold that looks like this, this cone, and pack it full of the shaved ice. Then you have this little ⁓ little rod that you plunge through the top to create the opening for your straw. And so This is something ⁓ Jeff Beachbunberry, again, our kiki archaeologist or historian, as he was rescuing some of these recipes, he's figuring out how to how'd they do this. And so he has gone and created a specialty device or apparatus ⁓ to make navy grog ice cones. ⁓ you can find this on Cocktail Kingdom. ⁓ please sponsor us here. But I I mean again, this is a unique ⁓ device. I'm sure there are other ways that you could do this finding your own contraption, but this ⁓ this device is purposely made to make navy grog ice cast. ⁓ Yes. And it and so it's one of those things like you've got the unique presentation here. The other thing that is unique to kind of prove Don's ⁓ profile. So while my drink only had one sweetener with the honey syrup, it had two different forms of juices with the lime juice and the white grapefruit juice. So three types of rum, two juices, one sweetener. Yours had three types of rum. Three sweeteners with the marashino liqueur and one juice. So let's roll back to this. Then his philosophy always centered around these key ideas. So what was the first key idea? So the first is complexity without clarity. Don didn't necessarily want you to be able to identify every ingredient. Like most everything surrounding him, he wanted some mystery. Flavors that would blend together into something new, something maybe you quite couldn't pen down. Uh-huh. The second the second principle is that rum is a spectrum, not a single ingredient. Very true. And he treated rum much the way that chefs treat spices. Light rum, dark rum, overproof rum. Each plays a specific role in his Drinks. And again, going back to the where one rum won't do, three will. And I think that's what leads both of our palates more when we go out. We prefer a tiki sow that does that thing because not that we're foodies, but we're foodie adjacent, I guess. But we like that experience. I like food. Our our third reason. Is balance through contrasts, sweet, sour, bitter, spice. Dong's drinks were carefully engineered to hit every note, using syrups, liqueurs, fresh juices in tandem to create complexity. And one of the things we'll be talking about toward the end of this series is kind of the whole difference between like tiki drinks and tropical drinks. Uh-huh. That goes into number four though, like that showmanship. Yeah, so this is where you've got the pebble ice, the ice cones. ⁓ and all the elaborate garnishes. I mean Mint and and and fresh cut and wheels of s pineapple or or lemon, lime, orange, yeah. Yeah. setting things on fire. ⁓ another thing that you see a lot of tiki bars is swizzle sticks. Just decorative garnishes. And g the glassware. So we start to from our previous episode using rocks, now we've got a designed rocks, then in the next three episodes we're probably going to go a little bit deeper because glassware also helps to that experience, both visually, but also serves other purposes. Yeah, I mean, if you go to a bar that serves a wide array of drinks that includes like a tiki component, a lot of times, well, you know, your martini, your sours, your old fashions, you are more straightforward in their presentation, the tiki drinks are oftentimes the most garish. Yeah. I mean that's a great word for it. Garish. And and in the sense that like, you know, they get attention when you see a server come across, you're like, what's that? Blair. It's the tiki drinks are the fajitas of the cocktail whirl. Yeah. Like Kind of an interesting story related to that is one time Renee and I were we had gone at it on a tour and then had lunch at the bar at Willet Distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky. Got the famous egg salad sandwich. Okay, that's all you, not me. And so we ordered cocktails, and I ordered an Iron Ranger, which is a bourbon-based tee drink. And so not only does it come out in a tiki mug, but it has this presentation like with some dry ice where like smoke goes across the bar. It's better length route. And you know what happened after I ordered that? Seven more people ordered it. Bingo. Yep. So tiki drinks draw attention. Showmanship is in play even outside of your normal tiki bars. Then the navy grog is an example of what then? The how rums interact with each other or yeah, I mean, and again, like this is a noticeable drink with that ice cone. I mean, yes, it's in a simple rocks glass, but people are like, what what's going on there? And I mean, like in many ways, all it is doing is chilling the drink and maybe chilling it a little more as you drink through the straw. Yeah, from our last episode, you made a grog. This is now the navy grog. The thing is, if you were to put those two side by side and ask me which one do I am I gonna order, I'm gonna order that one just because the ice game is visually more intoxicating. It's like, Yeah, ⁓ what is that? Well, and I think that's also a good example. The whole like moving from grog to navy grog is again going from one rum to three. Yep. Going from one type of juice to two, going, you know. Something more than just a raw sugar syrup like with the demerita honey syrup. Yeah, so you you've got some rum funk, you got some ⁓ demerero for that richness molasses flavor, right? Yep. And then the lighter rum ties everything else together. Absolutely. So let's ⁓ time stamp on that one, buddy. I don't know where we're going, but I'm gonna bring it to a close. Are you good with that? Let's do it. So Don the Beatscomber didn't just create cocktails, right? Like what did he do? He He created an an entire world. So I ⁓ we would consider this as you used the word earlier, and I'm going to pinpoint it. It was escapism. ⁓ a thousand percent. Okay. Yeah, so escapism, creativity, and layered flavor that continues to influence bartenders today. Modern tiki bars craft cocktail menus and even the way that we think about rum as a category. It all traces back to Don. Absolutely. But we have to remember that no story exists in isolation. Because while Don was building his tropical empire in Hollywood, another man was crafting his own version of Paradise up in Oakland. we've got a little bit of ⁓ I guess, West Coast rivalry going. Absolutely. Okay. So next time on Into the Barkhive, what do we got? We're going to explore the life and legacy of Traitor Vic, the Another Tiki Giant. Absolutely. ⁓ my goodness. Here we go, guys. So if you like this episode, please like, subscribe, follow us on YouTube, ⁓ Instagram. We are on the TikTok now. Thanks to Blake. ⁓ what we've got going on after that is audio formats for Spotify and Apple. If you like your your podcast that way. ⁓ please always interact with us. Send us some messages on their content. It's helping us kind of change our approach to these ⁓ to these videos. ⁓ what we would also like for you to do is send us an email. Let us know how you liked ⁓ these two cocktails. Try them on your own, maybe give a different spec. Do you like the float or do you like the sip on this ⁓ floater? ⁓ that's going to be at podcast at into the barchive.com. But until next time, what we got? Keep exploring the past one trink a time as we dive deeper into the barkive. Cheers.