The Zombie...
Your essential guide to Tiki’s most infamous cocktail, its recipes, ingredients and origins
“It’s too dangerous! Only two allowed per customer! The last guy that had three of these went mad. It’s enough to turn you into the living dead!”. And our favorite quote by far, “The mother of all freak drinks” (David Wondrich). With such fine accolades, why wouldn’t you want to try one of these?
Or maybe two… or three…
And there lies the genius behind this cocktail. Not only is it a complex masterpiece of almost orchestral proportions – tying together a cacophony of ingredients in a beautiful interplay of tastes and flavors – but the Zombie Punch is also the living embodiment of its creator’s next level marketing prowess.
Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gant (AKA ‘Don the Beachcomber’), founding father of Tiki, created the Zombie in order to bridge the gap between the rather rigid machismo of 1930’s male drinkers and the exotic nature of his own brand of ‘tropical’ rum rhapsodies.
Not only did the Zombie speak to these guys as a cocktail they could drink without manly shame, but it dared them to take it one step further. “Who amongst you is tough enough to try this drink? Can you handle two? You definitely won’t be allowed a third…”
It became a challenge that intrigued the people of Hollywood, a landmark drinking experience to be tried by all visitors to the area. An experience that built enough momentum to spread its cocktailian influence across America, powering the culture of tiki with it in the process.
Make mine a Zombie… available for sale now
The Holy Trinity of Tiki
Now the Mai Tai may well be the clean cut, minimalist rum-bassador of Polynesian Pop and the Navy Grog with its bad-boy manly charm was most definitely the drink that catalyzed Tiki’s revival. But the Zombie, in its infamy, with its layers of mystique, danger and South Sea escapism, not only epitomises the essence of Tiki, but it’s the drink that put it on the map in the first place.
When you combine the extreme levels of competitive industry secrecy that surrounded these proprietary recipes, with the fact that Don tweaked and tinkered with the ingredients of his Zombie his entire career, you’ll go some way in understanding why you may have never tasted two Zombie recipes that are alike. In fact, why you may well have never tasted a REAL Zombie in the first place.
The best Zombie recipes
In this article we seek to address this – providing you with Don’s Zombie Punch recipe from 1934, along with its origins and a healthy nod to tiki revivalist Jeff ‘Beachbum’ Berry and his tireless work in uncovering this genre defining cocktail.
We’ll also cover two more of the (seemingly infinite) Zombie variations that are out there – the ‘Spievak’, or Mid-Century Zombie, also dug-up (
) by Jeff Berry and preferred by many due to its flavor profile and straightforward measures; PLUS Mr Berry’s Simplified Zombie, which is even easier to make and does a damn fine job of getting close to the original considering it only has half the number of ingredients.
Enjoy. 
And remember, don’t come running to us when you can’t remember how to pronounce your own name or use the bathroom unassisted. You’ve been warned. 
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Zombie Punch, Donn Beach’s Original 1934 Recipe
One of the more potent vintage tropicals, the original Zombie is a staple of tiki legend. It’s not a punch in the modern sense, rather in this context it refers to a fruity cocktail filled with an array of flavors.An intricate balance of sweet, tart and refreshing, with layers of fruit and spice, it’s as close as you can get to high-octane tiki heaven, or as Donn called it... his ‘mender of broken dreams’...
Servings 1
Ingredients
- 1 ½ oz Gold Puerto Rican Rum
- 1 ½ oz Dark Jamaican Rum
- 1 oz 151-proof Demerara Rum
- ½ oz Falernum - see our guide to making it at home
- ½ oz Don's Mix - 2:1 ratio of White Grapefruit Juice to Cinnamon Syrup
- ¾ oz Fresh Lime Juice
- 1 dash Angostura Bitters
- ⅛ tsp Herbsaint or Pernod - the equivalent of 6 drops
- 1 tsp Grenadine - preferably homemade
- 6 oz Crushed Ice - the equivalent of ¾ cup
- 1 Mint Sprig
Method
- Pour all ingredients into a blender, leaving the ice till last. Don't let it sit around or it will melt and overly dilute your drink.Then flash blend for 2-5 seconds: Turn it on to blend and immediately hit stop. If you have a pulse button then use this, but if you don’t you’ll need to turn it on and off fast. Pulse it again. And then once more.
- Open pour the drink into a Zombie or Chimney glass. When you've filled about ¾ of the way with both ice and liquid, use a gated finish to control the ice (put the strainer on the blender cup), filling with liquid to the top of the glass.The idea is that you use the gated finish to control the volume of liquid in your drink depending on how large your glass is.
- Give your mint a good slap to release the oils and then place in your drink.
Notes
The idea of flash blending is to perfectly chill, dilute and aerate your cocktail - releasing the aromatics, loosening up the alcohol and creating just the right mouthfeel - all without making a slushy. When you pour it in your glass, you should still be able to see crushed ice in with the liquid.
Excerpt from 'The Official Mixer's Manual', by Patrick Gavin Duffy
So perhaps Donn’s numbers driven origin story wasn’t a lapse in his famed marketing skills, rather, it was a considered response to the competition that challenged the very heart of his rum reputation.
Let’s leave the last word on the subject to his frenemy and rival, ‘Trader Vic’ Bergeron, “There has been much argument about the origination of the Zombie, but credit should be given where credit is due. Don the Beachcomber, of Hollywood, Chicago, and anywhere in the South Pacific, is the originator of this famous drink. Only he can give you the original recipe..." - Trader Vic's Book of Food & Drink, 1949.
So what were those final tantalizing puzzle pieces, those arcane ingredients of deception and veiled renown? What divine nectars were about to be re-visited upon us mere mortals?
Grapefruit juice and cinnamon syrup. Damn.
Ok, after all that, they could’ve been a bit more… well... exotic. But don’t let their unassuming demeanour fool you. When mixed together they produce flavors greater than the sum of their parts - the baking spice of the cinnamon and the earthy sweetness of the grapefruit combine to make a taste that's almost like that of fresh baked apple pie. What they bring to the Zombie is a sub-structure that supports the other ingredients in a way that is totally irreplaceable. Trust me. Treat yourself to a Zombie today. Or... err... maybe wait till the weekend 🤤🍹🥧
What's the best choice of rums to use in your Zombie?
Each rum used brings a particular quality to the mix - the dry, medium body of the Puerto Rican acts as a base on which to build the thick, funky Jamaican, with the Demerara bringing layers of charred woodiness and burnt caramel - all marrying perfectly in a blended dance of rum, syrups and spices.- The original recipe called for Lowndes, a long-extinct Jamaican rum. Hamilton Jamaican Pot Still Black Rum works well in its place, bringing you a taste of hogo-heaven on earth. Or if you want to take the funk down a notch, try the Appleton 12yr Gold.
- Lemon Hart 151 is recommended for the Demerara, but as it’s unlikely to be available, Hamilton 151 is an excellent substitute.
- For the Puerto Rican, try the smooth, slightly smoky Bacardi 8, or the Ron del Barrilito 3 Star. As alternatives, dry, slightly nutty rums such as Cana Brava 7yr from Panama, or Flor de Cana 7yr from Nicaragua would also work.
We're about to dig in pretty deep into the origin of this infamous drink, so if you want to jump to either the Mid-Century Zombie recipe or the Simplified Zombie, please do - but make sure you bookmark this page for later reading! 😊
Origin of the 1934 Zombie Punch
Tiki lore has it that Donn created the first Zombie in 1936 in his Hollywood ‘Beachcomber’ bar, in order to help revive a hungover customer so that he could make it through a business meeting... literally raising him from the dead? Or sending him to his undying doom… ☠️🍹⚡️ For many years Donn readily encouraged this colorful story, but in 1941 he turned his back on it, stating in his Beachcomber menu: “The Zombie didn’t just happen. It is the result of a long and expensive process of evolution: In the experiments leading up to the Zombie, three and a half cases of assorted rums were used and found their way down the drain so that you may now enjoy this potent ‘mender of broken dreams”. Why replace such a good origin story with something so scientific? Don the Beachcomber, master storyteller, creator of worlds, reneging on an engaging tale in order to bring it back down to the numbers?... Either way, the Zombie took off like a revenant rum rocket and sat there on its tiki throne for a good 10 years or so before that tricksy Trader Vic Mai Tai came and usurped its ungodly position amidst the undying stars.
With great renown comes much imitation
Nationwide acclaim for the Zombie drove bars across America, tiki or otherwise, to produce their own versions of this lethal libation. And with these overly alcoholic copies came the false claims to its undead lineage. Nightclub manager Monte Proser (later of the mob-tied ‘Copacabana’) served ‘Monte Proser’s Zombie’ at the 1939 New York World Fair, audaciously even going so far as to open his own Beachcomber restaurants on the Eastern Seaboard! Whilst in 1940 there came a claim that has niggled many across the decades. Patrick Gavin Duffy, traditional east-coast pre-Prohibition cocktail expert, printed his own recipe for the Zombie in 1934, in his book ‘The Official Mixer's Manual’. How could this be? Don’s Hollywood 'hole in the wall' had only started serving them that very same year... Although Proser’s claim was easily refutable and frankly, sheer balls deep fabrication, it’s taken some time to get to the bottom of The Patrick Duffy Recipe Mystery. Thanks to the cocktail Scooby Doo skills of Limbo Lizard at Tiki Central, we find that this wrongly assumed designation was nothing more than a ghost in the machine, a phantom created by a 1940 reprint, where the recipe was retrospectively inserted into a handy space between sections. A recipe that bears no resemblance to the cocktail we know and love (fear? love... fear a little).
Excerpt from 'The Official Mixer's Manual', by Patrick Gavin Duffy
So perhaps Donn’s numbers driven origin story wasn’t a lapse in his famed marketing skills, rather, it was a considered response to the competition that challenged the very heart of his rum reputation.
Let’s leave the last word on the subject to his frenemy and rival, ‘Trader Vic’ Bergeron, “There has been much argument about the origination of the Zombie, but credit should be given where credit is due. Don the Beachcomber, of Hollywood, Chicago, and anywhere in the South Pacific, is the originator of this famous drink. Only he can give you the original recipe..." - Trader Vic's Book of Food & Drink, 1949.
A fall from grace
Sadly, the very key to the Zombie’s preternatural success - Donn’s business and marketing savvy - would eventually pave the way to its slow motion decline into syrup laden mediocrity. His penchant for encrypting his ingredients to stave off competitive espionage meant that no-one ever really knew what the hell went into his drinks. So with each new claimant and with each new copy, the Zombie devolved further and further away from its true essence, its fidelity deteriorating over the decades like a bad photocopy. And over time the secrecy and paranoia surrounding its proprietary recipe also began to turn the 'Press' against Donn, or at least, against this particular drink. With no writer able to replicate it regardless of the pressure from their publishers, it was eventually dismissed as a vulgar publicity stunt. And so, through the drinking dark ages of the 70’s - 90’s many of tiki’s recipes were lost to time… or so we thought…
Cracking the code
Inspired by his success in tracking down the original recipe for Donn’s Navy Grog, Jeff ‘Beachbum’ Berry stumbled into the role of cocktail archaeologist and modern day champion of tiki. A Hawaiian shirt wearing cocktail drinking Indiana Jones, his mixological explorations led him onto the trail of the unholy grail of tiki drinks (I was trying for a ‘Last Crusade’ gag but couldn’t quite clinch it)... the original Zombie. With a number of its ingredients encoded, unknown and lost to the ravages of bad taste, it took many years and many unmentionable imposters before he truly found his way through the veils of secrecy surrounding it. After a promising lead, though still possibly a red herring (see the 1950 ‘Spievak’ Zombie recipe below) Jeff uncovered a version that was reported by ‘Cabaret’ magazine in ‘56 as the one Don served at his Beachcomber restaurant in Waikiki. Happy with its provenance, Jeff left off his search, only to be thrown back into the investigatory fray a few years later... In 2005 Jennifer Santiago, daughter of Dick Santiago (a former barman who worked at the Beachcomber in 1937), presented Jeff with an almost incontrovertible piece of evidence - an old notebook that Dick had carried in his pocket for the 15 years he worked there. Jeff could almost taste the original Zombie, its secrets nearly within his grasp, but it still took him over a year to break the encryption surrounding the last two ingredients, ‘Don’s Mix’ and 'Spices #2'.
So what were those final tantalizing puzzle pieces, those arcane ingredients of deception and veiled renown? What divine nectars were about to be re-visited upon us mere mortals?
Grapefruit juice and cinnamon syrup. Damn.
Ok, after all that, they could’ve been a bit more… well... exotic. But don’t let their unassuming demeanour fool you. When mixed together they produce flavors greater than the sum of their parts - the baking spice of the cinnamon and the earthy sweetness of the grapefruit combine to make a taste that's almost like that of fresh baked apple pie. What they bring to the Zombie is a sub-structure that supports the other ingredients in a way that is totally irreplaceable. Trust me. Treat yourself to a Zombie today. Or... err... maybe wait till the weekend 🤤🍹🥧Shop our exclusive Tiki collection on Red Bubble
The 'Spievak' or Mid-Century Zombie, by Donn Beach
Smooth, deep and gentle, this drink is an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove. Appearing as a recipe in ‘Barbecue Chef’, a self-published manual by Louis Spievak (1950). It was supposedly provided to Spievak by Donn Beach himself, with the purpose of catering to more of a home market.Although it shares very little with the ‘34 Zombie, its particular flavor profile is deemed superior by many tiki connoisseurs, fitting well with slightly more modern tastes.
Servings 1
Ingredients
- 1 oz White Puerto Rican Rum
- 1 oz Gold Puerto Rican Rum
- 1 oz 151-proof Demerara Rum - ideally Lemon Hart
- 1 oz Fresh Lime Juice
- 1 oz Fresh Lemon Juice
- 1 oz Unsweetened Pineapple Juice
- 1 oz Passion Fruit Syrup
- 1 tsp Demerara Simple Syrup - see quick recipe below
- 1 dash Angostura Bitters
- 1 Sprig of Mint
Method
- Pour all ingredients into a shaker, adding enough crushed ice to show above the surface of the liquid.
- Shake vigorously for around 15 seconds, until a light frosting starts to form on the outside of the shaker. Pour unstrained into either a Zombie glass, or alternatively a Collins.
- Create your garnish by first bruising the mint and then placing it down the side of the glass into the ice.
Notes
An inside spread from the self published, ring bound, 'Barbecue Chef', by Louis Spievak
Listed in Berry's Intoxica and Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails, the 'Spievak' Zombie is a true work of genius - a perfectly balanced recipe that harkens to the expertise behind the original Zombie. The issue lies in that there's barely any overlap between the two in terms of flavor profile or ingredients. Whilst the 'Cabaret' Zombie, although distinct to the original, could easily be part of its natural evolution.
So did the ever-tinkering Donn create the Spievak Zombie as an experiment, aimed at making it accessible to a more restrictive home bar audience?
It's possible.
Seven of its nine ingredients are easy 1 oz pours, some of the more esoteric components have been replaced, and it's shaken rather than blended, making it only a little more complex than your standard cocktail.
But it seems that on this account we may never know. The trail of evidence has run its course. So I suppose the question it really boils down to is, "Who cares if it tastes this good?" 😉🌴🍹
Demerara Simple Syrup
- Add 1 cup of demerara sugar to 1 cup of water in a pan (making a 1:1 simple syrup).
- Heat the pan and bring the mix to a simmer. Do not allow to boil. If it boils then water will evaporate and your syrup has the potential to crystallize when in the bottle.
- Stir continuously until the mix is clear and the sugar is fully incorporated.
- Allow to cool, then pour into a sterilized bottle and refrigerate. It should last a couple of weeks.
Simplified Zombie, by Jeff 'Beachbum' Berry
Beachbum Berry's stripped back version of the 1934 Zombie. With only five ingredients, it's amazing how well it approximates the flavor profile of Donn's original recipe. And with only 1½ ounces of booze, you're less likely to have some kind of drunken 'incident'. 
Servings 1
Ingredients
- ½ oz Cruzan 151
- 1 oz Dark Jamaican Rum
- ¾ oz Fresh Lime Juice
- 1 oz White Grapefruit Juice
- ½ oz Cinnamon Syrup
- 1 Sprig of Mint
Method
- Pour all ingredients into a shaker, adding enough ice cubes to show above the surface of the liquid.
- Shake vigorously for around 15 seconds, until a light frosting starts to form on the outside of the shaker. Pour unstrained into either a Beachbum Berry Zombie glass, or alternatively any tall glass
- Garnish. Mint. Slap. Stick it in the drink. Job done.
Notes
If you don't have any Cinnamon Syrup to hand, it's a very easy infusion to make. Also known as Don's Spices #4, we show you how to quickly whip up a batch it in our article on Don's Secret Mixes and Spices.
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