Soggy Dollar Bar, BVI, 1970s.
| 2 oz · 60 ml | DARK RUM | 40 % |
| 4 oz · 120 ml | PINEAPPLE JUICE | |
| 1 oz · 30 ml | ORANGE JUICE | |
| 1 oz · 30 ml | COCONUT CREAM |
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
| Pre-batch | 8 oz mixed with ice, 0.8 oz of it pure alcohol |
|---|---|
| Melt | Shaken: +20 % of the pre-batch, +1.6 oz of water |
| Served | 8 + 1.6 = 9.6 oz in the glass |
| Strength | 0.8 ÷ 9.6 = 8.3 % ABV as served |
| Ethanol | 0.8 oz × 29.57 ml × 0.789 g/ml = 19 g · about 131 kcal from the alcohol alone |
FROM DARK RUM · from oak barrel aging
Bourbon's fingerprint, extracted from the charred American oak the law requires for aging. Same molecule as the vanilla bean's signature, so a well-aged bourbon legitimately tastes like vanilla. Chemistry, not metaphor. Cognac, aged rum, tequila reposado all extract vanillin from oak too. Different barrels, same molecule.
ALSO IN Old Fashioned · Manhattan · Whiskey Sour · Paper Plane · Boulevardier · Sazerac · Espresso Martini · Mai Tai
FROM ORANGE · citrus peel oil
An orange rind, squeezed, throws a spray that catches the light. That's d-limonene boiling off. It's roughly 95% of orange peel oil by mass, and the molecule that puts the "orange" in orange anything. Used industrially as a green solvent because the chemistry that dissolves citrus oils also dissolves greasy machinery. The expressed-peel garnish on a cocktail is delivering vaporized limonene to the rim of the glass.
ALSO IN Old Fashioned · Martini · Margarita · Gin & Tonic · Cosmopolitan · Mai Tai · Piña Colada · Hemingway Daiquiri
FROM NUTMEG · the clove note
The clove note, a phenylpropanoid that shows up wherever a recipe calls for clove, allspice, or nutmeg, and in rye whiskey through oak-barrel extraction. Anesthetic at high concentration; dentists used clove oil for centuries before lidocaine. The numbing sensation on the tongue from biting a whole clove is eugenol blocking nociceptor signaling at the contact point.
Dark rum, pineapple, orange and coconut cream. Carbonyl esters from pineapple (ethyl hexanoate, methyl butanoate) marry the oak vanillin of the rum, and lipid-dense coconut cream coats the palate and carries the volatiles. The grated nutmeg is load-bearing; myristicin is the finish.
Daphne Henderson is credited with inventing the Painkiller at the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. The bar gets its name from the swim required to reach it: sailors who anchored offshore had to wade in with their wet currency. Pusser's Rum (the Royal Navy reformulation) trademarked the name in the late 1980s and in 2011 sued a New York bar called Painkiller, which settled and became PKNY. Other rums in this template are technically 'tropical rum drinks'; the Painkiller specifically calls for Pusser's.
