Rum

Don's Own Grog

Name: Don's Own Grog
Yield: 1 servings

Glass: Double Old-Fashioned

Donn Beach's self-attributed 1937 grog, a three-rum blend laced with blackberry liqueur, demerara, and a dash of grenadine.

rum tiki pre-tiki blended jamaican lime grog

Ingredients

fresh lime juice (0.75 oz)
demerara syrup (0.25 oz)
grenadine (1 dash)
Angostura bitters (2 dash)
creme de mure (0.5 oz)
light Puerto Rican rum (0.5 oz)
blended aged rum (1 oz)
dark Jamaican rum (0.5 oz)
grated nutmeg (1 pinch)

Don's Own Grog is the grog Donn Beach put his own name on in 1937, distinct from the six other grogs in this corpus: the historical Royal Navy Grog (Vernon, 1740, equal-parts rum/water/lime/sugar ration), Donn's later Navy Grog (rebuilt as a three-rum tiki sour around a frozen ice cone), Trader Vic's Grog (Vic's Demerara-honey-allspice-passion fruit answer to Donn's), the Coffee Grog (Donn's hot-coffee-and-rum tableside-ignited closer), the Yeoman's Grog (a Donn lemon-orange-allspice variant), and the Captain's Grog (a separate three-rum Donn-spec tiki swizzle with falernum).¹ What sets this grog apart is the blackberry liqueur (crème de mûre), which gives Don's Own its dark, almost port-wine bottom note no other grog in the family carries, and the three-way rum split (light, dark Jamaican, and a blended aged middle) that pulls structure across light, funky, and rounded styles in a single glass.² Berry recovered the spec via the Don the Beachcomber notebook lineage and published it in Sippin' Safari; Smuggler's Cove later codified it for the modern tiki revival (p. 40).¹ The Smuggler's Cove spec is built around blended aged rum (1 oz), blended lightly aged rum (½ oz), and black blended rum (½ oz) with Leopold Brothers Rocky Mountain Blackberry Liqueur and an SC Demerara Syrup base, flash-blended with crushed ice and agitator cubes. The file's measurement bill below uses light-Puerto-Rican / dark-Jamaican / blended-aged rum-style designations and a shaker rather than the Smuggler's Cove drink-mixer method; treat it as an adaptation rather than a direct lift from SC p. 40.³

Brand recommendations. Best: Plantation 3 Stars or Caña Brava for the light rum; Hamilton Jamaican Pot Still Black or Smith & Cross for the dark Jamaican; Plantation 5 or Mount Gay Eclipse for the blended aged rum; Hamilton 86 Demerara as a single-rum substitute for the dark slot; BG Reynolds or homemade Demerara syrup; Briottet or Combier Crème de Mûre; Liber & Co. or homemade grenadine. Economical: Bacardi Superior; Coruba Dark; Appleton Estate Signature; Small Hand Foods Demerara syrup; Bols Crème de Mûre; Rose's Grenadine.

Instructions

In a shaker combine fresh lime juice, demerara syrup, grenadine, Angostura bitters, creme de mure, light Puerto Rican rum, blended aged rum, and dark Jamaican rum.
Add cracked ice and shake hard for .
Strain into a double old-fashioned glass filled with fresh ice.
Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.

Sources

Berry, Sippin' Safari (2017 ed.), Don's Own Grog entry, Berry's recovery of the 1937 spec from the Don the Beachcomber notebook lineage, with three-rum split, blackberry liqueur, demerara, grenadine, and Angostura. ↩
"Don's Own Grog Tiki Recipe." Steve the Bartender. https://stevethebartender.com.au/dons-own-grog-tiki-recipe/ (accessed 2026-05-03), confirms 1937 attribution to Donn Beach, the Berry / Smuggler's Cove publication and adaptation lineage, and the blackberry-liqueur-plus-grenadine sweet/tart accent. ↩
Cate & Cate, Smuggler's Cove (2016), Don's Own Grog entry (p. 40), Smuggler's Cove's modern revival codification this file's spec descends from. ↩