Rum

Don's Special Planter's Punch

Name: Don's Special Planter's Punch
Yield: 1 servings

Glass: Collins

Donn Beach's two-rum honey-and-lemon Planter's Punch from his 1937 menu, a Don the Beachcomber riff on the Jamaican original.

rum tiki jamaican mid-century shaken lime punch

Ingredients

honey mix (0.5 oz)
club soda (1 oz)
fresh lemon juice (1 oz)
Angostura bitters (2 dashes)
light Puerto Rican rum (1 oz)
dark Jamaican rum (1.5 oz)
pineapple finger (1)
maraschino cherry (1)

Donn Beach carried at least five different Planter's Punches on his 1930s menu, and this is the version Berry decoded from the Beachcomber recipe books and named "Don's Own" (sometimes also titled "Don's Special"), the one that fed forward into the Mai-Kai's Special Planters Punch in 1956 when Bob Heyman built the Mai-Kai's drink menu around Don the Beachcomber alumni.¹ Where the canonical Jamaican Planter's Punch at #16 is the rhyming-formula template (one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak, typically a single aged Jamaican over lime, sugar, and soda),² Donn's version swaps lemon for lime, builds on a honey-syrup sweetener instead of sugar, splits the rum across light Puerto Rican and dark Jamaican, and takes a couple dashes of Angostura.¹ The result is rounder, drier, and deeper than the Myrtle Bank template, recognizably the same drink, but pointed toward what would become the tiki idiom.³

Brand recommendations. Best: Don Q Cristal or Probitas for the light Puerto Rican rum; Hamilton Jamaican Pot Still Black, Smith & Cross, or Coruba for the dark Jamaican; raw wildflower honey for the honey mix. Economical: Bacardi Superior or Plantation 3 Stars; Myers's Original Dark or Appleton Estate Signature; supermarket clover honey.

Instructions

First make honey mix by combining equal parts honey and warm water; chill before use.
In a shaker combine club soda, fresh lemon juice, honey mix, Angostura bitters, light Puerto Rican rum, and dark Jamaican rum.
Shake briefly with ice cubes and pour everything (ice and all) into a collins glass.
Garnish with a pineapple finger and a speared maraschino cherry.

Sources

Berry, Sippin' Safari (2017 ed.), Don's Special Planter's Punch entry, and Beachbum Berry's Grog Log (1998), Don's Own Planter's entry (p. 33), Berry's recovery of the spec from the Don the Beachcomber recipe books and the Heyman / Mai-Kai 1956 lineage from the Beachcomber alumni feeding into the Mai-Kai opening menu. ↩
Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum (2006), planter's-punch chapter, the canonical "one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak" rhyming template the Donn variant points away from. ↩
Hurricane Hayward, The Atomic Grog, Mai-Kai Special Planters Punch ancestor lineage; cross-referenced via the published spec at https://cocktailpartyapp.com/drinks/dons-own-planters/ (accessed 2026-05-03). ↩