Berry, Jeff “Beachbum” | The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails

(1958–), is a drink historian specializing in exotic cocktails of the mid-century, commonly called “tiki” drinks. He’s the author of seven books covering their history and featuring definitive recipes; these include Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log (1998), Beachbum Berry Remixed (2009), Beachbum Berry’s Sippin’ Safari (2007), and Beachbum Berry’s Potions of the Caribbean (2014).

Berry was born in Albany, New York, but grew up in Southern California, watching “adults ordering these amazing-looking exotic cocktails served with ice cones molded around straws, fancifully garnished with flaming lime shells,” he recalls. By the time he was old enough to order these himself, the tiki drink culture had begun to fade, with tiki bars shuttering and drinks in most remaining restaurants evolving into debased versions of the originals.

In his twenties and thirties, Berry began researching how the original drinks were crafted. He visited existing tiki bars that still made tiki drinks with integrity and interviewed retired bartenders who worked at the hallowed locales in their glory days. Where the original bartender was not available, Berry often interviewed their children and others who knew their recipes and how to decipher them (many were written in code). In the 1990s, while working his day job as a screenwriter, he started meeting and exchanging notes with fellow cocktail historian Ted Haigh, along with tiki design expert Sven Kirsten and designer-writer-producer Otto Von Stroheim. See Haigh, Ted.

Berry’s first books were published in spiral-bound format, which he and his wife, Annene Kaye, designed using photocopied type and graphics in a mix-and-match collage style. His first, Grog Log, contained recipes for classics such as Trader Vic Grog, La Florida, Boo Loo, and the Mai Tai (which had been badly corrupted by later bartenders, thanks to Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron’s penchant for secrecy about the ingredients in his creation and his refusal to publish a recipe for many years). See Bergeron, Victor “Trader Vic,” and Mai Tai.

Berry has made a convincing case that tiki drinks were among the original “craft cocktails” and deserving of placement alongside others in the classic canon. See craft cocktail. He has insisted on the use of quality ingredients in every drink, reflecting the care with which they were originally made (often using rums considered old and rare today). “Always squeeze your own lime juice,” Berry wrote during a time when concentrates were common. “The difference is crucial to the fresh, crisp, ‘alive’ taste you’re after.”

Berry said that it took ten years and three books to nail down the origins of the Zombie, a drink first created by Don the Beachcomber. Berry searched for the original Zombie recipe (“Nobody really seems to know what went into … the Zombie” he wrote in 1998). See Zombie. In a chapter devoted to the Zombie published in Sippin’ Safari, he revealed an early recipe he found in a self-published three-ring-binder cookbook from 1950, which gave a recipe in which the author thanked Don the Beachcomber for his “generous assistance.” Berry subsequently turned up additional Zombie recipes, including a 1934 Zombie Punch and a 1956 recipe he unearthed in Cabaret Magazine.

Berry is credited for decoding many other classic tiki drinks, especially those popularized by Don the Beachcomber, including the Nui Nui.

Berry left both screenwriting and Los Angeles in 2007. In something of a reverse migration of Don the Beachcomber (a New Orleans native who ended up in Los Angeles), Berry and his wife eventually moved to New Orleans. In 2015 they opened Latitude 29, a restaurant and bar in the city’s French Quarter where guests sample both original creations and potions laboriously recreated from past recipes of tiki’s golden era.