Lush and beachy, it lengthens aged rum with pineapple and orange juice, rounds it out with cream of coconut and crowns it with a heavy snow of fresh-grated nutmeg. Picture a Piña Colada with a bright streak of orange running through it — creamy, tropical and deceptively strong, it drinks like sunscreen in a glass.
Garnish: Grated Nutmeg
Shaken · Highball · On the Rocks
add
Add the aged rum, pineapple juice, cream of coconut, and orange juice to a shaker with ice.
shake
Shake well until thoroughly chilled and the cream of coconut is fully integrated.
strain
Strain into an ice-filled highball or tropical glass.
garnish
Top with a generous dusting of freshly grated nutmeg; an orange slice or pineapple wedge is optional.
The drink first turned up during the 1970s at White Bay's Soggy Dollar Bar, on the British Virgin Islands' Jost Van Dyke, though its maker remains uncertain — some credit Daphne Henderson, others George and Marie Myrick. Cruzan was the rum in those first rounds. Charles Tobias of Pusser's Rum later reverse-engineered the recipe into its "4-1-1-1" ratio, and Pusser's registered Painkiller as a trademark in 1989. A 2011 trademark clash with PKNY showed how widely the build had since become common property.