12 Most Popular Jamaican Cocktails

There’s no better way to get the summer started than with a tropical rum punch, and this recipe makes enough for a crowd. Featuring both unaged and coconut rum, this Jamaican Rum Punch adds characteristic Jamaican spice with a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg. Angostura bitters add a much-needed bitter finish to complement the sweetness of orange and pineapple juice.

In honor of one of Jamaica’s most iconic rum distilleries, this Jamaican Breeze Cocktail calls for Appleton Estates Reserve Rum for a top-shelf Jamaican cocktail. This recipe has a well-rounded flavor profile, muddling spicy fresh ginger with sweet and tangy pineapple juice and Angostura bitters. The trifecta of sweet, spicy, and bitter makes for a refined dinner party drink.

This smoothie cocktail has my absolute favorite morning flavor pairing: coffee and banana. The Dirty Banana is a rum-spiked banana smoothie with banana and coffee liqueur to boot. There’s no richer cocktail than this, and the creamy texture is everything! This recipe calls for banana chunks and ice, but I recommend forgoing the ice and adding frozen banana chunks instead.

This Jamaican take on the classic vodka cocktail swaps vodka for Appleton Estate aged rum, which instantly instills a much richer alcoholic flavor. Additionally, this recipe uses a blend of ginger syrup, pineapple, and lime juice for a stronger spice and sweetness profile to stand up to the rum. A dash of angostura bitters completes this delicious mule with a dry finish.

Inspired by the King of Reggae, you know this drink assumes the colors of the Rastafarian flag. In order to achieve the red, yellow, and green color palette, you have to make this frozen cocktail in parts. The red is a combination of rum and strawberry daiquiri. The yellow is a blend of mango, rum, and sour mix. The green is a combination of rum, mango, and blue curacao.

The name of this cocktail may sound silly, but it’ll certainly create a tropical craze for your next poolside bash. Blending unaged rum and coconut rum with banana liqueur and pineapple juice, this cocktail has a sweet taste of the tropics. A splash of cranberry juice gives it a much-needed sour kick.

A Jamaican twist on the classic Pina Colada, this Jamaican Painkiller uses both Jamaican rum and Puerto Rican Chila Orchata, a cinnamon cream rum. A few shots of each spirit get blended with pina colada mix, banana liqueur, and frozen pineapples for the ultimate spiked milkshake. I think banana and cinnamon are the perfect ingredients to add a Jamaican signature to a Latin-inspired cocktail.

It isn’t all about the rum in Jamaica. A case in point is this simple vodka cocktail. You get the beautiful colors of a beachy sunrise thanks to orange juice and grenadine. This recipe is as simple and easy as they come, requiring nothing more than a glass of ice and a stirring spoon to blend the three ingredients.

Another vodka cocktail, this luxurious Jamaican Adult Lemonade calls for citron and vanilla-flavored vodkas. The lemonade honors Jamaica by using pure cane sugar, lemons, and limes. Vanilla adds a really interesting richness to the citrus, and the dash of angostura bitters rounds out the flavor profile beautifully. This recipe is a single-serving cocktail shaker drink, but you can easily scale it up for a pitcher.

The Dark and Stormy may be a Bermudian invention, but you can easily make it Jamaican by using Appleton Estate dark rum. This classic cocktail uses dark rum, ginger beer, and lime juice for a refreshing trifecta of spicy, sweet, and sour. With three ingredients, this is a quick and easy cocktail to whip up at a moment’s notice.

Another frozen cocktail, Jamaican Me Thirsty, is another elaborate process of blending three different frozen parts separately and then layering them for a psychedelic tie-dye of Rastafarian colors. In this case, rum gets blended with banana liqueur for the yellow layer, melon liqueur for the green, and strawberry liqueur for the red.

This festive and colorful shot layers colorful liqueurs in the order of the Rastafarian flag, topping it all off with 151-proof rum to achieve a literal flame. Grenadine, banana liqueur, and creme de menthe create the red, yellow, and green stripes while also adding an interesting flavor trifecta of sweet, minty, and bitter.