Sand in the Coffee, Vol. 86: the bushwacker, explained by somebody who has to drive home
The Bushwacker is not from here. I know. Sit down. It was invented in the Virgin Islands in the mid-seventies, a Pensacola Beach bar brought the recipe home not long after, and this coast has spent the fifty years since arguing about who makes the best one so loudly that everybody just assumes we invented it. We didn’t. We adopted it, fed it, and now it’s ours the way a dog that showed up on the porch is yours. Every deck bar from the Flora-Bama west down Perdido Beach Boulevard has one on the board, and if you’re down for the holiday week and haven’t had one, you’re going to. So here’s how to do it without it doing you.
What’s actually in the cup
Rum. Coffee liqueur. Crème de cacao. Cream of coconut. Milk or ice cream — this is the great schism, and both sides are right. Blended with ice until it stands up in the cup. It comes out the color of the sand at Johnson Beach after a rain, and it tastes like a Frosty that went to college and made some choices.
That’s the trick of it: it does not taste like a drink. A margarita warns you. A Bushwacker whispers. There’s about as much liquor in one as in a real cocktail, it goes down like dessert, and that is the entire reason this column exists.
The floater
Somewhere around your first sip, a bartender will ask if you want a floater. A floater is an extra shot — often the high-proof stuff — poured across the top so it sits there on the foam like a warning label you can drink. It is not a garnish. It is a second drink standing on the shoulders of the first. Say no the first time. You can say yes on a later trip, when you’ve earned it and you’re walking home.
When to order it
Not before you drive. Not before you swim. Not before the 3 o’clock radar check, because a Bushwacker in the hand when the sky turns purple over the Pass is how a person ends up standing under a tin roof for ninety minutes wondering what happened. Check what the beach is doing, get the car parked for the night, and then walk up to the bar.
The locals’ window is 4 to 6. Half the decks on both sides of the line run a happy hour in there — the happy hours page keeps the list — the sun’s off the water enough that the deck’s bearable, and sunset is a hair after seven right now, so one drink gets you all the way to the show without a refill. Order at 4:30. Be looking at the Gulf when the sun goes. That’s the whole plan.
The one-per-sunset rule
One. It’s a drink and a dessert in the same cup; it has taken care of both. Locals split them. You’ll see two people with two straws in one cup on any deck around here and think it’s a date. It’s not a date. It’s a strategy.
If you want a second, go get water and a basket of something fried first, and then ask yourself honestly whether you want another Bushwacker or whether you want to sit down. It’s usually the second one.
Where the benchmark is
Every bar on this coast believes theirs is the best. Three are worth knowing before you form an opinion of your own.
The Flora-Bama, on the Florida side hard against the state line, is where most people have their first one, and it’s the version the rest of the coast is measured against — thick, cold, and served in a plastic cup because glass and that deck have never gotten along. The Sandshaker on Pensacola Beach, three bridges and the better part of an hour east of the Key, is the bar that claims it brought the recipe to the Gulf in the first place, and they’ve got the sign to prove it. And on the Orange Beach side, the deck bars around Perdido Pass and along Perdido Beach Boulevard each run their own — some with ice cream, some with a shot of something extra in the base, some frozen so hard you need the spoon. Ask your bartender who’s on the blender tonight. The good ones have an answer.
The kids’ version exists almost everywhere — same blender, no rum. If you’re the driver, that’s your order, and nobody on a Gulf Coast deck has ever once made fun of the designated driver, because the designated driver is the only reason the rest of them get home.
The exhale
The wind lays down most evenings this week — slick calm, the charter guys call it, when the Gulf goes flat as a plate and the light goes gold on it. That’s the fifteen minutes the Bushwacker was built for. Not the afternoon. Not the pool. That one. Have yours then, on a deck, facing west, on whichever side of the line your bed is on.
Then walk. It’s a beach town. Everything’s closer than you think, and the Bushwacker makes it feel closer still.
— Chris
P.S. Know a deck, a restaurant, a charter, or a shop we don’t have yet? Add it — free, Florida side or Alabama side: /submit/
