Though Pusserβs Rum trademarked the recipe in the early 1980s, the classic Painkiller formula was actually created in 1971 by Daphne Henderson, the owner of a tiny, six-seat swim-up bar called the Soggy Dollar Bar in the British Virgin Islands.
Henderson kept the exact recipe for her sweet concoction a secret, but Pusserβs founder Charles Tobias (who begged Henderson for the recipe to no avail) was able to successfully deconstruct the drink. In fact, the barβs patrons supposedly preferred his less sweet, so-called βsuperiorβ version.
We like our Painkillers even boozier than Tobiasβ take, so we dialed back the juice and increased the rum. For us, itβs the seriously superior Painkiller.