The Hand Grenade is the rare drink on this site whose actual recipe we cannot give you — because nobody outside a handful of people has it. Created for Tropical Isle, the Bourbon Street bar Pam Fortner and Earl Bernhardt opened around the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, it's a trademarked, jealously guarded formula sold in a neon-green grenade-shaped yard cup and billed as "New Orleans' most powerful drink." What follows is an honest approximation in the style of published interpretations: melon liqueur over a vodka-rum-gin base, lengthened with pineapple.
We can't tell you exactly because it's a secret.
Tropical IsleHistory
Fortner and Bernhardt built Tropical Isle into a Bourbon Street institution on the back of this one drink — trademarked, litigated when copied, and since 1992 served in the signature grenade-shaped cup that doubles as the city's most common souvenir. The recipe itself has never been published; the bar mixes its base from unmarked containers. Everything below the melon color is educated inference, and every published "Hand Grenade recipe," including this one, is an interpretation — worth stating plainly, since most don't.
The Spec
Interpretations converge on a neutral three-spirit base under a generous pour of green melon liqueur — which supplies the color and most of the sweetness — with pineapple juice smoothing the landing. Serve it long over crushed ice and it wears its Bourbon Street colors honestly.
Respect the Payload
Three spirits plus a liqueur is a real pour hiding under a candy-melon flag — the original's reputation for ambushing tourists is earned. Serve it long, cold, and with water on the side; the drink's namesake is not a metaphor for subtlety.
The Trademark Is Part of the Story
"Hand Grenade" is a registered trademark, and Tropical Isle has successfully gone after imitators selling under the name — one reason no bar outside their family serves an "official" one. Make it at home and you're a hobbyist; put it on a menu and you're a defendant.
Bottom Line
The Hand Grenade is Bourbon Street in liquid form: loud, green, stronger than it tastes, and owned outright by the people who invented it. This interpretation gets you the flavor and the caution; the grenade cup you'll have to earn in person.