The Scorpion is one of the small handful of drinks that can be traced straight back to Donn Beach's original Hollywood Beachcomber menu in the 1930s. It was built for the communal bowl service Beach pioneered — big vessels with multiple straws, meant for a table rather than a single drinker — and its combination of rum, brandy, and orgeat became a template other tiki bars copied for decades.
It came in a bowl with someone else's straw in it, and that was the whole point.
A Beachcomber Original
Where many "classic" tiki drinks are modern reconstructions pieced together from fragmentary notes, the Scorpion is documented well enough that its basic architecture — light rum, brandy, orange and lemon juice, orgeat — has stayed consistent across decades of tiki-bar service and cocktail-history research.
Beach served it in shareable bowls with a floating gardenia and multiple straws, a presentation as much about spectacle as flavor. Scaled down to a single glass, the drink still reads as unmistakably his: brandy is an unusual choice next to rum, and the orgeat gives it a nutty sweetness none of his citrus-forward drinks share.
The Spec
A single-serve scaling of the standard reconstruction: light rum for the base, a smaller brandy pour for depth, equal parts orange and lemon juice, and orgeat to round the sharp edges.
Why brandy next to rum
Beach used brandy in several early drinks as a way to add weight without adding more rum — it reads as a background note here, not a second lead spirit. Any smooth VS-grade brandy works; save anything you're precious about for a Sidecar.
Orgeat over simple syrup
Orgeat's almond note is what separates a Scorpion from a plain rum-and-brandy sour. If you're using a store-bought bottle, check that it isn't cloyingly sweet — you may want to trim the pour slightly.
Bottom Line
The Scorpion holds up as one of tiki's most legitimately "classic" classics — simple enough to make on request, old enough to have earned the name.