The Tiki Max is a deliberately maxed-out tiki build: two rums, an orange liqueur, an apricot liqueur, orgeat, three juices, and a dash of bitters, all shaken together and capped with a floated rum. Difford's Guide credits it to Simon Difford, made in 2008 at the Cabinet Room — the bespoke bar in his own London home — and that page is the only place we could find the drink documented at all; no independent cocktail-history source, book, or bar menu corroborates the date or setting. The attribution is specific rather than invented, and it fits a pattern of other named cocktails (Strawberry Blonde, London Cosmopolitan, Biggles Sidecar) traced to the same bar and year, but it remains a single-source record. It has since climbed into Difford's own Top 100 Tiki/Tropical directory, and the site's own tasting note more or less admits the recipe shouldn't work as well as it does.
This drink breaks the golden rule — simple is beautiful. However, it's tasty and packs a punch.
Difford's Guide tasting noteA Named Creator, One Source
Simon Difford is a real, well-documented bartender and author — the Cabinet Room is the working bar built into his own living room, and it's shown up as the birthplace for several of his other named recipes from the same period. That gives the Tiki Max's attribution more specificity than most uncredited tiki drinks get. What it doesn't have is any confirmation outside Difford's own guide: no third-party cocktail history, competing bar's menu, or published book mentions it, so treat the 2008 date and the Cabinet Room setting as Difford's own record rather than independently verified history.
What isn't in question is the recipe itself, which reads like an inventory of the tiki modifier shelf rather than a restrained build — a trait the name leans into.
The Spec
Nine ingredients go into the shaker, and a tenth — more navy rum — gets floated on top after straining over crushed ice. At roughly seven ounces of total liquid before ice, it's built to be a long, slow, cracked-ice sipper rather than a short shaken cocktail.
Two rums, two different jobs
The 54.5% navy-strength rum is the drink's backbone and its finishing float; the charcoal-filtered light white rum adds body and a little aged roundness without competing for attention. Swap in a single rum for both and the drink gets simpler and flatter — the contrast is the point.
Two modifiers, not one
Most tiki sours lean on a single orange liqueur. This one splits the same half-ounce slot between Grand Marnier and an apricot liqueur, layering stone-fruit sweetness under the orange brightness before the orgeat adds its nutty weight. It's exactly the kind of ingredient stacking the site's own tasting note calls out.
The float isn't a garnish gesture
Floating the second measure of navy rum on top means it's the first thing that hits the nose and the front of the tongue on every sip, keeping the overproof rum present even after it's been diluted into a nine-ingredient shake and poured over crushed ice.
Bottom Line
No lost recipe, no invented backstory — just a named bartender's own maximalist tiki build, honestly sourced to one place, that earns its name by ignoring the usual rule that simple is beautiful.