What's Kraken?

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What Is the What's Kraken? Cocktail?

What's Kraken? is a modern tiki-adjacent shooter of a cocktail built around spiced rum, fresh orange juice, honey syrup, muddled raspberries, and a float of Aperol. It first appeared on the cocktail-sharing site Kindred Cocktails in 2014, where its creator described the finished drink as tasting like "a berry-flavored Orange Julius" — sweet, citrusy, and just bitter enough at the edges to keep it from turning into candy. The name is a playful nod to the Kraken Black Spiced Rum that inspired the original recipe, and it has stuck around in home bar rotations as a fun, punny party pour ever since.

For this version, we lead with a classic spiced rum rather than a single proprietary brand, which keeps the vanilla-and-clove backbone of the drink intact while letting you use whatever bottle is already on your bar cart. Spiced rum is a natural fit here: its baking-spice sweetness plays beautifully against tart raspberries and bittersweet Aperol, echoing the same warm-spirit-meets-bright-fruit logic that makes a good daiquiri or Mai Tai work so well.

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The first thing you notice about What's Kraken? is the fruit. Fresh raspberries are muddled right in the shaker with orange juice and honey syrup, so their seeds and juice infuse the whole drink rather than just floating on top as garnish. That gives the cocktail a jammy, slightly tart core that's rounded out by honey's floral sweetness. Spiced rum adds cinnamon, clove, and vanilla notes underneath, while a half-ounce of Aperol brings a streak of bitter orange and rhubarb that keeps the whole thing from tipping into dessert territory. Finished with an expressed orange peel, the aromatics on the nose are bright and citrusy even before the glass reaches your lips.

Texturally, this is a shaken-and-double-strained drink, so it pours silky and slightly frothy from the raspberry pulp, similar to how a well-shaken sour develops a light foam. It lands somewhere between a fruity shooter and a full cocktail — small enough to sip in a few rounds, but balanced enough to enjoy slowly if you'd rather stretch it out.

How to Make It

Start by muddling fresh raspberries with orange juice and honey syrup directly in your shaker tin; you want to break the berries down enough to release their juice and a bit of pulp, but you're not trying to puree them completely. Add ice along with the spiced rum and Aperol, then shake hard for a good ten to fifteen seconds — the vigorous shake is what gives the drink its light, aerated texture. Double strain through a Hawthorne strainer and a fine mesh strainer into a chilled coupe glass to catch the raspberry seeds, then express an orange twist over the top and drop it in or perch it on the rim.

Origin and Variations

Unlike centuries-old classics, What's Kraken? is a relatively recent home-bartender creation, born from the wave of spiced-rum cocktails that followed the Kraken brand's rise in the early 2010s. It sits in the same lineage as other rum-and-citrus shaken drinks featured on sites like Kindred Cocktails, where home mixologists and pros alike log original recipes for the community to riff on.

Because the drink is built from a simple sweet-tart-bitter framework, it's easy to adapt. Swapping raspberries for blackberries or muddled strawberries shifts the fruit character without upsetting the balance. Some versions trade honey syrup for a straight simple syrup if you want a cleaner, less floral sweetness, and a few home bartenders drop the Aperol in favor of a few dashes of Angostura bitters for a spicier, less citrus-forward finish. If you like the tropical direction spiced rum takes a drink, you'll probably also enjoy a Painkiller or a classic Hurricane, both of which lean on similar sweet-and-spiced rum backbones.

Serving and Garnish

What's Kraken? is traditionally served in a coupe glass, which shows off its deep pink-orange color and keeps the drink cold without diluting it the way a rocks glass full of ice would. The classic garnish is nothing more than the expressed orange peel used to finish the drink — twist it hard over the surface to release the citrus oils, then either drop it in or rest it across the rim. If you want a slightly more festive presentation for a party, a single fresh raspberry speared on a pick makes an easy, on-theme addition.

When to Serve It

This is a good drink for warm-weather gatherings, backyard cookouts, or any occasion where you want something a little more interesting than a standard rum punch without a lot of extra effort. Because it's shaken to order rather than batched, it works best as a made-to-request cocktail rather than a big-batch punch, though you could easily scale up the raspberry-honey-juice mixture ahead of time and shake individual portions as guests arrive. It pairs nicely with grilled shrimp, citrus-forward salads, or light desserts like berry tarts, since the fruit and spice notes in the glass echo what's already on the plate.

Why People Like It

Part of the appeal of What's Kraken? is simply the name — it's memorable, a little silly, and gives bartenders an easy conversation starter. But the drink holds up on its own merits too: it's a fresh, fruit-forward cocktail that doesn't rely on a long shopping list of obscure ingredients, and the spiced rum base gives it more depth than a typical vodka-and-juice shooter. If you enjoy the rum cocktail category broadly, our guide to classic rum cocktails is a good next stop, and if you're curious about dialing in your own syrups at home, our piece on making simple syrup from scratch covers the technique in detail. For more background on the drink's origins, Liquor.com is a great resource for exploring other spiced-rum-based recipes in the same family.