This Bar’s Rainbow Shots Have TikTok Mesmerized

A Texas bar is going viral for pouring a row of rainbow-colored shots.

A TikTok user named Makayla Alinda posted a video of the rainbow shots at Bullpen Bar & Grill in Kingsville, Texas, and the clip has exploded on TikTok. It has amassed more than 3 million views and 150,000 likes, with viewers fascinated by the way a single pour produces a lineup of shots ranging from blue and green to yellow, orange and red.

@makaylaolivarez Rainbow shots 🌈 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜 #bartok #bartender #shots @BullpenTX ♬ Yo no Quiero agua – D Jam Saw & Anthony Ready & Yeigo

The effect is especially satisfying to watch.

Thanks to the way the different liquids are layered before pouring, as the bartender pours, the first shot comes out bright blue. The color of each shot changes through green, yellow and several shades of orange before ending with a deep red shot. It’s essentially a liquid rainbow being poured one shot at a time.

One commenter joked, “So who ever gets the blue gets only mixer😂.” Alinda responded that the blue portion is blue curaçao, meaning there is alcohol in the first shot.

Others questioned the opposite end of the rainbow.

“Looks cool but not drinkable,” one person wrote. “The last one is pure grenadine.”

Another commenter suggested that the shots aren’t meant to be divided among several people in the first place. The idea, they noted, is for one person to take the entire rainbow, since the individual pours don’t contain the same amount of liquor.

The rainbow-shot technique has been around for years. Traditional recipes typically use ingredients such as grenadine, orange juice, vodka and blue curaçao, with additional mixers sometimes added. The liquids are layered according to their different densities, allowing them to remain separated in a mixing vessel before being poured rapidly into a line of shot glasses.

As the mixture moves through the glasses, the proportions of the different layers change, creating different colors from one shot to the next. The result is a rainbow effect without having to make seven completely separate drinks.

The technique has been documented online for well over a decade. Tipsy Bartender published a rainbow-shot video in 2011 that has since generated more than 11 million views on YouTube, while cocktail recipes describing the same color-changing pour have been circulating for years.

So Bullpen Bar & Grill didn’t invent the rainbow shot. But its version has found a new audience on TikTok, where the mesmerizing pour has inspired plenty of people to wonder whether they could recreate it themselves.

“I wanna learn how to do this just for funsies,” one commenter wrote.

Others were simply there for the spectacle.

“😍🌈 so cute!!!”

Whether all seven shots taste equally good is another question entirely. Traditional recipes can leave the final red shot heavily influenced by grenadine, which adds a significant amount of sweetness, while the earlier shots can have different balances of spirits and mixers. Some cocktail recipes even recommend changing the proportions to make the individual shots more balanced.

But that’s arguably beside the point; rainbow shots are a visual spectacle, designed to make people stop and watch. And with more than 3 million TikTok views, Bullpen Bar 7 Grill’s colorful pour is doing exactly that.