How to Prepare Your CoffeeANZAC Gunfire
What you need
Ingredients run from the top of the cup to the bottom; the last item is the bottom layer. Values are normalized to a true 100% stack.
- Grind
- Medium-coarse — urn-brewed filter or plunger coffee, whatever the hall already has on
- Water temperature
- Coffee hot from the urn; rum at room temperature
- Total time
- 4 min
Gunfire is the rum-laced mug that follows the dawn service on ANZAC Day — the one morning a year an RSL hall pours a shot into the coffee urn's output without anyone blinking. The drink itself is older and British: 1890s army slang for a tot of rum served into black tea before a cold, early start, revived every Christmas morning in barracks since. Australia and New Zealand kept the name and the rum but swapped in coffee, and as café culture overtook the tea urn, coffee became the gunfire breakfast's default rather than its variant. It is drunk standing, in company, between the dawn service and the cooked breakfast that follows — a tradition, not a cocktail, and nobody measures the rum with a jigger.
Steps
Brew a strong pot or urn of black coffee
RSL halls serve this from whatever's already brewing after the dawn service — a plunger or urn-filter coffee strong enough that a nip of rum rounds it out instead of just watering it down with liquor.
Pour a nip of dark rum into the hot mug
There's no fixed historical measure — soldiers and RSL branches have always added rum by eye, not by jigger — but a standard nip (about 30 ml) is the closest thing to a modern default without turning the mug into a measured cocktail.
Stir once and drink it hot, standing with company
Gunfire is drunk fast and warm right after the service, usually while catching up with people you haven't seen since last ANZAC Day — it cools quickly in a cold morning, and the point is the company as much as the coffee.
Cup ready
Time to enjoy your ANZAC Gunfire
Brewed the way they do it in Australia. What next?
Tips
- Some RSL branches pour the rum into milk instead of coffee, or offer all three — tea, coffee, and milk — side by side; coffee has simply become the most common base as tea's popularity has faded.
- A splash is traditional and a generous tot is not unusual — this is poured by feel at a trestle table, not from a jigger, so don't second-guess a cup that looks a little stronger than the last one.
Common mistakes
- Measuring the rum like a cocktail recipe — gunfire has never had a fixed ratio; a precisely jiggered pour is a modern bar's gunfire cocktail, not an RSL hall's gunfire breakfast.
- Serving it over ice with garnish — this is a hot mug drunk standing on a cold morning, not a chilled bar drink; lemon wedges and cinnamon sticks belong to the cocktail-recipe version, not the tradition.
FAQ
Is gunfire originally a tea drink or a coffee drink?
Tea, originally. The British Army mixed rum into black tea as 'gunfire' from at least the 1890s, serving it to troops before a cold dawn start — a practice that carried into Christmas-morning tradition in barracks and, separately, into the Australian and New Zealand ANZAC Day dawn-service breakfast. Tea was the standard accompaniment for decades, but as café culture grew, coffee overtook it as the more common base at most RSL gunfire breakfasts today.
Why is this tied specifically to ANZAC Day?
The 'gunfire breakfast' became a fixture of ANZAC Day commemorations from the 1930s onward, served between the dawn service and the hot breakfast that follows — almost every RSL club now serves one free to guests. Historian Dr Samantha Owen (Curtin University) traces the custom to officers serving rum-laced tea to ordinary soldiers in recognition of their service, a gesture that became folded into the day's own rituals rather than staying a purely military one.
How much rum actually goes in?
There's no fixed historical ratio — accounts describe everything from a token splash to a generous tot, poured by habit rather than measured. A commercial modern reference point is about one cup of coffee to a 30 ml nip of rum, which is also the Australian standard spirit measure — a reasonable everyday default, not a historically codified one.
The Atlas
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