Revel in it.We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, The simple combination of lemon, sugar and barrel aged whiskey is one of life’s greatest culinary pleasures. It is a standby that requires only three ingredients, and can be made almost anywhere-and probably has been. It is a survivor that’s managed to stay in the public consciousness from the earliest days of mixed drinks to today’s renaissance. Riff all you want, but cherish the classic. Or you can do what I did in my Amethyst Sour: all of the above.Įxperimenting and having fun with the form is, in a way, a historical practice-though once you stray too far from the traditional combination of whiskey, sugar, and lemon, you transform a whiskey sour into a new thing worthy of a different name. Even just a dash of bitters can quickly change this old workhorse into something new and shiny. In contemporary mixology this is often done by “splitting the base,” in which a bartender replaces part of the core spirit of the drink with another kind of distillate. Or for an alternative sweet factor, try substituting a flavored syrup like raspberry-a quick stroll through the old cocktail books will demonstrate how much mileage this can get you.Īdding nontraditional spirits to a classic is its own time-honored tradition. Potato Head) can move the sour in many directions, as seen historically in a classic whiskey daisy-where the sugar is swapped out for a sweet orange liqueur. The common bartender trick of swapping out ingredients (a move we call Mr. Such a simple structure can yield a wide range of results, and switching out the whiskey is only the beginning of the fun you can have with your whiskey sour at home. Balance means harmonizing two of our tastes-sweet and sour-with the proof and flavor of a base spirit. Potato Headīalance is a grossly overused word when it comes to cocktails, but when people use it correctly they’re often talking about a sour. Hell, sometimes I splash a little club soda in there too. (An honest look through the canon of classic cocktails will show you that any permutation thereof is entirely appropriate.) With some whiskeys, I like the body and texture that an egg white brings to the table, while sometimes I just want something closer to boozy lemonade. (Insert health disclaimer here: raw egg is not recommended for various groups, you likely know who you are.) I’ve heard a lot of snotty opinions about these options, and there was a time when a specific version-with an egg white and up-was often considered to be the proper whiskey sour. Once they choose their whiskey, guests then decide if they want their cocktail “up” or “on the rocks,” and whether they’d like an egg white. When I train a bartender, I teach them to ask guests a series of questions to help them quickly clarify what they want in a whiskey sour. Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Judy Haubert To egg white or not to egg white? How to serve a whiskey sour? There’s precedent for an egg white, and precedent for skipping it. The 19th century’s most famous bartender was probably better at cribbing drink recipes than he was at inventing them.) (This is typical of the recipes in this foundational tome. Sours were already a thing when Jerry Thomas included them-along with their close cousin, the fix-in the world’s first cocktail book, his 1862 Bartender’s Guide. There might not be much mystique, but there’s plenty of legacy to this stalwart. Yes, people love drinks with cool stories shrouded in the murk of history, but the whiskey sour tells you what it is plainly. The whiskey sour arguably kept a bit of American bar culture alive in a way that the mighty negroni and old-fashioned could not. The whiskey sour survived Prohibition, the cocktail dark ages of the mid-20th century, and even the flair of the 1980s cocktail scene. After all, the catering bartender at your cousin’s wedding probably couldn’t turn out a boulevardier or sbagliato, but I’m willing to bet they could serve up the whiskey sour that got you through it. Don’t let its ubiquity devalue it: You might feel real suave when you’re playing “stump the bartender” by requesting some obscure gem from the annals of mixology, but there’s no shame in holding the everyday standards dear. There are few classic cocktails more important than the whiskey sour.
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