![]() ![]() Typically, I want a bourbon that has some character, but not so much that it gets in the way of things. There’s just something about the roundness of the stuff that leans up well against the acid of lemon juice. ![]() ![]() The 19th century’s most famous bartender was probably better at cribbing drink recipes than he was at inventing them.)īourbon is my go-to for whiskey sours. (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. We prefer the middle path, but the appropriate measure may ultimately come down to personal taste.There are few classic cocktails more important than the whiskey sour. Most books recommend three-quarters ounce simple syrup, but the amount of lemon juice varies greatly, from a fat ½ ounce ( Liquid Intelligence) to ¾ ounce ( A Spot at the Bar and Death & Co.) to a full ounce ( Speakeasy). The final detail is the balance of sweet to sour. Some versions also recommend a splash of orange juice, or even a bit of angostura bitters floating on top. We like both, but narrowly prefer the rocks glass for it’s simple, workaday style and receptiveness to fun garnishes. Some books recommended serving in a coupe or sour glass, while others opt for a rocks glass with one large cube. The fat from the egg cuts the lemon and whiskey while imparting the drink with a creamy texture and beautiful hazy appearance.Ĭontemporary books are mixed on what kind of glassware to use and how to serve the whiskey sour. It transforms the experience from simple to transcendent. He tries to remain impartial during the instruction and not give away his conclusion, but his thesis is obvious: the thing is way better with egg. In Liquid Intelligence, famed detail freak Dave Arnold prescribes an exercise where the reader makes two whiskey sours: one with egg white and one without. Lately, bartenders have begun challenging this notion, and now bar manuals such as Death and Co., Liquid Intelligence, and A Spot at the Bar all recommend adding an egg white. Until recently, the revived whiskey sour was made the way Jerry Thomas printed it in 1869: with lemon, bourbon, sugar, and a bit of water. There are a few intricacies worth discussing for the more detail oriented of us, most of which will be covered next, but they aren’t really required. It can be made with basically no bar, at any time, and by anybody, even-as Jason Kosmas quips in Speakeasy-“aspiring actors working as bartenders.” The basics for a great whiskey sour are simple: use fresh lemons, decent whiskey, medium sized cubes, and shake for at least 12 seconds. Wondrich jokes “if you want to get a mixologist riled, tell him he’s put too much sugar in his sour,” and yet beyond a few hotly debated intricacies, the drink is devastatingly simple. Like the Martini, this recipe is a simple one capable of occupying the obsession of some great bartenders. ![]() Of course, today the sour has mostly been folded into the broader cocktail category, except at more historically minded bars, and the gin sours and dizzy sours of yesteryear have been whittled away in favor of the family’s most enduring and emblematic member: the whiskey sour. The sour was, as David Wondrich put it in Imbibe, “one of the cordial points of American drinking.” The drink was served with a variety of different bases, dotting menus and the mustaches of thirsty patrons from the mid 1800s until the death of the mixed drink in the 1970s, though if one wants to be a populist they could argue it lived on even then, albeit through the wonderfully gross sour mix epidemic. For many decades the sour-along with its cousins the fizz, julep, and cobbler-commanded a level of popularity that matched even the mighty cocktail. ![]()
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