I’m a bit of a whiskey fiend when it comes to cocktails, so it seems appropriate that we start building the base drinks with a few whiskey ones. A sour, done right, is the absolute business. There’s a couple of tricks to making your Sour extra special, which will translate across all your sours- tequila, whiskey, gin, the basic principles are all the same. You’re looking for several things in a good whiskey sour - balance, smoothness, a good silkiness to the foam, and a little punch. Note: there’s a rather wonderful vegan variant you'll find in an earlier article I’ll link here.
Ingredients
50ml good whiskey - I’m very partial to a Black Bush, there’s a nice honeyed sweetness that really adds to the drink.
25ml fresh lemon juice- either hand squeezed (with one of those devil’s elbow thingies), or the fresh stuff you can buy from your friendly fruit and veg supplier. Fresher is always better.
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters. Cause everything is better with bitters.
1 whole egg white, or 20ml if you’ve prepped a load of whites in advance
5-10ml sugar syrup, for a little sweetness.
Method
Throw all your ingredients into your shaker without ice. Add a little pinch of salt to the mix. As always, start with your juices and work your way up to the spirits, so if you muck up at least you're not tossing the good stuff. Pop your lid on, and shake the life out of it for 5-10 secs or so - this is called a dry shake, and builds the foam and pressure easily as they don’t have to fight against the cold, providing your silkiness and wonderful mouthfeel. Pop the shaker open, fill it with ice, seal it, then shake the absolute life out of it for 10-15 seconds, until the shaker is freezing to your hand. That's your chill, your balance, all tied up beautifully. The whole double-step process is known as a double shake, so you've learned something else today. (You can do what is called a reverse double shake where you do the hard shake - the one with ice-first, then the dry shake. Some (hi Erin!) get a better result this way, so have a play around and see what works for you.
Now, you should have a lovely Double Old Fashioned glass sitting on standby, filled with ice and ready to go. Always have your glass chilled and ready with ice as your first step, because there's absolutely nothing worse than making your drink only to find you’re out of glassware or Ice.
Strain your drink across, and garnish with a wee bit of an orange twist or some lovely bitters art (tutorials here). Boom! Job done!
Enjoy!
Also delightful served ’up’(with no ice, in a N&N glass)
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