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5 Whiskey Sours to Try: Cocktails You Need to Know — Part 1

by Proof Syrup |

In honor of National Bourbon Heritage Month, we’re all about a whiskey sour. Here are five we love.

whiskey sour with orange accents sitting on a kitchen table

A thing you ought to know about cocktails: There are just six to 10 of them in the entire mixed-drink canon.

What?

Yes. The specific number depends on whom you ask or whose book you read, but a basic truth of bartending is that there are really only about six to 10 different cocktails. Once you understand those fundamental recipes, the thinking goes, you’ll understand everything else. Starting with this week’s blog post, we’ll offer tips and recipes for each of those six to 10 cocktails and their variations.

First up, for no particular reason: Sours.

About the Sour

Most simply, a sour is a three-ingredient cocktail made from a spirit, citrus, and sweetener. What makes a sour a sour as opposed to something else is the use of one spirit, instead of a spirit plus a liqueur. For example, a daiquiri (rum, lime juice, simple syrup) is a sour, whereas a margarita (tequila, Cointreau, lime juice, simple syrup) falls into the sidecar category.

Sours comprise a vast assortment of cocktails, some of which contain more than three ingredients, or use multiple forms of the same spirit (two kinds of rum, for example), or include (optional) egg white. Here are some tips for mixing successful sours, and recipes for some of our favorites.

How to Sour Like a Champ

Use fresh citrus juice. If you’re not using Citrus Sour Proof Syrup, squeeze that fruit by hand. We like the citrus squeezer sold by Crate & Barrel, which is both thorough and sturdy, but you do you. 

Use good liquor. Seriously: the citrus and sugar can only go so far toward masking the grossness of terrible hooch, and sometimes they make it worse. Please don’t.

Use egg white, or don’t. A few sour recipes call for egg white. When properly shaken, the egg white creates a rich, silky, creamy texture and an almost meringue-like layer atop your yummy sour cocktail. It’s cool-looking and neat to drink, but the egg white is there for texture and looks, not flavor. If raw egg white squicks you out, no worries; you lose little by skipping it. If you do plan to use egg white, check out our article on shaking vs stirring. 

Serve iced if eggless, up if using egg. This is pretty self-explanatory: If you skip the egg white, serve the cocktail over ice. If you use the egg white, serve the sour “up” — chilled glass, no ice.

Measure everything. No eyeballing, please. Nailing the proportions is key to striking the spirit-acid-sweetness balance that makes sours delicious, and it’s the only way you’ll be able to repeat that perfect cocktail. Mixing by ‘feel’ or guesstimate is not good bartending. Just. Measure. Everything.

Shake it, baby. Sours by definition involve citrus, and that means the proper technique for mixing them is a nice shake — it’s the only way to get that citrus juice and spirit all married up. In case you find yourself shakerless, ‘tis better to improvise than to stir. We like a thermos or mason jar as a shaker stand-in.

Recipes: 5 Whiskey-Based Sours to Try This Weekend

Classic Whiskey Sour

Ingredients
Cocktail Recipe Steps
  1. Shake bourbon, Proof Syrup, and egg white with ice.
  2. Strain into a chilled rocks glass.
  3. Garnish with a dash of bitters and a Luxardo cherry.

Bourbon Basil Sour

Ingredients
  • 2 oz Bourbon
  • 1 oz Basil Proof Syrup
  • ¾ oz Lemon Juice
  • Basil Leaf & Lemon Wheel to Garnish
Cocktail Recipe Steps
  1. Shake bourbon, Proof Syrup, and lemon juice with ice.
  2. Strain into ice-filled rocks glass.
  3. Garnish with basil leaf and lemon wheel.

Rosemary Whiskey Sour

Ingredients
  • 1 ½ oz Bourbon
  • ¾ oz Rosemary Proof Syrup
  • ¾ oz Lemon Juice
  • 1 Egg White (Optional)
  • Dash of Bitters & Luxardo Cherry to Garnish
Cocktail Recipe Steps
  1. Shake bourbon, Proof Syrup, and egg white with ice.
  2. Strain into a chilled rocks glass.
  3. Garnish with a dash of bitters and a Luxardo cherry.

Brown Derby

Ingredients
  • 2 oz Bourbon
  • 1/2 oz Honey Proof Syrup
  • 1 oz Grapefruit Juice
  • Grapefruit Twist to Garnish
Cocktail Recipe Steps
  1. Shake bourbon, Proof Syrup, and grapefruit juice with ice.
  2. Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass.
  3. Garnish with grapefruit twist.

Gold Rush

Ingredients
Cocktail Recipe Steps
  1. Shake bourbon and Proof Syrups with ice.
  2. Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass.
  3. Garnish with lemon peel.

For More Info

We recommend Cocktail Codex by Alex Day, Nick Fauchald, and David Kaplan (with Devon Tarby). The book is structured around the six-cocktail theory of cocktail recipes, and it’s both coffee-table pretty and a fun, useful read.