In honor of National Bourbon Heritage Month, we’re all about a whiskey sour. Here are five we love.
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.
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
Squeeze your own citrus. Bottled juice is the single fastest way to make a sour taste flat. We like the citrus squeezer sold by Crate & Barrel, which is both thorough and sturdy, but you do you.
Let the syrup carry the body. In a sour you have citrus for acid and spirit for backbone, which leaves the sweetener to supply texture and finish. That is exactly the job Traditional Proof Syrup is built for — raw cane sugar gives it weight that 1:1 simple syrup cannot match, so the drink holds together instead of thinning out at the end.
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
- 2 oz Bourbon
- ¾ oz Traditional Proof Syrup
- ¾ oz Fresh Lemon Juice
- 1 Egg White (Optional)
- Dash of Bitters & Luxardo Cherry to Garnish
Cocktail Recipe Steps
- Dry shake bourbon, Proof Syrup, lemon juice, and egg white without ice.
- Add ice and shake again until well chilled.
- Double-strain into a chilled coupe.
- Garnish with a dash of bitters and a Luxardo cherry.
Maple Bacon Whiskey Sour
Ingredients
- 2 oz Bourbon
- ¾ oz Maple Bacon Proof Syrup
- ¾ oz Fresh Lemon Juice
- Lemon Twist to Garnish
Cocktail Recipe Steps
- Shake bourbon, Proof Syrup, and lemon juice with ice.
- Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass.
- Garnish with lemon twist.
Rosemary Whiskey Sour
Ingredients
- 2 oz Bourbon
- ¾ oz Traditional Proof Syrup
- ¾ oz Fresh Lemon Juice
- 1 Rosemary Sprig, lightly clapped between your palms
- 1 Egg White (Optional)
- Rosemary Sprig to Garnish
Cocktail Recipe Steps
- Drop the clapped rosemary sprig into the shaker with the bourbon and let it sit two minutes.
- Add Proof Syrup, lemon juice, and egg white; dry shake, then shake again with ice.
- Double-strain into a chilled coupe.
- Garnish with a fresh rosemary sprig.
Brown Derby
Ingredients
- 2 oz Bourbon
- ½ oz Black Walnut Proof Syrup
- 1 oz Fresh Grapefruit Juice
- Grapefruit Twist to Garnish
Cocktail Recipe Steps
- Shake bourbon, Proof Syrup, and grapefruit juice with ice.
- Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass.
- Garnish with grapefruit twist.
The classic calls for honey. Black Walnut does the same rounding job with a toasted edge that suits bourbon and grapefruit even better.
Gold Rush
Ingredients
- 2 oz Bourbon
- ¾ oz Traditional Proof Syrup
- ¾ oz Fresh Lemon Juice
- Lemon Peel to Garnish
Cocktail Recipe Steps
- Shake bourbon, Proof Syrup, and lemon juice with ice.
- Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass.
- Garnish with lemon peel.
Three ingredients, nothing to hide behind. We broke the whole thing down in our Gold Rush guide.
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.