Latest / Into The Barchive / The Whiskey Sour: A Cocktail Blueprint From Classic to Gold Rush
Transcript
- ITB: To the bark eye where the past comes alive. Tales Let them Jive. Welcome to the Barkive. Welcome back, Barkabists, and welcome to Into the Barkhive, the podcast where we dive deep into the stories, people, and cocktails that shape the way we drink. I'm Tim Wright, mixologist, above average curious drinker, and your slightly tipsy tour guide through this booze history. And I'm Dr. Blake Jones, historian and certified specialist of spirits, here to pour out the stories behind what's in your class. And today we're talking about one of the greatest foundational cocktails, the whiskey sour. You know, it's a drink that somehow manages to be timeless and endlessly adaptable. It's been served in grand hotel bars, neighborhood taverns, cotton Cocktail lounges and home bars around the world. It is simple. It's whiskey. It's citrus. It's sugar. But within that simplicity, there's an entire blueprint for understanding this cocktail. Yeah, because the whiskey sour isn't just a recipe, it's a category, it's a technique. It's a reminder that some of the greatest cocktails in history are built on balance. It's sweet, it's sour, and it is strong. Three ingredients that have been creating harmony in the glass for centuries. And today we're gonna make two versions. First we'll go with the traditional whiskey sour, including the optional but iconic egg white. Yes sir. Then we'll look at a modern descendant, the Gold Rush, a 21st century cocktail that strips the sour down to its essential elements and lets honey and whiskey take the center stage. So grab yourself your favorite glass Pick up your shaker and let's get into the bark ive. Our first cocktail is the classic whiskey sour. So in our small mixing gin, we're gonna take two ounces of Nelson Brothers Classic bourbon. So they're a local producer ⁓ here from where we're filming in Nashville. So great bourbon company there. So two ounces of the Nelson Classic. From there, we're gonna add three quarters of an ounce. Of lemon juice? For our sweetener, just basic simple syrup, three quarters of an ounce. And for the final ingredient, we're going to add an egg white. This ingredient wasn't part of the original whiskey sour, but was added not just to give the drink that signature like foamy head on top. It affects the entire texture of the drink throughout, giving it a much silkier mouthfeel. From there, we'll ice down. our tin and we're gonna do a reverse dry shake. So I'm gonna shake all these ingredients on ice first for 10 to 15 seconds. Alright, so there I'm gonna break the seal. Some people will do a dry shape first. ⁓ I just like the reverse dry because you get the ⁓ tin cold because sometimes on a dry shake the ⁓ there's not a great seal and it can get kind of messy. So I am straining all the liquid from the big tin into the small tin. I'm gonna take the ice that's in my big tin and just give it a quick toss and get rid of it. From there, I'm going to do the dry shape portion now. So we're gonna shake again. And what we're doing here is we're really getting that egg white to froth in a sense. We're whipping it by doing this shake. And so that's going to more evenly distribute the egg white throughout the cocktail. You're going to create that really attractive foamy head on the top of the whiskey sour the longer you do the dry shake. So I'm going to separate the tins there. I'm going to take out a big rocks glass with ice and put some ice in it before I stream. And from here you could directly pour. I'm just gonna do a strain because sometimes if part of the egg white hasn't gotten thoroughly beaten and incorporated, that might not be pleasant mouthfeel-wise. But ⁓ for the garnish, we're doing a flag. So I've got a lemon wheel with a cherry in between, and we have our classic whiskey sour cheers. The modern classic gold rush. Much like the whiskey sour, same ingredients other than we've swapped out the sweetener. Let's build it in the tin. We're gonna start with two ounces of our Nelson Greenbrier classic. The citrus, once again, lemon juice. Three quarters of an ounce. And simple enough, we go to sweetener. We're going to a honey syrup. Three quarters of an ounce. All into our small tin. Let's get some ice and get to shaking. Icenter of tin. Pour and seal. Shake. into a beautifully pearled glass. Let's put some ice. In stream. And this one? It's a Fresh lemon peel. Espresso oil across the top. Don't snap it like I did because you have big goofy fingers. But if you do, make sure it's sexy because you did it. And now we have our gold rush. Now that we've built the cocktail, let's build the context. Before we get into the whiskey sour, right? Specifically the whiskey sour, we need to go back to the concept that we ⁓ talked about in episode two, right? The sour template. Yeah, because one of the things we wanted to establish early on and into the barchive is that cocktails aren't just isolated recipes. They're parts of families. They're conversations between ingredients that bartenders have Been those conversations have been they've been having for generations. So the sour is one of the most important families in the cocktail history. Exactly. And when we talked about the sour template, we broke it down to its simplest form a base spirit, a sour component, and a sweet component. Spirit, citrus sugar. Exactly what we have here. That's the foundation. Yep. But within the Those three ingredients is almost infinite possibilities. And this is where we start to see the difference between a cocktail, I would say cocktail recipes and cocktail structures. A recipe tells you exactly what to make, right? But a structure a structure teaches you like how the drink works. Exactly. The whiskey sour isn't just a cocktail, it's an example of a blueprint that appears across the history of bartending. We've seen it with the daiquiri that takes rum and pairs it with lime and sugar, different spirits, different personality. But it's the same conversation that's happening in our glasses with the whiskey sour. And this ⁓ the reason this formula works, like it has worked throughout history. Yeah, and and that's one thing is like this isn't just like a modern notion of cocktail families and things like that. Because before modern refrigeration, global supply chains, bartenders and travelers had to think practically about ingredients. Yeah, because like citrus, right? One of the main things here, it provided freshness, acidity to the cocktail. The sugar helps like preserve and balance all three flavors of the cocktail, and the spirit gives it its base foundation. Yeah, and there's something very human about the sour. Especially if you think about like drinking whiskey, especially a bold spirit like bourbon or rye, adding citrus and sugar, it's not about hiding the whiskey. No, it's about creating a balance. Yeah, the goal isn't to make whiskey taste like something else, it's to reveal other parts of what's already there. A well-maced sour is a study in like I think music harmony, right? It's just too much citrus. And it becomes too sharp. Too much sugar, and it becomes flabby, fat, heavy, right? Too much spirit, and then just the balance completely disappears. It becomes the bully in the and the bar. Yeah. So the bartender's job is, as we have stated back in episode two, bartender's job is to find that perfect balance where everything comes together in harmony. Yeah. And that brings us to today's cocktail. But Because the whiskey sour is one of the clearest examples of the sour template in action. It's a drink that takes a simple structure and shows just how much personality you can create from it. And then when we when you made the gold rush, we see how modern bartenders took the exact same sour template and asked a simple question. What if we change one piece? One thing. We just went bloop. And so simple syrup becomes honey syrup. Yep. I could have added an egg white to mine. You couldn't have. I chose not to. Absolutely. Well, and you know, that's how cocktail history moves forward. It's not about throwing away tradition, but it's understanding the tradition. The sour's that conversation between ingredients. ⁓ and the balance point can actually change depending on the spirit, right? Yeah, like right now, if we would have taken our same cocktails. Done exactly the same thing that we have. Now switch out that ⁓ Nelson Greenbrier classic for hell, they're they're rye. The their Nelson Greenbrier rye. We technically have two different cocktails. Yeah. And a rye whiskey sour, when you think about rye whiskey, it has a little more spice nuts to it than bourbon does. So with a rye whiskey sour, maybe you want more sweetness. Yeah. But let's say you use a weeded bourbon, like a maker's mark or a weller or a larceny, they're gonna be lean into the softer, sweeter flavors. So maybe you need a little more lemon juice to punch it up. And then maybe if you got something that's high age, you know, you're try, you know, you're like, I'm gonna do something fun with my 18-year bourbon. Or Instead of using something in that 90 to 100 proof range, you're like, I want to pull out a hundred and twenty-five-proof bookers or something like that. And that's gonna change the ratios too. It's all about the ingredients that you're using in the cocktail to bring them to a specific balance, to that specific harmony. Absolutely. I'm gonna say let's jump into the history of what. The whiskey sour is. Now that we understand that structure of the sour template, let's actually talk about the drink itself. Yeah, I mean the whiskey sour has a distinctly American story. And what makes it so interesting is that comes from a time when cocktails were still being defined. You know, we think of cocktails as this vast universe, but in the 19th century, bartenders are figuring out the language of mixed drinks. Yeah. So the whiskey sour's part of that conversation. Going back to the whole the, you know, instead of cocktails you had cocktails, julepes, cobblers, fixes, fizzes, sours. And so now what made the sour pop like this? Where where did this specific one? So the first printed appearance of the whiskey sour comes from the eighteen sixty two bartender's guide by Jerry Thomas. Yes sir. Right. The Thomas is, as we've mentioned, one of the most important figures in cocktail history. He's not just a bartender. He's the author of the very first, like, dedicated cocktail book. Okay. And he helped turn bartending into a craft. And so the whiskey sour appears alongside some of these other foundational drinks from what we consider the era of classic cocktails. Now you've said before it's worth remembering that during this piss ⁓ period of time that whiskey itself was changing, correct? What's going on there? So while rye whiskey dominates a lot of the Northeast here, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland area, bourbon is emerging and developing its identity in Kentucky and the South. Okay, so regionally now we're getting two different brown spirits. Yes. So and part of it is what grows where? Rye doesn't grow really well in Kentucky. Corn does. Yes. So rye grows much better in Pennsylvania and New York. Yes. And so that is why it's kind of like called a whiskey sour, not a bourbon sour. Because they were using whatever ingredient they had available to them in that specific region. Yeah, and so this is a way to not only showcase those regional whiskies, but make them more approachable. So the whiskey sour did exactly that. Again, the template itself lends the opportunity for a bourbon to be used down south and a rye to be used up north. Exactly. And before the cocktail really becomes a symbol of sophistication, it's also very practical. Travelers, sailors, and workers understood That citrus can bring freshness to spirits that could be harsh or monotonous because not everything was well crafted. ⁓ the lemon juice softens the sharpness of the barrel aging of the whiskey, but doesn't mask it. It accents it in different ways. So I'm guessing that's why we started with the classic today, like building off of that template and then showing how later on it can evolve. Yeah, but because before you can reinvent a drink. You've got to understand the original. And the whiskey sour is one of those cocktails that kind of teaches you everything about this family. So ⁓ you mentioned bringing freshness, sharpness, ⁓ like being very regional in that. So the sour wasn't just fashionable and it's kind of solved this problem. Yeah. And so like this is an era when we're moving from large format punches, like when you go to taverns to people going to bars to have single serving drinks. Like some of the original whiskey sour recipes would have me large measures of water in them and less lemon juice. So it's a sweeter, like punch style drink or a diluted punch. So when did this change? So there were updates along the way. In eighteen eighty-seven, Jerry Thomas's revised bartender's guide had a dash of orange curacal in his whiskey sour. Then the float of red wine that is characteristic of what we call the New York sour. Yep, that emerges in the eighteen eighties. In the nineteen twenties, the egg white is introduced to the whiskey sour. And you know, I get it. And I know you're you're we talked about this in the sour episode. Yes. I'm one of those I'll eat an egg if I have to. I prefer not to. Flips are still a weird. genre for me, but I'll drink the cocktail because it's a really good thing. But still, egg white cocktails, the thought of it still gives me the heebie-jeebies. Yeah. But once it's executed, it's a dang good drink. Yeah, I mean, and historically eggs were not unusual in drinks. They help create texture and richness. And the egg white transforms the whiskey sour into from a bright, refreshing drink into something with a completely different character. That smooth cream mouthfeel. Yeah. The texture softens the acidity. It gives the cocktail a luxurious sort of feel. And it changes our perception. Like as I was here sitting sipping on this whiskey sour, it's like, wow, like it has, even though there's no amaretto or almond in it, it's creating some of those notes. Yeah, as it starts to mix with your lemon on that one, they combine and give that together. I think some of the bourbons coming through and helping that. But yeah, you it it will continue to evolve as the drink starts to rest together, right? It's still once it's done shaking, it's still while we've made it up this mixture, right? It still needs to marry. It needs time to kind of settle down. Absolutely. ⁓ but like so many classic cocktails, the whiskey sour had, let's say, a complicated 20th century. ⁓ prohibition. Yeah, the the sour survives prohibition. Okay. It appears in mid-century cocktail culture, but unfortunately it becomes associated with convenience products. Okay. Aka sour mix. Yeah, yeah. Or Like I mean you can still find this in some grocery stores and liquor stores, like a whiskey sour mix where it's like sour mix with a foaming agent in it like to emulate the egg white. So for many people the the problem with the whiskey sour is their first experience was not with fresh lemon juice and simple syrup and careful balance. It's a sweet ne it's like a neon yellow version of the bottle. Just add whiskey and shake, and there's your whiskey sour. We got them from a dive bar and it was not a balanced thing. It wasn't necessarily the ingredient because it was that plastic whiskey sour mix. It was just Not right proportion, not balance coming out of the mix itself. Like it wa it was good to get to slam down one or two and then later on you felt that. Absolutely. I can't say that I've after one or two of these that I get that same nasty feeling. Yeah. At least this is clean. It is. And it's one of those things where the modern cocktail revival helps Bartenders and drinkers rediscover what made the whiskey sour special in the first place. The fresh ingredients. Fresh ingredients. We have we we say use fresh citrus. We cannot like ex like fress this enough. Using a fresh lime a lemon in this cocktail is different than using even a a good bottled lime juice. The oils that come through you pressing and in the moment or A few hours before, like the room we're recording in right now smells like lemon. No. Both of these were lemon strong, both fresh lemon. It just it pop it's I mean, still to this moment, also oils on our hands. But the guy behind the camera right now recording this goes, that's a lot of lemon in this in this room. And we're like, yeah, there's just two cocktails, buddy. Yeah. So it makes a huge difference. Fresh ingredients instead of the bottled crab. Bingo. From the fresh ingredients, it actually allows you to do balancing easier. Because not depending on what time of year, that speck that we just made may need a change. Maybe I got a sweeter lemon. Maybe I got a tartar lemon. Maybe it needs more of my ⁓ honey syrup. Maybe it needs less. Yeah. Just because it worked one time doesn't mean it's always gonna work. So that's the other thing about understanding the balance. Yeah. And then When you do that, you truly have to understand the uniqueness of each roll of those three components in your cocktail hold. Making the whiskey sour is going to be a fine dance that if you just screw around with, sometimes you're gonna mess it up. So be be intentful. Be have a purpose when you do it. Yeah, and this cocktail renaissance also inspired bartenders to ask, what if we take the sour formula and rethink it? Which brings us to the gold rush. And you know, as you alluded to earlier, the gold rush is a great example of how bartenders work with tradition. Yeah, man. I I love the the fact that the switching out of the simple syrup and giving somebody that that permission to to have something that they like. I'm I like honey. I like a honey syrup cocktail. It's just easy, especially during the time that you can get fresh honey, yeah, like everywhere. Mm go ahead and grab it, make a big big batch of it because it's not gonna go bad any time soon. Yeah. Well, ⁓ just a little history of how we got there. Yep. Is this drink, the gold rush, is associated with that cocktail renaissance of the early two thousands. Okay. And it's really focused on taking classic ideas and improving them rather than just like, here's your classic whiskey sour. And the gold rush, kind of another circle back to an older episode. Yes, sir. was created at Sasha Petrosky's famous bar Milk and Honey in two thousand one. Okay. But it wasn't technically created by Sasha Petrosky. It wasn't created by a bartender, but by someone sitting on the other side of the bar, a guy named TJ Siegel, who worked in restaurants and bars in New York. He was a childhood friend of Petrovsky's, and he would oftentimes come to Milk and Honey, like after his shift and Get a drink, and his go-to drink was a bourbon sour. Okay. And he liked his bourbon sour, no egg white. And he liked it served on the rocks. Cause sometimes a whiskey sour could be served in a coup. But he wanted his on ice in a rocks glass. And he came in and he and Sasha were having a conversation. And Petroski told Siegel about this new honey syrup. That he had been workshopping ⁓ to make the classic honeysuckle cocktail. ⁓ is that like daicry with honey syrup? Yes. So again, the same substitution philosophy. The honeysuckle was pre-prohibition classic. But ⁓ Siegel was like, huh, that's interesting. He's like, hey, why don't you make me my normal bourbon sour, but instead of simple syrup, why don't you try this new honey syrup in there? And then Sasha made the drink for him, presented it. Single, something's like, Wow, that's really good. Well, I imagine because it's not in the lore, but he had to have been like Eureka, right? Because of the gold rush. Well, and single has said the name is meant to be cheeky and playful, may have like hidden layers of meaning to it. ⁓ but what's interesting is is milk and honey. And a successor of our Attaboy, they do not have printed cocktail menus. They rely on conversations between bartenders and guests. And then from that conversation, the bartender like makes what's called a bartender's choice cocktail to kind of suit the flavor preferences and wishes of the guests. And the gold rush soon became a go-to bartender's choice for whiskey lovers. And as we discuss in our episode about Sasha Petrovsky, his approach and his cocktails, such as the Gold Rush, spread throughout the network of bars around the country, including Little Branch, Dutch Kills, Violet Hour, The Varnish. The Gold Rush would actually inspire another ⁓ milk and honey bartender, Sam Ross, to create a variation of the gold rush. Uh-huh. I know where you're going with this. Does it have scotch in it? It does. Okay. So instead of bourbon, add scotch, keep the lemon juice, and take the honey syrup and add a little something extra. A little spice, a little ginger. Right? And then on top, ⁓ maybe just another little amp up of flavor. And ⁓ add a little float of smoky peaty scotch. And they called it. The penicillin. And so Sam Ross, ⁓ and the penicillin is kind of the most famous cocktail invented at Milk and Honey. Sam Ross, who invented the drink, was inspired by the gold rush to then develop a few years later the penicillin. From a basic template of sweet citrus, I mean ⁓ yeah, sweet citrus and booze. Spirit, we had the sour, and it leads all the way to the penicillin. Yes. Which is, I would say, yes, a very modern cocktail that has polar opposites. You're either a fan or you're not. I don't I don't think I've ever met anybody that's kind of in between and on the fits for that. Yeah. the whiskey sour has proof that sometimes the simplest cocktails tell the biggest stories. And as we've seen, a little whiskey, citrus, and sugar opened the door to an entire world of drinks, from classic whiskey sours like mine to a gold rush like the one Tim made. that brings to the end of this episode. Please like, scr subscribe, follow us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. ⁓ for those that are podcast listeners, go to either the audio or the video versions of Spotify or Apple. And next time on End to the Barchive, we're traveling somewhere a little more tropical. Okay, we're going to be exploring one of those, ⁓ the more one of the most influential, I would say, cocktails antique history, the Mai Tai. Yeah, and we're gonna be talking about the origins of the Mai Thai, its creators, its connection to Polynesian-inspired cocktail culture, and why this rum-based classic remains one of the most debated and beloved drinks. In history. So until next time, keep exploring the past one drink at a time. As we dive deeper into the bark.