Sweet And Sour Drinks - Degroff

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cocktailcorner by Dale DeGroff

sweet

&

sour drinks

THE BENCHMARK COCKTAILS

f your bar has made the big step to fresh juice sour drinks and you are having trouble with the recipes, join the club. Sweet and sour drinks still remain the biggest challenge for bartenders. They are truly the drinks that separate the professional from the student. The biggest mistake that bartenders make in this category is producing drinks that appeal to their tastes instead of the palates of the general public. The average consumer won’t tolerate a sour drink. Test your recipes on managers and colleagues before going live with them. It’s essential to review the details of the process, like the strength of the simple syrup and the consistency of syrup preparation, from bartender to bartender.

I

MY RECIPE Here is the formula I arrived at after much thought and feedback from countless customers and the formula I have used successfully for years: 3/4 oz. sour 1 oz. sweet 1 1/2 to 2 oz. strong Plug that into a Whiskey Sour, for example, and we get: 3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice 1 oz. simple syrup* 1 1/2 oz. American Whiskey (Scotch is an option but Whiskey Sours are generally blended or straight American and

lar is 50 brix, or half sugar and half water, and the rich is two parts sugar to one part water. BACK IN THE DAY When I started my exploration of fresh fruit drinks in 1984 at the insistence of my boss and mentor Joe Baum in New York City, I started by exploring old bar books and many of them prescribed the rich formula two to one. Remember, a typical drink was much smaller when those books were written because many of these drinks were served in a small 3 to 4 ounce cocktail glass. A typical recipe would be: 1/2 oz. rich simple syrup 3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice 1 oz. of the spirit

I would recommend a good bourbon like Maker’s Mark or Woodford Reserve).

*Let’s get to specifics about simple syrup and not the store-bought variety. There are two recipes for simple syrup that most bars use: regular simple and rich simple. The regu-

After shaking, the drink would nicely fill the small glass. But when I tried that formula, I hit a snag; my cocktail glass measured 8 ounces. I was constrained by management to use maximum two ounces of spirit to produce the sour style drinks. I tried

to use the rich syrup with the following recipe for a Whiskey Sour: 1/2 oz. rich simple syrup 3/4 oz. lemon juice 2 oz. of American whiskey Even after shaking with ice and adding up to an ounce of water, the drink was sorry looking and unbalanced in the big 8 ounce glass. It looked stingy. I tried bumping the lemon juice to 1 ounce and the simple syrup to 3/4 ounce and the drink looked better, but the lemon took over and the resulting drink was way out of balance on the acid side. The solution I found was to create more volume with the ingredient that added sweetness but not flavor - the simple syrup. I changed the simple syrup recipe to one to one and switched the sweet and sour ingredients in the recipe, arriving at the following: 3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice 1 oz. simple syrup (50 brix) 2 oz. of American whiskey With 3 3/4 oz. of over-all liquid before shaking, the drink looked great in the big glass. After I shook it with ice, I got the additional ounce of water, an important ingredient in any cocktail. It looked great; I got volume and a well-balanced drink! All recipes are just the starting point, because the final arbiter of taste is the person across the bar. In the case of the sourstyle drinks, there is a wide latitude of preference, but the rule of thumb is almost all drinkers will tolerate a slightly over the line sweet drink, but almost none will tolerate a sour drink. Fresh lemon and lime juice are unforgiving and a small over-use will result in an undrinkable potion.


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Recipes TOM COLLINS 1 1/2 oz. gin 3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice 1 oz. simple syrup 2 oz. club soda Shake the first three ingredients well with ice and strain into a Collins or chimney glass and top with the sparkling water. Garnish with a flag (orange slice and a cherry or in English fashion with a lemon slice). Note: adding mint leaves to a Tom Collins makes a pleasing variation on this drink. MARGARITA 3/4 oz. fresh squeezed lime juice 1 oz. Cointreau 1/2 oz. simple syrup 1 1/2 oz. tequila (100% blue agave plata)

Assemble all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake well to a slow ten count. Strain into the serving glass of choice (rocks glass or cocktail glass if served without ice). Prepare the serving glass by frosting half of the outside rim with Kosher or margarita salt. Never use iodized table salt; it is much too salty!

BOURBON STONE SOUR (also known as a California Sour) 1 1/2 oz. bourbon 1 oz. simple syrup 3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice 1 oz. fresh orange juice Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry.