bourbon – rye – Cold Glass

bourbon – rye

My favorite category, cocktails that rely on American bourbon and rye for backbone.

Whiskey and Barspoons: the Brainstorm Cocktail

The Brainstorm Cocktail, photo © 2017 Douglas M. Ford. All rights reserved..

There is a tongue-in-cheek reference to something called a Brainstorm Cocktail in a 1906 issue of a trade magazine called “The Northwest Druggist”:

The “brainstorm” cocktail is the latest. It consists mainly of cracked ice set aside to thaw.

Druggist humor, I guess.

The real Brainstorm Cocktail came along about ten years later; it’s one of Hugo Ensslin’s pre-Prohibition classics, first published in his Recipes for Mixed Drinks (1916).

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April 27, 2017 12

Whiskey Sours and Embittered Last Words: the Paper Plane Cocktail

The Paper Plane Cocktail, photo © 2016 Douglas M. Ford. All rights reserved.

The first cocktail I learned to make was the Whiskey Sour. I made it with Scotch, which was a very poor choice, but I was just out of college and didn’t know better. It’s gratifying to discover, in retrospect, that even then I had enough wits about me to think that tinkering with the mix might lead to a worthwhile improvement in flavor. It took forever to realize that the problem was the Scotch. Well, it was too much lemon, too, but at least I finally figured it out.

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December 3, 2016 2

Hair of the Dog: the Morning Glory Cocktail

Morning Glory Cocktail, photo© 2016 Douglas M. Ford. All rights reserved.

Hangovers have been around forever, so it’s not surprising that one of the most popular branches of amateur medicine is the hangover “cure.”

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November 18, 2016 3

Dark Horse: The Preakness Cocktail

The Preakness Cocktail, photo © 2016 Douglas M. Ford. All rights reserved.

I’ve never been a follower of American horse racing, but I do enjoy the hype and pageantry of the three-race set known as the “Triple Crown” — in the US, it’s the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.

The Kentucky Derby falls near my birthday, so for decades my birthday partly has been a Derby-watching event, replete with fancy outfits, good hats and, especially, whiskey juleps. The Mint Julep is the universally accepted symbol of the Derby, and the Run for the Roses starts the ice-crushing season right.

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May 21, 2016 5

Another Round of Whiskey Sours: the Ward 8 Cocktail

The Ward 8 Cocktail, photo © 2015 Douglas M. Ford. All riights reserved.

As the saying goes, “myth and legend are the kudzu of history,” and cocktail history is as much overgrown as any.

Today’s case in point: the pre-Prohibition Ward 8 Cocktail, one of the most famous of classic whiskey sour variations.

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July 28, 2015 17

The Diamondback Cocktail

You could think of the Diamondback cocktail as an Old-Fashioned on steroids.

Or at least, that’s what it’s evolving into. It didn’t really start that way.

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March 7, 2015 15

Another Old-Fashioned the hard way: the Conference Cocktail

The Conference Cocktail (detail), photo © 2015 Douglas M. Ford. All rights reserved.

I learned two important things when I first encountered the Saratoga cocktail. For starters, I discovered that I like the Saratoga even more than I like the Manhattan—and that’s saying something.

But more significantly, I discovered that rye whiskey and brandy go astonishingly well together.

And the knowledge of that happy combination led to delight when I came across Brian Miller’s riff on the Old-Fashioned, the Conference cocktail.

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February 18, 2015 2

Short and evil: the Devil’s Soul cocktail

The Devil's Soul Cocktail (detail), photo © 2014 Douglas M. Ford. All rights reserved.

Gaz Regan first published Ted Kilgore’s Devil’s Soul cocktail in 101 Best New Cocktails 2012. As Regan says, it combines “ingredients that absolutely positively do not belong in the same glass,” yet somehow they work together to form a complex and sophisticated success.

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November 21, 2014 4