Edible and Audible

Ahh, drinking. We’ve been through some crazy times, both good and perhaps less than good. We’ve shared some laughs, shed some tears. Our relationship has changed over the years, starting with white-hot lust over anyone who’d cast a glance our way (i.e. piss-poor flavored beer or sickeningly sweet schnapps) and gradually matured into a steady, comfortable grown-up relationship consisting of a good beer, a martini, a gin and tonic. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still drink beer and gin and tonics all day long, but at some point I needed something more, something to rekindle a little of that lust of an earlier time without the horrendous hangover or waking up in a cruise ship infirmary.

At some point a few years ago I had the fortune to discover for myself a few of the better cocktail establishments in New York, places where the ingredients you had heard of were used in ways you had never thought of, and the ingredients you hadn’t heard of – mezcal, batavia arrack, genever, house-made bitters, etc – could make your head spin. Fortunately I decided to take the plunge and just started ordering things without any knowledge of their taste, and even more fortunately had excellent bartenders holding my hand along the way. In the wrong hands some of these ingredients could certainly turn you off for life. As I tasted new spirits, gathered wisdom from bartenders, and observed as much technique as my alcohol-fueled brain could handle I finally started to piece together the fundamentals of making a decent drink, the building blocks necessary to not just regurgitate a recipe but to be able to make a well-balanced drink regardless of the ingredients on hand. Keep in mind there is a huge difference in a well-balanced drink and a great drink and I certainly don’t yet make great drinks by any stretch of the imagination. However, you gotta start somewhere and without balance you have no chance of making even a good drink, much less a great one.

That being said, here’s a simple but tasty recipe that showcases the importance of balance in a cocktail, a Gin Sour. My favorite Sour recipe is roughly 3 parts spirit (gin, rum, bourbon, etc) to 1 part acid, generally lemon or lime juice (fresh-squeezed only) and 1 part sweetener, often in the form of simple syrup. You can mix and match spirits, citrus, and sweeteners in a number of combinations and still make a good drink. There are several drink “families” but Sours are among the most versatile and simplest to prepare.

Gin Sour

2 ounces gin (Plymouth would work well here, but a London dry such as Tanqueray or Beefeaters would be fine too)
.75 ounces fresh-squeezed lemon juice
.75 ounces simple syrup (recipe below)

Measure all ingredients and place into a shaker (start with juice and syrup first, if you mess up you don’t ruin the gin!) and then fill with ice (if you can make your own ice in a tray you’ll be doing yourself a huge favor, more on that in a later post). Shake hard for 10 seconds or so or until the shaker feels very cold in your hand. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

FYI, replace the gin with rum and the lemon with lime and you got yourself an original daiquiri – see what I mean?

Simple Syrup

8 oz of sugar (ordinary fine or superfine sugar will do for now)
8 oz of water

Add both to a sealed jar and shake it like it stole something from you for a minute or so. Let it rest a bit and repeat until the sugar looks dissolved. This will keep for about 2 weeks in the fridge.