We are going to make a sour cocktail. A sour is a family of cocktails that are made with a base spirit, a citrus, and a sweetener. This simple simple recipe is going to already allow you to riff and remix and adjust to make something thats tailored for you and your tastes.

We are going to make this cocktail with literally whatever we can find in your kitchen.

Ingredients

• A bottle of liquor
• A lemon or a lime
• Sugar
• Water
• Ice

Tools

There are only two tools we need.

Shaker thingy

Grab a mason jar and lid. If you dont have that, anything you can shake liquids in. I've use a water bottle before, even a coffee thermos.

If you really have nothing with a lid, you can use a cup and a spoon/knife/chopstick to mix at every step that we are shaking.

Measure thingy

Ok, next step, measuring things. Grab a tablespoon. Either a real one, or just a spoon from your kitchen. You can use the top of a bottle. We want the measurement to be about half a ping pong in size. We dont care if it is exactly a tablespoon. We just want the measure to be repeatable and we will make everything work by ratios. From here on this will be called a 1 of the measure thingy or 1m. For example: 1m of sugar.

Building the Cocktail

Grab shaker thingy and measure thingy and lets get started.

Sweet

• Add 1m of sugar into shaker thingy
• Add 1m of warm water into shaker thingy
• Shake this together.

The warm water will help the sugar dissolve. This is simple syrup.

Balancing a cocktail is being attentive to the amount of sweet there is. The sweet softens the heat of the spirit. At home you can experiment to find your preferred level of sweet. You may want to take old recipes that are too sweet and dial them back. Or find a drink that is too hot and add more sweet to balance it.

When you want to make simple syrup in a batch, here is how I make it at home.

Sour

Ok, lemon or lime. Which one do we want to use?

The citrus choice depends (mostly) on the liquor. The joy of doing this yourself is you can break the rules and do whatever you want.

Here's a quick table of suggestions for common liquors:

• Vodka → Lemon
• Gin → Lemon
• Tequila/Mezcal → Lime
• Rum → Lime
• Whiskey/Scotch → Lemon

Grab a knife, slice the citrus in half. Squeeze the citrus into a bowl. I've used a fork to twist into the citrus to get more of the juice out.

• Add 2m of citrus juice into shaker thingy (no need to shake)

Balancing a cocktail requires bringing some sour/tart flavor to balance the sweet and bridge the spirit.

Spirit

The cocktail we are making is a "sour". And it can be ordered at bars often by calling our the spirit you want:

• Vodka → Vodka Sour
• Gin → Gin Sour
• Whiskey/Scotch → Whiskey Sour

A Tequila sour is called a Margarita tho it is often made with a few other ingredients.

A Rum sour is called a Daiquiri.

You can quickly see how knowing this basic cocktail allows you to see how variations start to build and how much many cocktails actaully have in common.

• Add 4m of liquor into shaker thingy

Ice

The secret ingredient to all balanced cocktails is diluation from ice shaken into the drink.

We shake to dilute and chill. Yea, dont store your booze in the freezor or fridge. We need it literally melt part of the ice to dilute the drink.

• Add at least one handful of ice into shaker thingy
• Shake until the outside of the shaker is cold (usually 10-15 seconds)

When we really dial into the cocktail the size of the ice cubes affects our shake times. 🤯 For now, just shake until the outside of the shaker is cold.

Also, how the drink is served, "up" (in a coupe glass) or "on the rocks" (in a rocks glass with ice) will affect how long we want to shake. Cause as a drink sits for 10min+ in a glass with ice, the drink will further dilute.

Serve

Using the mason jar top, mesh kitchen strainer, or anything, strain the drink into a glass. If you dont have a strainer, just "open pour" it into your glass.

If you still have some unsqueezed citrus, cut out a wedge, put a little notch in it, and slide that notch onto the side of the glass.

The taste and enjoyment of the cocktail your guests have is truely connected to the preparation and presentation. We taste and enjoy things with a story and a context behind them.

Moreover, the garnish often acts as a que to the eyes and nose to be paying extra attention to "this" flavor in the drink.

Cheers

You just made your first cocktail. 🎉

Taste it. What do you think? Is it too sweet? Too sour? Too hot? What are your notes?

Great. The evening is young. Lets make another.

References

🍹 Cocktails

Sip consciously, play with your senses

If you've never made a cocktail before and want to see what the fun is about without needing to get ALL THE STUFF, then this is place to start → Let's make your first cocktail right now!

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