Whiskey Sour

The Whiskey Sour was the first cocktail that caught my attention. It is a simple cocktail with whiskey, lemonjuice and simple syrup. In some variations egg white is used to create a layer of foam on top of the cocktail.

When I first decided that I would make the Whiskey Sour, I looked op some recipes on the internet. The web is filled with websites containing cocktail recipes. The recipe I first tried, was made in a shaker with crushed ice, juice of half a lemon, half an egg-white, two barspoons of simple syrup and 4.5 cl. of my favourite whiskey. So I took all the ingredients, the eggs were easy to find, fresh lemons from the local grocery store, simple syrup from the supermarket and the only whiskey I had (Jack Daniels No. 7).
The main taste in the cocktail was the lemon. I invited some friends over to taste it and our conclusion was that the cocktail was a bit dull and there was no trace of whiskey in it.

After digging deeper in the Whiskey Sour recipes I noticed that the egg white was not a real important ingredient and I figured that this might be what made the cocktail dull. So the next try was without  the eggs.
There was no foam on the cocktail but it had a clear yellow colour but the taste of the bourbon was still missing. So on njam.tv I found the recipe of Manuel Wouters. He also used bourbon in his Whiskey Sour so I used the same amount of ingredients he did. The final result was not what we were looking for. The combination of the bourbon and a larger amount of simple syrup only made the cocktail sweeter.

So I went back to my original recipe without the eggs but instead of adding 4.5 cl. of bourbon, I added 6.
The bourbon finally came through the sour taste of the lemon, but it was not yet the cocktail I was looking for. The Whiskey Sour I had in mind, was sour, but with a smokey toch of whiskey hidden inside it. So i went looking for another whiskey. I didn't want to try another bourbon cause I knew the result would be more or less the same. In the Mobile Liquor Store in Ghent, there was a large selection of different whiskeys. I was looking for a good but not to expensive whiskey here. Afterall we are on a budget. So I bought a bottle of Bushmills. This turned out to be a good choice. Using the Bushmills instead of Jack Daniels made the whiskey more smokey instead of sweet. My search for the perfect Whiskey Sour was over.

And now I proudly present my first cocktail recipe:

- 6 cl. of Whiskey (no bourbon)
- Juice of half a Lemon
- 2 barspoons of simple syrup

Put all the ingredients in a shaker filled with icecubes. Shake untill the shaker is ice-cold.
Serve in a Tumbler-glass with icecubes, a slice of lemon or orange and a cocktailcherry.

Cheers!