How to balance a whiskey sour that tastes too sharp
How to balance a whiskey sour that tastes too sharp
A sour is a simple drink on paper and a fiddly one in the glass, because it's three things pulling against each other and the moment one of them wins you've got something nobody wants to finish. Too much lemon and it's acidic. Too much syrup and it's a lolly. Not enough of either and it's just warm spirit with a cloudy top on it.
The good news is that it's the most fixable drink there is, as long as you know which lever to pull.
The ratio to work from
Start at 45ml of spirit, 30ml of fresh lemon juice and 15ml of sugar syrup. That's a touch sweeter than the old bartending standard, and it's a better starting point for a home-made spiced or liqueur-style whiskey because those already carry some sweetness of their own.
Shake it hard with ice for about 20 seconds. Not 5. The shake is doing three jobs at once and none of them happen in 5 seconds: it chills the drink, it waters it down by roughly a quarter, and that dilution is not a flaw, it's part of the recipe. An under-shaken sour tastes sharp because it's under-diluted, and people reach for sugar to fix a problem that was really about ice.
So if it's too sharp
Work through these in order, because the first two are free.
Shake it longer. Genuinely, try this first. Another 10 seconds on the shaker will take the edge off more than a teaspoon of syrup would, and it doesn't make the drink sweeter, it makes it rounder.
Check your lemon. Lemons vary a lot, and a big juicy one straight off a tree in spring is milder than a small tired one from the back of the fridge. If you measured 30ml from a sharp lemon you've effectively used more acid than the recipe intended.
Then add syrup, 5ml at a time. Stir, taste, repeat. Five at a time sounds fussy and it's the difference between landing it and overshooting into syrup territory, which is much harder to come back from.
And if it's too sweet
Harder, but not hopeless. Adding lemon works. It also makes the drink bigger and colder so that by the third or fourth correction it starts tasting watery.
A better fix is a couple of dashes of bitters if you've got them, because bitterness reads as the opposite of sweetness on your palate without adding any volume. Failing that, a strip of lemon peel twisted over the top puts citrus oil on the surface and changes what you smell, and a surprising amount of what you think you taste is actually what you just smelled.
Last resort, make a second one deliberately too sharp and pour the two together. That's not elegant and it does work.
The egg white question
An egg white does nothing to the taste and everything to the texture, and it's the difference between a sour that looks like a cocktail and one that looks like cloudy juice.
If you use one, dry shake it first with no ice at all for about 15 seconds to get it foaming. Then add ice and shake it again. Doing it the other way round gives you a thin, sad foam that collapses before you sit down. If raw egg isn't your thing, a splash of the liquid from a tin of chickpeas does much the same job.
Where the spirit comes into it
All of the above assumes your spirit is somewhere near 40 per cent. Make it with something at 25 per cent, which a lot of liqueur-style essences land at, and the whole drink is out of balance before you start, because there's not enough alcohol to carry the citrus and the sugar. If you're working with a liqueur rather than a straight whiskey, pull the syrup back to about 5ml and taste before you add more.
And a smoky essence changes the arithmetic again. Smoke reads as dry on the palate. A peated or smoked spirit in a sour usually wants a little more syrup rather than less.
One thing worth saying plainly
Owning a still is legal here and we sell the gear, but actually distilling spirits at home needs an excise manufacturer licence from the ATO and most people haven't got one, so if that's you then what you're doing is flavouring a base spirit you've bought. That's completely legal, and it's what this whole article assumes anyway.
What you'd want for this
- Still Spirits Spiced Whiskey Liqueur Essence 50ml. Spice and honey in the spirit, so you need less syrup in the glass.
- Still Spirits Smokey Whiskey 50ml. The smoky option. Drinks drier, so it wants a bit more sweetness.
- Still Spirits Triple Sec Liqueur Essence 50ml. Orange, and a good way to sweeten without plain syrup.
- Still Spirits Liqueur Base B. The middleweight base most liqueur essences are built around.
Did you know we also keep Still Spirits Honey Spiced Whiskey, 500ml swing top bottles, 750ml amber flip tops, 1125ml spirit bottles and measuring jugs in the shop. They aren't all on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.
The rest of it is in our homebrew range, and Brewhilder, our homebrew helper, will talk you through what suits your setup.
Read next
- How to make melon liqueur and a melon spritz at home
- How to run a whiskey tasting night with your own blends
- What a herbal liqueur essence does and what to mix it with
My first few sours were basically lemon cordial with a hangover attached, so I'm a firm believer in tasting before you pour it into a nice glass.
Cheers,
Candeece
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