16 recipes

Whiskey cocktail recipes

Whiskey drinks live or die on the sugar. An Old Fashioned with 10 ml of syrup and one with 15 ml are recognisably different drinks, and 5 ml is well inside the margin of error of a free pour or a hastily-filled jigger.

Syrup is also the ingredient where weight and volume diverge most: 1:1 simple syrup is 1.11 g/ml and rich 2:1 syrup is 1.27 g/ml, so 10 ml of rich syrup weighs 12.7 g. Weigh the syrup and the whiskey and the drink stops drifting sweeter over an evening.

Old Fashioned

The original cocktail. Whiskey, sugar, bitters.

3 ingredients · 71.5 ml · 34.5%

Manhattan

Rye whiskey and sweet vermouth, stirred until very cold.

3 ingredients · 91.5 ml · 32.2%

Boulevardier

Bourbon instead of gin. The Negroni's brooding American cousin.

3 ingredients · 105 ml · 28.9%

Toronto

Rye and Fernet — bitter, herbal, perfectly balanced.

4 ingredients · 76.5 ml · 36.1%

Whisky Sour

Bourbon, lemon, sugar, egg white for foam. Dry shake first.

4 ingredients · 127 ml · 18.9%

Paper Plane

Sam Ross's equal-parts modern classic. Sour, bitter, boozy.

4 ingredients · 90 ml · 18.8%

Penicillin

Sam Ross again. Scotch, honey, lemon, ginger. Shake and strain.

4 ingredients · 111 ml · 21.6%

John Collins

The whiskey Collins — bourbon, lemon and sugar, topped with soda.

4 ingredients · 150 ml · 12%

Remember the Maine

A Manhattan riff with cherry liqueur and a rinse of absinthe.

4 ingredients · 91 ml · 33.2%

Rusty Nail

Scotch and Drambuie over ice. Two ingredients, all class.

2 ingredients · 70 ml · 40%

Vieux Carré

New Orleans in a glass: rye, cognac, vermouth, Bénédictine, bitters.

6 ingredients · 97 ml · 32.6%

Irish Coffee

Hot coffee and Irish whiskey, sweetened, under a float of cream.

4 ingredients · 170 ml · 9.4%

Mint Julep

Bourbon and sugar over crushed ice with a mint bouquet.

3 ingredients · 76 ml · 32.2%

New York Sour

A whiskey sour crowned with a float of red wine.

5 ingredients · 140 ml · 18.5%

Tipperary

Irish whiskey, sweet vermouth and green Chartreuse. Emerald and warming.

3 ingredients · 89 ml · 37.8%

Dom Pedro

South Africa's beloved dessert cocktail — whisky blended with vanilla ice cream and cream.

3 ingredients · 150 ml · 6.7%

The PourPilot coaster

Every one of these, weighed for you

The PourPilot coaster sits under your glass and weighs each ingredient as it goes in, lighting up when you reach the target. All 124 recipes are in the free app, in grams, and it works with no internet connection at all.

See the coaster How it works

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