Bramble
Gin and lemon built over crushed ice, with blackberry liqueur drizzled over the top rather than shaken in.
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A Bramble cocktail in a rocks glass over crushed ice, deep purple-red, garnished with a blackberry and a lime wheel on a cocktail pick
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring. Dilution is modelled rather than measured, as a fraction of the poured volume before any ice; dotted figures descend from that estimate.
Giffard, the reference producer, states its Crème de Mûre is vegan, lactose-free and made from concentrated blackberry juice with no animal-derived ingredient.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
23 ml fresh lemon juice
60 ml London dry gin
15 ml simple syrupInterchangeable by volume and close in sugar, so the arithmetic barely moves. The molasses note it adds sits underneath the crème de mûre rather than competing with it, and darkens the drink slightly.flavour: minor change · strength: no change · sweetness: no change
15 ml crème de mûre
- 23 ml fresh lemon juice
- 60 ml London dry gin
- 15 ml simple syrup
- 15 ml crème de mûre
- ~28 ml water
Glass
Vessel
113 ml of liquid plus 187 ml of crushed ice occupies about 300 ml, inside the 400 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
5 steps · 2m 20sSqueeze the 23 ml fresh lemon juice and strain out the pips and pulp.
Pack a double rocks glass with crushed ice, mounded above the rim so it will still be visible once the liquid is poured over it.
Pour the 60 ml London dry gin, the 23 ml fresh lemon juice and the 15 ml simple syrup directly over the crushed ice.
Stir briefly for 10s, just enough to settle the ice and combine the three liquids; this is a build, not a stir to equilibrium, so the drink is still diluting after it is served.
Pour the 15 ml crème de mûre over the surface in a slow, circular motion so it sits as a layer and bleeds downward through the ice rather than mixing straight in.
The crème de mûre goes on last and is never stirred through. Poured slowly over the surface, it sinks in a slow purple trail rather than mixing evenly, so the drink reads pale at the top of the glass and darkens toward the bottom, and each sip changes as the straw draws from a different depth.
Common pitfallCrushed ice melts far faster than a cube, so this drink keeps diluting after it is handed over. It is built to be drunk promptly rather than nursed the way a stirred drink over a single large cube can be.
Keeping and make-ahead
Batched ahead, this keeps sealed and cold. The water line the engine adds is the dilution figure from the spec panel, not a rule of thumb.
About
A modern sour with a documented creator and date, built over crushed ice and finished with a drizzle of blackberry liqueur rather than shaken with it.
The Bramble is credited to Dick Bradsell, a British bartender, who devised it in 1984 while working at Fred's Club in Soho, London 1. He described the idea as coming from a memory of picking blackberries as a child on the Isle of Wight, and wanted a cocktail that read as distinctly British rather than borrowed from an American or continental template 1.
The recipe pairs gin, fresh lemon juice and sugar syrup over crushed ice with crème de mûre, a blackberry liqueur, drizzled across the top rather than mixed in 12. That last step is the drink's identifying feature: most sours are combined to even out before they reach the glass, and the Bramble is deliberately left uneven, the liqueur sinking through the ice in a visible trail rather than being incorporated. The name refers to the blackberry bush itself, tying the drink's identity directly to Bradsell's own account of where the idea came from rather than to any wordplay 1.
Unlike most of the family it belongs to, the Bramble's history carries none of the usual disputes: it has one named creator, one documented decade of origin, and a recipe that has changed little since. What varies between bars is mostly the garnish and the exact ratio of syrup to lemon, not the technique that defines it.
- 1Bramble (cocktail)en.wikipedia.org
- 2Bramblepunchdrink.com