Gold Rush
A whiskey sour with the sugar replaced by honey syrup, shaken and strained over ice.
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.
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 bourbon- 23 ml honey syrupInterchangeable by volume and close in sugar, so the arithmetic barely moves. What is lost is the honey's floral note against the bourbon's caramel, which is most of what separates this drink from a plain whiskey sour.flavour: significant change · strength: no change · sweetness: no change
Glass
Vessel
158 ml of liquid plus 175 ml of cubed ice occupies about 333 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
4 steps · 1m 52sSqueeze the 23 ml fresh lemon juice and strain out the pips and pulp.
Combine the 60 ml bourbon, the 23 ml fresh lemon juice and the 23 ml honey syrup in a shaker and fill it with cubed ice.
Shake hard for 12s. Short and violent; the aim is to chill and aerate, not to melt the ice.
Strain into a double old fashioned glass over fresh cubed ice.
Strained over fresh ice rather than up, unlike most of the family it belongs to. Bourbon's own weight carries the honey's roundness better cold and slightly diluted further than it does straight from the shaker, where the two together can read heavy.
Common pitfallHoney syrup, not honey straight from the jar. Raw honey is too viscous to combine evenly in a cold shake and sinks to the bottom of the glass rather than mixing through it; let down with water first, it pours and measures like any other sweetener in the family.
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 single documented swap made at a single New York speakeasy around 2000 (honey syrup for the sugar in a whiskey sour) that turned into one of the most widely poured modern classics.
The drink was created around 2000 at Milk & Honey, Sasha Petraske's Lower East Side speakeasy, and is credited to T.J. Siegal, a regular at the bar rather than one of its bartenders 1. Siegal asked for his usual bourbon sour made instead with a honey syrup that bar had recently started keeping on hand 1. That syrup, mixed roughly three parts honey to one part water by Milk & Honey bartender Toby Maloney, had been developed for a different drink, the Honeysuckle, a honey-based riff on the daiquiri, and found its lasting use in Siegal's sour instead 1.
The result is described in both accounts as a direct variation on the whiskey sour, with honey syrup standing in for the plain sugar syrup and nothing else in the formula changed 2. It was not the bar's most requested drink in its early years (the Mojito, the Queen's Park Swizzle and the Bee's Knees were all ordered more often at the time), but it outlasted them in wider circulation 1. Its spread beyond Milk & Honey is credited in large part to Jim Meehan, who put the recipe in front of a wider audience through his own bar and his cocktail writing 1, after which it travelled through the bars Petraske himself went on to open. It is now poured widely enough to sit on menus alongside the Old Fashioned and the Manhattan, drinks many decades older than it 1.
- 1How the Gold Rush Became a Modern Classicpunchdrink.com
- 2Gold Rush Cocktailtuxedono2.com