Trinidad Sour
Angostura bitters as the base spirit, against orgeat, lemon and a dry rye backbone.
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.
The producer's own product page states the bitters are 100% vegan and gluten-free.
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
50 dashes Angostura Aromatic Bitters (45 ml)Proprietary
30 ml orgeat
23 ml fresh lemon juice
15 ml rye whiskeyInterchangeable by volume and close in strength, so the arithmetic barely moves. Bourbon's extra sweetness sits closer to the orgeat than rye's dry spice does, and the drink reads rounder for it.flavour: minor change · strength: no change · sweetness: minor change
- 50 dashes Angostura Aromatic Bitters (45 ml)Proprietary
- 30 ml orgeat
- 23 ml fresh lemon juice
- 15 ml rye whiskey
- ~56 ml water
Glass
Vessel
169 ml of liquid, served without ice, inside the 180 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
3 steps · 47sCombine the 50 dashes Angostura Aromatic Bitters (45 ml), the 30 ml orgeat, the 23 ml fresh lemon juice and the 15 ml rye whiskey in a shaker with ice.
Shake hard for 12s.
Strain into a chilled coupe.
Angostura is measured here as the base spirit rather than a dash, which inverts the usual proportion between a bitters and everything else in the glass. The rye is a backbone rather than the point of the drink, present mostly to keep the bitters and orgeat from reading as a cordial.
Common pitfallPoured to a standard bitters dash, this recipe looks like a typo. It is not; the quantity of Angostura is what makes the drink what it is, and halving it in the name of caution turns it into a thin, sweet lemon drink with no backbone.
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 2009 sour that inverts the usual bitters dash, built almost entirely from Angostura and orgeat, that failed the competition it was entered in before becoming an official IBA cocktail.
The bartender Giuseppe Gonzalez created the Trinidad Sour in 2009, during an early stint at Clover Club, the Brooklyn cocktail bar that had opened the previous year 1. He entered it in a competition that same year; it did not place in the top ten 1.
The drink's defining move is proportional rather than technical: Angostura bitters, normally added by the dash, is poured here as the largest single ingredient in the glass, standing in for the base spirit a sour would usually be built on 2. Orgeat's almond sweetness and lemon's acidity are built to meet that concentration of bitters halfway, with a small measure of rye behind both of them for structure rather than flavour 2. Angostura is not sold or priced as a mixing spirit, and pouring it by the measure rather than the dash made the drink markedly more expensive to make than an ordinary sour, which was itself part of what made it stand out at the time 1.
Despite its poor competition showing, the recipe spread by word of mouth among bartenders over the following years and was eventually adopted as an official cocktail by the International Bartenders Association 1.
- 1Trinidad souren.wikipedia.org
- 2Trinidad Sour Cocktail Recipepunchdrink.com