The Spirits #118: The Dirty Sour

~ Pure filth ~

~ THE DIRTY SOUR ~

40ml gin
10ml sauerkraut juice
10ml cornichon vinegar
10ml sugar syrup

Place the ingredients in a shaker, add copious ice and shake hard for a few seconds. Fine-strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a cornichon. As you can see I placed a little sprig of parsley on top. Dill would be better, I think.

Some Dirty Notes

1. The Dirty Sour is a bona-fide 21st century classic, a drink that encapsulates the modern drinking zeitgeist, lends itself to infinite interpretation and tastes damn great. It was invented by Richard Godwin last week.

2. I was thinking about alternative ways to introduce sourness into cocktails other than lemon and lime… and also about how you could make a Dirty Martini dirtier… and, well, the rest is history.

3. Don’t sweat the specifics. If you think of the drink as 40ml spirit, 20ml sour pickle juice, 10ml sugar syrup, you’ll find it’s quite versatile. All sauerkraut juice or all pickle vinegar will work fine too. I even made a version with the vinegar from a jar of capers and it was not bad! Not bad at all. Please: experiment and report back.

4. That said, I found the combination of lecto-fermented funk from the ‘kraut and off-dry cucumber-infused vinegar specified above to be particularly delectable. I used a very traditional German sauerkraut (lots of dill and caraway) in tandem with Pepinillos from El Colmado Spanish deli which are tiny cucumbers preserved in an anchovy-infused vinegar. Pure filth, if I’m honest.

5. I want to see these on every menu by this time next year.

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🖊️I am Richard Godwin.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine, orgeat, etc are here.
🧑‍🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
⚗️ My bottle recommendations are here.
📃 The full A-Z recipe archive is here. 
➡️ Please find a round up of organisations helping Ukrainians here.
🏥 And here is a list of trusted charities who are helping people in Gaza.

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CABINET POSTS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

🌿Green Chartreuse
🍒 Maraschino
🍑 Apricot Brandy
🍫 Crème de Cacao
🌷Cynar
🏝️ Falernum
🌵 Mezcal
🐂 Sherry
🧡 Aperol
🍌 Crème de Banane
🐻 Kümmel
🕊️ Bénédictine
🦅Fernet-Branca
❄️Brancamenta
🐿️Amaretto

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PLAYLIST

I have been listening to the song Chalé! by the Tsonga rapper Sho Madjozi on rotation recently. I don’t know why. It just slaps. So I made a whole playlist around its general vibe. I’m not going to pretend my knowledge of Tsonga rap is extensive but so there’s a dash of Sudanese synth in there, a smattering of Ghanaian highlife, etc, a blast of African warmth to counter the cold. And the peculiar despondency that comes from learning from Spotify Wrapped that your top artist of 2023 is… Johann Sebastian Bach?! FFS.

PLEASE NOTE: This playlist updates weekly (or thereabouts). Follow/like and you will have an ever-replenishing list of interestingly curated songs to put on when you like. I keep an archive list of all songs featured so far here.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

I interviewed Jessica Chastain and really tried to retain a measure of journalistic objectivity. (ES Magazine)

And I wrote about how depressing it is that Booker Winner Paul Lynch is spending his winnings on his mortgage. (Independent)

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