The Spirits #123: The Pisco Sour

Or: the finest sour known to humanity

~ THE PISCO SOUR ~

60ml pisco
10ml lemon juice
10ml lime juice
20ml sugar syrup (2:1)
20ml egg white
Angostura bitters

Freeze a cocktail coupe. Add all of the ingredients (except for the bitters) to a cockail shaker. Shake vigorously to froth up the egg white. Now, add ice - lots of it - and give another shake to cool and dilute the drink. Strain the drink through a fine-mesh sieve into your frozen cocktail glass. Add a dash or three of Angostura to the foam by way of garnish.

Some Pisco Sour notes:

1) The Pisco Sour is almost certainly the greater sour ever created - maybe even the best cocktail full stop? It’s certainly in the conversation! The above is what I believe (after extensive experimentation) to be the choicest ratio. I have these made with both lemon and lime but figured, why not both? If it works for the Ramos Gin Fizz (another ) it works for the Pisco Sour.

2) Attentive readers will know that I usually favour raw (aka “golden”) cane sugar when it comes to sugar syrups. I was fresh out when I made this and so made a quick 2:1 syrup with plain old white caster sugar. I’m pretty sure that this contributed to the deliciousness of the cocktail - and certainly, the prettiness. I ended up adding a little more of it than I usually would too. My feeling is that eggless sours (Daiquiris, Margaritas, etc) are best when they’re nice and tart and citrus-dominated; whereas a Pisco Sour benefits from a bit more sweetness.

3) After my conversation with “cocktail supernerd” Camper English, I have taken a little more care over my ice. I’m not sure I can be bothered with the whole clear ice thing. But I have improved my shakeroo. For this, I place one properly large lump in the shaker along with four of fiver smaller shards. The large lump was for maximum cooling effect; the small ones were there to snap apart and dilute the drink. It really did make for an optimally cold and delicious drink.

4) You can acheive an arty bitters effect by carefully dropping the bitters onto the foam, and then using a cocktail stick to drag the rusty stain this way and that. With practise (and a dropper bottle for the bitters) you can make quite elegant patterns of a kind that I didn’t quite manage above.

5) I used the Chilean Pisco ABA, just absolutely outstanding stuff, 10/10, no marks. I am hard at work on a wider pisco post for the Cabinet, which will compare a few different pisco choices, Peruvian and Chilean, and also tell you what you can do with this delicious liquid beyond the eponymous Sour and its variants. Yes, I’m talking Chirulíns and Chilcanos and El Capitans and Pisco Punches and - oh boy you’re in for a treat. Should be with you next week, all well!

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WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

Well, actually, I’ve been doing millions of interviews this week and dashing to London and back like a madman - and I appear to have run out of time this week to write anything fresh this week. However, I realise I have failed to link to any of my recent articles, which is remiss of me. So:

In praise of pointless hobbies… I wrote about the many benefits of cultivating hobbies; and also, my dad, an avid railway modeller. He has an extensive late-1950s-era east London-inspired layout in his shed - a scale model of his childhood - and I learned while researching this that there are models on it that he built when he was eight. (Telegraph)

How H2O became big business… Here is the afore-trailed article on tap water, which includes much that is cocktail-adjacent, including this insight: ‘In truth, Marber says, while we all need between 1.2 and 1.5 litres of water a day, that doesn’t literally mean that we need to get all of that from drinking the stuff neat, let alone carry that volume on our person. “Your kidneys don’t say: ‘Oh, this is coffee? Forget it,’” he says. “They will even filter out the water in a G&T and use it.”’ (Guardian)

Stop measuring yourself. I always enjoy my assignments for Men’s Health and this one in particular was a lot of fun. It is, essentially, a rant (an informed one, hopefully) against Strava, iWatches, Garmins, FitBits and all of that silly tech that many people now consider to be essential part of going for a run (or cycle, or swim… etc). I particularly enjoyed 60-something runner Richard Askwith’s indictment of what he called ‘BIG RUNNING’. “‘My body is not an F1 car,’ he laughs. ‘It’s more like a battered Nissan Micra with the panels falling off….‘All you really need to be a runner is to get out the door with two functioning legs and ideally a pair of shoes of some sort. But somehow, in recent decades, the running industry has told you that you can never amount to anything unless you have all the proper kit. (Men’s Health)

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PLAYLIST

We are still going with last week’s water list - which I don’t mind saying is one of my favourites.

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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.