Homebar Awards 05/23 – My Vibe

The Home Bar Awards challenge for Mai 2023 was to create a bourbon ‘Session’ drink for the summer. This time, the competition was supported by Basil Hayden’s. After a little research, I came up with a simple recipe which takes a little bit more effort during preparation.

First, let us take a look at the Basil Hayden Bourbon. The bourbon is distilled from Jim Beam’s high rye mash-bill with a combination of 63 % corn, 27 % rye and 10 % malted barley. The bourbon has no age statement anymore, but is rumoured to be older than the Old Grand Dad bottling.

Mellow bourbon notes

The Basil Hayden Bourbon, really works well as an introduction to Jim Beam’s Small Batch series. It does offer typical bourbon notes, while still being easy on your palate. Yet, until now I underestimated the bourbon a bit. While, there are more complex bourbons out there, you still find a touch more complexity in the taste.

A seasonal highball

This may well have been the recipe for which I needed the most preparation. Let us start with the inspiration first. I wrote down a recipe featuring bourbon and strawberry syrup a while ago. From there, I took the initial idea and converted it into highball. From the Flavour Bible, I got the pairing with basil, pepper and vanilla. So, I decided to make a pepper essence and a basil strawberry lemonade. Additionally, I also added a bit of Byrrh, because I thought the fruity and slightly bitter flavour would also pair well with the rest. The vanilla bitters rounded everything off.

Homemade ingredients

**Grate Andaliman, Malaguetta, black, green and white pepper in a mortar (go easy on the white pepper) – warm infuse in 96 % ABV alcohol for three days – filter and bottle in a dropper bottle.

***Wash eight sprigs of basil and 250 g strawberries – pat basil dry – boil basil in cooking water for 15 s – put in ice bath immediately – pat basil dry – blend with 150 ml of 2:1 simple syrup – cut the strawberries – add strawberries, the juice of two lemons, the basil syrup and ½ tsp of citric acid to a highspeed blender – blend until everything is finely mixed – bring 50 ml water and two tsp. Agar Agar to boil – cook until Agar Agar is dissolved – stir in the Agar Agar mixture to blended ingredients – put the whole mix into an ice bath until gelling – filter through cheesecloth – do not squeeze any agar agar into the mix – bottle in soda siphon with additional 75 ml of cool water – let cool over night – carbonate – cool again.

A refreshing summer highball

Actually, I am a bit proud of how the lemonade turned out. The colour, viscosity and taste are spot on. Thanks to John from Johneatsanddrinks for the syrup recipe! Apart from that, the ‘My Vibe’ was a tasty combination of just the right amount of bourbon notes with the fruitiness of the lemonade. The pepper essence brought a little bit of spice to the mix and together with the carbonation even added a slight salinity. The Byrrh and the vanilla bitters also paired exceptionally well with the rest.

*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. The bourbon was provided by Beam Suntory.