Home Bar Awards ’25 – Like a Drug
It always was a blast participating in the Home Bar Awards challenges. I am very happy that Chris aka Cocktail Chris brought them back! The first quest of 2025 is all about classic sours, but without any citrus!
Actually, I had some experience coming up with drinks which do not use citrus for acidity. On the one hand, I love to use Verjus in cocktails and on the other, I have mixed with sour apple juice more than once (30 g malic acid per litre juice). For this drink, I went with the latter..
Inspired by the Penicillin
Apart from that, I just had the feeling that Arrack would work in this drink. However, I split the base with Genever and a bit of ginger liqueur. For the colour I added a bit of carrot juice. Additionally, I added homemade dandelion & burdock bitters. For the sweetner, I went with burned honey syrup.
3 cl Old Duff Genever
0,75 cl Dwersteg Ginger Liqueur
3 Dashes Homemade Dandelion & Burdock Bitters*
1,5 cl Carrot Juice
3 cl Acid Adjusted Cloudy Apple Juice**
2 cl Burned Honey Syrup***
Shake – chilled Double Old-Fashioned glass over ice cubes;
Garnish: Slice of ginger;
Song: Queens of the Stone Age – Like a Drug;
*Add 2 g Orange Peel (dried), 2 g Lemon Peel (dried), 1 g Gentian Root, 3 g Burdock, 4 g Dandelion root, and a Star Anise to 100 g Vodka 40 % – Let rest for two days – filter – bottle in clean droper bottle
**Add 30 g of malic acid to 1000 ml of cloudy, organic apple juice – bottle in clean bottle
***Add 100 ml of honey to a pan – heat over medium heat while stirring until it turns dark brown – slowly add 50 ml of water – stir – let cool and bottle in clean bottle
I tried a few different combinations of base spirits here. Yet, all combinations with Träkal did not really work. Arrack and Genever was the best overall choice. Obviously, the ginger liqueur, honey and carrot juice work together quite well. The sour apple juice adds the necessary acidity and gives the drink a proper backbone.
