Late 19th-century British colonial India.
| 2 oz · 60 ml | BLENDED SCOTCH | 40 % |
| 4 oz · 120 ml | SODA WATER |
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
| Pre-batch | 2 oz mixed with ice, 0.8 oz of it pure alcohol |
|---|---|
| Melt | Built in the glass: +5 % of the pre-batch, +0.1 oz of water |
| Topped | Poured after the melt, kept whole: soda water 4 oz, no alcohol |
| Served | 2 + 0.1 + 4 = 6.1 oz in the glass, 0.8 oz of it alcohol |
| Strength | 0.8 ÷ 6.1 = 13.1 % ABV as served |
| Ethanol | 0.8 oz × 29.57 ml × 0.789 g/ml = 19 g · about 131 kcal from the alcohol alone |
FROM SCOTCH · from oak barrel aging
Bourbon's fingerprint, extracted from the charred American oak the law requires for aging. Same molecule as the vanilla bean's signature, so a well-aged bourbon legitimately tastes like vanilla. Chemistry, not metaphor. Cognac, aged rum, tequila reposado all extract vanillin from oak too. Different barrels, same molecule.
ALSO IN Old Fashioned · Manhattan · Whiskey Sour · Paper Plane · Boulevardier · Sazerac · Espresso Martini · Mai Tai
Scotch and soda: two ingredients and no sweetener. The Japanese whisky highball follows the same pattern at even higher dilution ratios. The soda amplifies vanillin from the oaked Scotch, while the cold and dilution dampen harsh alcohol burn.
The Scotch and Soda is older than most cocktail historians acknowledge. The soda siphon, patented in Britain and France early in the century, reached every corner of the Empire; soldiers and administrators drank scotch-and-soda by the gallon through the 1880s-1910s. The drink became culturally American through the post-WWII era; Frank Sinatra, by contrast, drank Jack Daniel's, a Tennessee whiskey, not Scotch. Modern Japanese highball culture is a more refined evolution of the same template.
