Brandy Sling (Cold)

Brandy Sling (Hot)

A hot Brandy Sling is 50ml of brandy, 20ml of fresh lemon juice and 15ml of sugar syrup in a warmed heatproof glass, topped with 90ml of water just off the boil, stirred, and finished with freshly grated nutmeg and a lemon slice on the rim. About 2.0 UK units. In his 1862 bar guide Jerry Thomas wrote that the brandy sling is made with the same ingredients as the brandy toddy, except that you grate a little nutmeg on top. His sling has no lemon; ours adds 20ml, which keeps the sugar and brandy from tasting flat in hot water. Heat is the method. Water just off the boil, never boiling, warms the brandy without scalding off its aroma, and the nutmeg on the surface reaches you before the first sip.

Gin Sling

A Gin Sling is 50ml London Dry gin, 25ml fresh lemon juice and 15ml sugar syrup, built over ice in a tall glass, topped with 60ml of cold soda and finished with nutmeg grated fresh over the top. The nutmeg is the part that makes it a sling. The sling is older than the cocktail. The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, a secondary source, records the sling in Maryland in 1778 and says the first printed definition of the cocktail, in 1806, noted that it is vulgarly called bittered sling. Those early slings were spirit, sugar and water. Jerry Thomas, in his 1862 bar manual, separated the sling from the toddy by one detail: nutmeg grated on top. Lemon and soda came later, and they bring the modern Gin Sling close to the Tom Collins. The difference is in the proportions and the spice: less soda, so the gin stays in front, and a dusting of nutmeg the Collins never had.

Sidecar

A Sidecar is a cognac sour: 50ml cognac, 20ml Cointreau or another triple sec and 20ml fresh lemon juice, shaken hard and double strained into a chilled coupe under an expressed strip of lemon peel. The IBA gives these measures, which put the cognac at two and a half parts to one each of orange and lemon. The Oxford Companion dates the first printed recipes to 1922, in Robert Vermeire’s Cocktails: How to Mix Them in May and Harry MacElhone’s Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails at the end of the year, both at equal parts by Difford’s Guide. Both named Pat MacGarry of Buck’s Club in London; Difford’s says later editions of MacElhone’s book appear to take the credit for himself. The sugared rim came later: the earliest mention we have read is a 1932 American book, and the Oxford Companion says the drink has often been served with one since the 1930s. Ours has no rim. Each Sidecar carries about 2.8 UK units.