Gin Fizz
The Gin Fizz is the sour family’s effervescent branch and one of the golden age’s defining orders: gin, lemon and sugar shaken hard and fired into a small glass with soda, drunk fast while the sparkle holds. Jerry Thomas printed the fizz template in 1876, New Orleans made a religion of it, and by 1900 fizzes were being drunk by the dozen at American bars with shaker-men working in shifts. The classic serve is the part modern bars forget: a fizz takes no ice in the glass. It is shaken viciously cold, strained into a small chilled tumbler, topped with a short measure of soda and drunk in a few minutes. Ice in the glass makes it a Collins, which is a longer and lazier drink entirely. From this template the family branches. Egg white makes a Silver Fizz, yolk a Golden, the whole egg a Royal, and the Ramos added cream and orange flower water and demanded twelve minutes of shaking.
Glassware: Highball Glass
Garnish: Lemon Wheel or nothing in the speed tradition
Ingredients
45ml
The engine: a crisp London Dry, bright enough to read through lemon and bubbles at speed. There is no ice or time here for a subtle gin to emerge.
30ml
The sour’s full dose at thirty millilitres. A fizz runs sharper than a Collins because it is drunk faster and never gets the dilution a long glass provides.
10ml
The balance, calibrated for a cold and quick drink. Sweetness reads lower at fizz temperature, which is why the measure looks generous on paper.
60ml
The fizz itself: a short, lively top into an ice-free glass, poured with intent and drunk before it settles. Fresh from a small bottle, because flat soda has nothing to offer.
Instructions
Shake the gin, lemon juice and syrup very hard with ice for 12 seconds.
Strain into a chilled small highball or fizz glass with no ice.
Top briskly with the soda water.
Serve immediately.
Source: the IBA (Official IBA specification; method ours). Last checked 13 August 2026.
Expert Tip
No ice in the glass is the whole identity, and it is the detail almost every modern bar gets wrong. The cold comes from a hard shake and the sparkle comes from the soda, and the clock starts the moment it is poured: a fizz has a five-minute lifespan and is meant to. Adding ice does not extend it so much as convert the drink into a Collins, which is a perfectly good thing to have made and is not this. Chill the glass instead. Shake for a full twelve seconds, longer than feels necessary, because all of the drink’s dilution has to happen in the tin rather than in the glass, and top with a short, brisk pour of soda rather than a long one.
Behind the Gin Fizz
Flavour Profile
The Origin
The fizz enters the printed record in Jerry Thomas’s 1876 edition and became the American bar’s morning and afternoon standard: a short, sharp sparkling sour built for speed.
New Orleans adopted the format hardest of anywhere. The fizz craze around 1900 had large bars employing teams of shaker-men working in relay to keep pace with orders taken by the half-dozen, which is a piece of bar history that sounds invented and is not. The drink was ordered in rounds and consumed at a pace that no modern cocktail service would recognise.
Fizz Versus Collins
The two drinks share their ingredients and differ in almost everything else, which is why the distinction is worth holding on to.
A Collins is built long over ice in a tall glass and sipped across half an hour, with the ice supplying continuous dilution as it goes. A fizz is shaken cold, served short and without ice, and drunk young while the carbonation is at its loudest. One is a session drink and the other is closer to an espresso: same beans, entirely different intention, and the presence or absence of ice is the whole switch.
Why No Ice
All of a fizz’s dilution has to happen in the shaker, which is why the shake runs longer than it does for a drink going over ice.
Twelve hard seconds gets the mixture properly cold and adds the water the balance assumes. Straining that into a chilled glass with nothing in it gives you a drink at its correct strength and temperature from the first sip, which then warms and flattens over about five minutes. That is not a flaw in the design. It is the design, and it is why the drink was historically ordered in rounds rather than nursed.
The Egg Ladder
Add an egg white and the Silver Fizz appears, silkier and crowned with foam. The yolk instead makes a Golden Fizz, richer and rounder. Both together give a Royal.
At the top of the ladder sits the Ramos Gin Fizz, which took the idea to its logical extreme with cream, orange flower water and a shake long enough to require relays of staff. Each rung trades the plain fizz’s speed for texture, and the plain version is the one that best explains what the format was originally for.
How to Serve It
A chilled, smallish glass, a hard shake, a confident soda pour and immediate delivery. The fizz rewards decisiveness at every step and punishes hesitation at all of them.
It is the correct brunch drink for anyone who finds a Mimosa too slow, and the correct second drink of an evening that started with a Gin & Tonic. Make it, hand it over, and let it be finished. A fizz left standing while somebody takes a photograph has already stopped being one.
Make it at home
The Spirit
GinA flavour requirement rather than a method. The law asks only that juniper be the predominant taste and that the spirit reach 37.5%, which leaves everything else on the botanical bill to the distiller and permits a gin that was never redistilled at all.
Master the Techniques
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is there no ice in the glass?
What is the difference between a Gin Fizz and a Tom Collins?
What is a Silver Fizz?
How long does a fizz last?
You Might Also Like
Ramos Gin Fizz
Henry C. Ramos created this at the Imperial Cabinet Saloon in New Orleans in 1888, and by the Mardi Gras of 1915 his bar needed thirty-five shaker boys working in relay to keep up with it. That is the drink’s reputation in one statistic: it is built on a shake so long that no single pair of arms could finish one. Seven ingredients go in before the soda: gin, lemon, lime, sugar, egg white, cream and orange flower water. The egg white and the cream emulsify over the shake into a foam denser and more stable than any sour’s, and the soda, poured in after straining, lifts that foam into a white column standing above the rim. Orange flower water is where most versions fail. It is a distilled floral water, not orange bitters and not zest, and it is the only thing that reaches between the gin’s botanicals and the cream’s weight. Two or three drops make the drink. Leave it out and you have a cream fizz with gin in it.
Tom Collins
The Tom Collins is a gin sour lengthened with soda: gin, fresh lemon, sugar syrup and soda water over ice in a tall glass. The simplicity is deceptive. Built with a quality London Dry, lemon squeezed to order and well-chilled soda poured carefully, it is one of the most refreshing long drinks there is. Built with bottled juice and flat soda, it is one of the most disappointing. The name comes from one of the odder stories in the canon. The Great Tom Collins Hoax of 1874 involved telling somebody that a man called Tom Collins had been disparaging them in a nearby bar, then sending them off to find a person who did not exist. It spread across American cities fast enough that the name entered everyday speech, and a long gin drink already being served as the John Collins acquired it almost by association. Old Tom gin, the sweeter style that preceded London Dry, was the format's original base and makes a rounder, gentler drink. Both are correct.
French 75
The French 75 was created at Harry's New York Bar in Paris in 1915 and named after the French 75mm field gun, the defining artillery piece of the First World War on the Western Front. The naming was not incidental: the drink was designed to hit with the force of the weapon, pairing gin and Champagne behind a presentation considerably more elegant than its strength suggests. The structure sits between the Tom Collins and the Champagne Cocktail. A gin sour of gin, fresh lemon juice and sugar syrup is shaken, strained into a flute or coupe, and topped with Champagne rather than soda water. The wine's yeast character, fruit and effervescence interact with the gin and citrus in a way soda cannot. The gin versus cognac debate has run since the drink appeared in print. The gin version is the historically consistent original and the one documented here; the cognac version, richer and more fruit-forward, is a legitimate variation.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits