Pickleback
The Pickleback is two shots taken in strict order: whiskey first, cold dill pickle brine immediately after. The brine erases the whiskey's burn so completely that people meeting it for the first time routinely ask to check the bottle. It was named at the Bushwick Country Club in Brooklyn in 2006, where the bartender Reggie Cunningham poured the pairing at a customer's suggestion using the bar's stock of McClure's pickles. The combination itself is much older, whiskey and brine having been folk practice in the American South and across Eastern Europe for generations. What the bar supplied was the name and the ritual. The mechanism is real. Salt and acid both interfere with how the palate registers ethanol heat, so a brine chaser arriving while the burn is still developing switches it off and leaves the warmth behind. It is the same principle as a salt rim on a Margarita, staged as a piece of theatre rather than as a garnish.
Glassware: Shot Glass
Garnish: None: two glasses are the whole theatre
Ingredients
30ml
Smooth Irish is traditional and it is the right call. The ritual is about removing an edge, so a soft whiskey suits it; a rough high-proof bourbon works and rather misses the point.
30ml
Straight from a jar of proper dill pickles, and cold. Sweet or bread-and-butter brine defeats the mechanism entirely, because it is the salt and the acid doing the work rather than the flavour.
Instructions
Pour the whiskey into one chilled shot glass and the cold brine into another.
Take the whiskey in one.
Chase immediately with the brine, without pausing.
Expert Tip
The order is the recipe. Whiskey, then brine, with no pause between them. Reversed, or with a gap, the trick does not work and you have simply drunk a shot of whiskey and a shot of pickle juice, which is a considerably worse experience. Both glasses want to be cold, and the brine especially. Warm brine tastes of vinegar and not much else; cold, it tastes clean and dill-forward and does the job properly. Use the brine from a jar of proper dill pickles rather than sweet or bread-and-butter ones. Sugar in the chaser defeats the whole mechanism: it is the salt and the acid doing the work, and sweetness gets in the way of both.
Behind the Pickleback
Flavour Profile
Where It Comes From
The Bushwick Country Club is a bar in Brooklyn rather than a country club, and in 2006 one of its bartenders, Reggie Cunningham, was asked by a customer to try whiskey with a chaser of brine from the bar's pickle jars. He did, named it on the spot, and it became the bar's signature order.
The pairing was not new. Whiskey with brine turns up as folk practice across the American South and throughout Eastern Europe, where vodka and pickles have been a standing combination for a very long time. What Brooklyn added was a name that travelled and a ritual precise enough to explain in one sentence, which between them took it worldwide inside about three years.
Why It Works
This is not bravado, it is measurable. The perception of alcohol heat is not a taste but a chemical irritation, registered by the same receptors that respond to capsaicin and to temperature. Salt and acid both interfere with that signal.
A brine chaser arrives a second or two after the whiskey, while the burn is still building, and effectively switches it off. What is left is the whiskey's warmth and flavour without the heat, which is why the effect feels like a trick rather than like masking.
It is the same principle as the salt on a Margarita rim, where salt suppresses bitterness and lifts the perception of sweetness. Here it is doing a cruder job far more dramatically.
The Spec
Two things matter and neither of them is expensive.
The whiskey should be smooth. Irish is traditional because the original bar poured it, and it is also the sensible choice: the whole ritual is about removing an edge, so starting with a gentle spirit gives a cleaner result. A high-proof rye or a rough bourbon works and the contrast is less interesting.
The brine must be dill and it must not be sweet. Bread-and-butter pickle brine has sugar in it, which gets in the way of both the salt and the acid, and the mechanism stops working.
A Drink With No Recipe
There is no mixing here, no ice, no glassware decision worth arguing about, and no technique beyond pouring two things into two glasses. That makes it an odd thing to write about at all.
What it has instead is a ceremony, and the ceremony is the entire point. Two glasses arriving together, one instruction, and a reaction that is the same every time somebody tries it. Very few drinks produce a predictable moment like that, and the ones that do tend to spread whether or not anybody is promoting them.
How to Serve It
Two chilled shot glasses, thirty millilitres in each, whiskey on the left and brine on the right if you want the order to be obvious.
Explain it once: whiskey, then brine, straight after, no pause. Then leave them to it, because the pause between the two is the only way this goes wrong.
Make it at home
The Spirit
Whiskey (Irish)Whiskey distilled and matured on the island of Ireland, for at least three years in wooden casks. Triple distillation and an absence of peat are strong conventions rather than rules, and the exceptions are worth knowing before treating either as a definition.
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Pickleback?
Why does the brine work?
Which whiskey should I use?
Does the type of pickle matter?
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Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits