Highballs
52 recipes, page 1 of 3
This Field Manual holds 52 recipes in the highball family. A highball is one spirit lengthened with one carbonated mixer, built in the glass over ice. There is no shaking and usually no third ingredient.
The technique is all there is, so it shows. A cold glass, ice to the top, mixer poured down the side and one stir at most: each of those keeps carbonation in the drink. A gin and tonic, a whisky highball and a rum and coke are the same build with different halves. The ratio does the rest, and two parts mixer to one is a strong highball where three to one is a long one.
Base Spirit
Difficulty Level
Americano
The Americano was born at Gaspare Campari's bar in Milan in the 1860s, served then as the Milano-Torino after its two principal ingredients: Campari from Milan and sweet vermouth
Añejo Highball
The Añejo Highball is Dale DeGroff's rum buck, built in 2000 and dedicated to the Cuban bartenders of the 1920s and 30s. That dedication is not decoration: every ingredient in the
Batanga
The Batanga is the drink Don Javier stirred with the knife. Don Javier Delgado Corona created it in 1961 at La Capilla in the town of Tequila itself, naming it for a portly
Campari & Soda
Campari & Soda has been served in Italian bars since the late nineteenth century and has never needed improving. Two ingredients, built in a glass, drunk before a meal. The
Cantaritos
Cantaritos is tequila with three citrus juices and grapefruit soda, salted and served in a small clay cup. The cup is not decoration: it is called a cantarito, it gives the drink
Cape Codder
The Cape Codder is vodka, cranberry juice and a squeeze of lime, and the lime is not optional. Without it you have a glass of juice with vodka in it; with it the drink finishes
Cuba Libre
The Cuba Libre was born in Havana around 1900, in the afterglow of the war that gave the drink its toast: Cuba freed from Spain, American soldiers in the bars, and the new
Cucumber & Elderflower G&T
The Cucumber & Elderflower G&T is a gin and tonic with two English garden moves made on it: fifteen millilitres of elderflower liqueur, and a long cucumber ribbon pressed against
Cucumber & Mint Gin & Tonic
Cucumber and gin is a pairing that has gone from eccentric to obvious inside about twenty years, and this is the version where the cucumber is in the tonic rather than floating in
Dark ’n’ Stormy
The Dark 'n' Stormy is Bermuda's national highball and one of very few cocktails with a legal department. It was born after the First World War, when ginger beer brewed at a Royal
Dragon’s Breath
The Dragon’s Breath is our long drink for St David’s Day: Penderyn and honey syrup built over ice in a highball, topped with ginger beer and finished with a squeezed lime wedge.
El Diablo
El Diablo is the devil in a highball, and a Trader Vic creation from 1946: tequila and crème de cassis under a ginger beer top, lime squeezed and dropped, one of the first
Elderflower & Raspberry
Elderflower and raspberry is one of those pairings that sounds like a summer dessert and turns out to be considerably drier than expected, mostly because the tonic underneath is
English Garden
The English Garden is what it says on the glass: gin, elderflower, pressed apple and mint shaken into a long drink that tastes of the country it is named for. It has no inventor
Fernandito
The Fernandito is Fernet Branca and cola, and it is the most consumed cocktail in Argentina by a distance. Known locally as Fernet con Coca, it emerged in Córdoba in the 1980s
Fluffy Duck
The Fluffy Duck is the advocaat bottle’s night out: Dutch custard liqueur lifted with gin and orange, lengthened with soda into a 1970s party classic whose name describes the
Garibaldi
The Garibaldi is Campari and orange juice, which for most of the twentieth century meant a perfectly blameless and slightly boring highball. Then Naren Young rebuilt it at Dante
Gin & Tonic
The Gin & Tonic is medicine that stayed for the party. Quinine, the bitter bark extract that treated malaria across the British Empire, was so foul in solution that officers of
Gin Rickey
The Gin Rickey is gin, fresh lime juice and soda water over ice, and there is no sugar in it of any kind. That absence is the whole drink. It is what separates a Rickey from a
Ginger Snap
The Ginger Snap is warming spice in refreshing form: a bourbon highball where fresh lemon and cinnamon syrup sit under a fiery ginger beer, finished with a cinnamon stick. It is a
Greyhound
The Greyhound is older than its vodka. Harry Craddock printed the grapefruit-and-gin original in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, and the drink took both its name and its second
Harvey Wallbanger
The Harvey Wallbanger is a Screwdriver that took a swerve: vodka and orange juice with a float of Galliano, the tall golden Italian liqueur, and the most successful
Horse’s Neck
The Horse’s Neck began as a soft drink. Through the 1890s it was ginger ale over ice with a long spiral of lemon peel draped over the rim, and the peel, hanging down the side of
Jack’s Godfather Highball
Jack’s Godfather Highball is the Godfather stretched out and given cola. Tennessee whiskey and amaretto, which is the whole of the original, then 75ml of cola over ice in a tall