Whiskey Smash
Bourbon, lemon, sugar and mint, muddled and served over crushed ice. A nineteenth-century julep cousin that Dale DeGroff brought back, and the most refreshing thing you can do with a bottle of bourbon.
Built to the standard modern spec; not yet tested in our kitchen. How we test.
The recipe.
Scaling adjusts quantities only. Prepare shaken drinks in individual portions.
Let’s make a good drink.
Add the mint leaves and the simple syrup to a shaker and press gently with a muddler — enough to bruise the leaves, not to shred them.
Add the bourbon and lemon juice, fill with ice, and shake hard for 10 seconds.
Fine strain into a rocks glass packed with crushed ice.
Garnish with a slapped mint sprig and a short straw.
A thoughtful finish
- Muddle the mint lightly. Crushed hard, it releases chlorophyll and tastes grassy and bitter; pressed gently, it tastes of mint.
- If you use whole lemon wedges in the muddle, as DeGroff's original does, you get oil from the peel as well as juice, which adds aroma. Press, don't pulverise, or the pith turns bitter.
- Crushed ice is part of the recipe. The drink is meant to dilute as you drink it, like a julep.
Common mistakes
- Over-muddling the mint into a green paste.
- Serving it on big cubes. It comes out too strong and too sweet, because it never gets the dilution the recipe assumes.
- Skipping the fine strain. Mint fragments in the teeth ruin a good drink.
A few good questions.
What is the difference between a Whiskey Smash and a Mint Julep?
Lemon. A julep is whiskey, sugar and mint; a smash adds citrus and is shaken rather than built. The smash is lighter and more sour.
Bourbon or rye?
Bourbon is the standard and its sweetness suits the lemon and mint. Rye makes a drier, spicier version that some prefer.
Can I make it without crushed ice?
You can serve it over cubes if you must, but reduce the syrup slightly and expect a stronger drink.
What else can I smash?
Almost anything — gin, cognac, rum, aged tequila. The template is spirit, lemon, sugar, mint and crushed ice, and the Gin Basil Smash is its most famous descendant.
Variations
- Mint Julep — Bourbon, sugar and mint, no citrus.
- Gin Basil Smash — Gin, lemon and basil.
- Whiskey Sour — Bourbon, lemon and sugar, without the mint.
- Brandy Smash — Cognac in place of bourbon.
Where it comes from
1887 · New York City · Jerry Thomas; revived by Dale DeGroff · Rainbow Room (revival)
A ‘smash’ in the nineteenth century was simply a small julep — spirit, sugar, mint and ice — and the Whiskey Smash appears in the 1887 edition of Jerry Thomas’s Bar-Tender’s Guide in exactly that form, with no citrus. The modern drink, with muddled lemon wedges, is Dale DeGroff’s. Working at the Rainbow Room in New York in the 1990s, DeGroff revived the smash with lemon and put it on the menu, and his version became the standard; he has said it is the drink he recommends to people who think they do not like whiskey. It is a cousin of the Mint Julep, lighter and brighter because of the lemon.
Sources
- Jerry Thomas, The Bar-Tender's Guide (1887 edition), 1887 (book)
- Dale DeGroff, The Craft of the Cocktail, 2002 (book)
- David Wondrich, Imbibe!, 2015 (book)
Strength. About 1.5 US standard drinks at an estimated 21.8% ABV, estimated from the ingredients and technique, not measured. What that means.
A little character in every sip.
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