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Cocktail Concoctions

Time for a Drink: The Gin Rickey

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As promised on Wednesday, Paul Clarke of The Cocktail Chronicles returns here with a recipe to do you up right for the weekend. Drink up! --The Serious Eats Team


Photograph by Paul Clarke

If you look at the gin rickey and think it's nothing but a gin and tonic without tonic's bittersweet bite, you'd be mostly correct. Dismiss it as a G&T wannabe, however, and you're missing out on one of the great joys of summer. Created in a Washington, D.C., bar called Shoemaker's during an especially brutal heat wave in the 1890s--before the advent of air conditioning, you'll note--the gin rickey is like an effervescent Frigidaire. Refreshingly bubbly and pleasantly bitter, this Gilded Age cooler demonstrates how your great-grandparents made it through the summer alive.

About the author: Paul Clarke blogs about cocktails at The Cocktail Chronicles and writes regularly on spirits and cocktails for Imbibe magazine. He lives in Seattle, where he works as a writer and magazine editor.

Time for a Drink: The Gin Rickey

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Ingredients

  • ice
  • half a well-washed lime
  • 2 ounces London dry gin
  • chilled club soda
  • Optional: splash simple syrup

Procedures

  1. 1

    Fill a 10-ounce Collins glass with ice. Squeeze lime into the glass, getting as much juice out of it as you can. Toss in the lime shell, then add gin. Top off glass with club soda. The rickey doesn't need it, but if you like a sweeter drink, add splash of simple syrup.

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