Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: Throwing Haymakers

It’s a special day before Thanksgiving edition of the Cocktail of the Week! As a service, I like to provide you fine readers with some ideas to serve at your own Thanksgiving celebrations. Or, for our Canadian friends, Thirsty Thursday celebrations. This week/year I’m providing a drink that should play well as a day drinker, both as a single serving, or as a punch that can be scaled up to fit however many people you may be planning on entertaining (or in some cases, be dealing with). It is the aptly named Haymaker.

I came across this one not too long ago (thanks Google!) and held onto it especially for this week. I wanted to offer a punch or large batch offering like the last time I wrote up a guide like this. I think it’s important to add something to scale when entertaining. Of which, on a personal note, I am extremely excited to be hosting some family this year. Last year sucked, and this one is only marginally better, but I can finally host people for holidays again, and I am definitely looking forward to tomorrow.

Anyway, on to the Haymaker:

.75 oz. Maker’s Mark
.75 oz. triple sec
.75 oz. dry vermouth
.75 oz. lime juice

Fill a cocktail shaker 3/4 of the way with cracked ice, pour the ingredients in and stir. Strain the mixture into an old-fashioned glass.

A quick word on presentation here. As noted above, the recipe calls for a strain into an old-fashioned (rocks) glass. Without garnish or ice, there is way too much headroom in the rocks glass for me. I decided to change glasses to a coupe:

Much better.

Now, the nose has a distinct whiskey aroma to it. I subbed in Rittenhouse Rye, so not exactly bourbon, but rye should fill in just as easily here. The lime juice also gives off a nice citrus-y aroma that mixes nicely with the rye on top.

Oh the sip is excellent. It starts off with whiskey notes, but the rye quickly becomes an underlying flavor to a good balance of lime/triple sec citrus flavors. The rye doesn’t completely disappear though, you can still detect it under the lime/triple sec flavor bomb, and it somewhat regains flavor intensity as the sip finishes. Speaking of the finish, I think it might be the rye I used (as opposed to bourbon) but I get a nice little whiskey bump at the end, that reminds you that you’re drinking straight booze here (sans the lime, but that doesn’t really count). I enjoyed that extra little hit of flavor. The vermouth flavor is next to non-existent here. I suspect it acts as a base to the heavily acidic lime juice, as well as the lime and hints of orange flavor from the triple sec. I can’t taste it, but I think this drink wouldn’t be as good if it wasn’t here.

Hopefully you’ve got most of these ingredients on hand. If not, I highly suggest grabbing the ingredients to make a couple of these, or even scale it up into a punch to serve to anyone that you may have over tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

(Banner image found here)