Hooray! It’s Friday finally. This week’s drink is brought to you by my bartender friend. I remembered I still had some homemade orgeat in my fridge from when we got together a while ago and not wanting to waste it I was hell bent on utilizing it this week. Though after checking with him and some research, apparently I didn’t have much to worry about. Orgeat is fairly shelf stable and can last for months when properly stored, aka in the refrigerator.

Anyway, what I came across is a drink called the Trinidad Sour. What makes this really interesting is the ratio of the ingredients. I can’t remember any kind of drink that has this much angostura bitters to another spirit, in this case rye. I’m cautiously optimistic this can work for me, but who knows. Let’s find out:

Trinidad Sour

1.5 oz. Angostura bitters

.5 oz. Rye whiskey

.75 oz. Lemon juice

1 oz. Orgeat

Shake all ingredients with ice. Strain into a coupe. 

Well this definitely an interesting smell on this one. I kind of thought the angostura aroma would be stronger, but it’s restrained. Barely, but it’s there.

Yup. That’s a sour alright. But…it works oddly enough. I’ll admit, I was just a bit skeptical that it would work with that much bitters in it, but it certainly does. It does come out of the gate pretty strong though. with the bitters absolutely leading the way. It’s definitely interesting getting that much bitters up front, and it does seem to mask any other flavors going on. With the exception of the lemon. The lemon flavor is definitely lost. But, it’s inherent sourness absolutely comes through in its entirety. and lasts basically the entire sip. The rye unsurprisingly gets absolutely covered up in this. The only thing then holding down the lemon and angostura is the orgeat. The syrup helps reign in what would be an overly bitter and sour drink and keeps it manageable, while also leaving a bit of sour to keep it true to its name. As well as the flavor, it adds a level of viscosity that I wasn’t expecting. It adds a rather nice mouth feel that helps bring this drink all together.

Well, this was certainly interesting. I did enjoy it, but I’m not sure I would make it again. Mainly because it was kind of a pain in the ass measuring an ounce and a half of angostura bitters since there is a stopper on the bottle that only allows for dashes. Yes, I know I probably could have taken that off, but I didn’t want to risk breaking it and rendering the “dash” measurement of bitters useless going forward. It’ll probably be a while before I remember that this was pretty good and then sit at the bar dashing out an ounce and a half of bitters into a jig.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)