Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: Annual Cider Experiment

Hooray for Friday! I had an idea to do some experimenting and make my own drink this week involving apple cider because why not? Checking my master spreadsheet where I track all of these posts, I see that I’ve been doing cider cocktail experiments around this time of year before. Which means apparently I’m pretty unoriginal. At the very least I can take some inspiration and do a little tweaking to the base spirit. So I took the last one I did, and changed around the base, as well as the citrus to see how it turns out.

2 oz. Rittenhouse Rye

1 barspoon(ish) Allspice dram

1.5 oz. Apple cider

Lemon wedge

Add the whiskey, allspice and cider to a rocks glass, add a large ice cube and stir to chill and combine. Squeeze a lemon wedge and drop into the glass

A little allspice up front, but nothing too aggressive. It is a pleasant aroma, and very seasonal.

Just like the other version, the apple cider flavors lead the way. But while they lead the show, they are nowhere near as strong as regular cider would be, no surprise there. Just underneath the cider, you get a clear zip of the allspice mixed in, mixed with a nice bit of rye making an appearance in there. I like what the rye brings here. Not just I am a big fan of rye, but it shines through the other ingredients easier and lets you know it’s in there, without completely overpowering everything else in there.

The lemon/lime swap seems to be a bit of a miss. The lemon gets a bit lost here, and I’m not sure why. I figured lemon would stand out more than lime did in the rum version I’m basing this off of. Maybe the lemon flavors is too close to the cider profile that it gets covered completely? Either way, I get little to no flavoring from it. Even at the end when the garnish is at the bottom of the glass with the last remnants of the drink in there, I hardly get anything.

The question now is, which version do I like better. They both definitely work, and work well. I guess it would depend on what your base spirit preference is. I think I might give a slight edge to the rum version personally. Despite my preference for rye itself, I think the rum plays slightly better here. Plus I get more of the other ingredients in the rum version.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)