The sour family of cocktails can be traced back to 1862, when they appeared in mixology legend Jerry Thomas’s book How to Mix Drinks. Thanks to that one-two punch of sweet and sour, their popularity endures today in drinks like the whiskey sour and tequila sour.
Sour mix is a staple at many cocktail bars and a welcome addition to your home bar. But you don’t have to settle for the store-bought stuff. Not when you can easily whip up a homemade batch that’s guaranteed to be more delicious. With fresh sour mix on hand, that whiskey or tequila sour is only a shake away.
Our recipe is as simple as 2, 2, 1...
2 parts simple syrup
2 parts lemon juice
1 part lime juice
A good starter batch size is 1 cup simple syrup, 1 cup lemon juice, ½ cup lime juice. This should yield around 10 sours, depending on your serving size.
You can find our simple syrup recipe here, but it’s as easy as bringing equal parts water and sugar to a boil (in this case 1 cup of each) and stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Then using a strainer, squeeze fresh lemons and limes till you get the right amounts of juice. Shake everything together until well-mixed. If you want more of a citrus kick, you can up the lime juice to ¾ cup. That’s it! Your homemade sour mix can be refrigerated up to two weeks.
Feel free to experiment by introducing other citruses like orange or grapefruit, but since they’re sweeter than lemons and limes, you’ll want to dial down the simple syrup accordingly.
With your mix on hand, you can make a quick whiskey or tequila sour by combining equal parts Ritual Whiskey Alternative or Ritual Tequila Alternative and mix. You can even add an egg white or aquafaba (chickpea juice) before shaking everything up in a cocktail shaker to give it the signature froth. Enjoy!
