How to cook highball (cocktail)?

Any bartender can easily tell what a highball is. Cocktail, which is so called, has certain characteristics and significant differences.

Classification Features

Among the huge number of mixed drinks, highball is especially common. Cocktail usually has a well-defined composition. In this case, it's better to talk about the required components. In general, highball is not a specific product, but a whole category. It includes drinks, which consist of two or more ingredients. And the first of them is any strong alcohol. The following products can play the role of the second:

• mineral water;
• Juices;
• Non-alcoholic carbonated drinks ;
• Champagne and others.

The number of them can be different, but most often during cooking it is customary to adhere to the proportion when the first and second components are in the ratio 1: 4. Haybol is a cocktail that is well known to many.

Among the large list there are such world-famous ones as "Brandy-Cola", "Bloody Mary", "Gin Tonic", "Screwdriver" and others. They are easy to distinguish from the others. Firstly, they are always served in special glasses with the same name. Secondly, it is a cocktail in which one component is mixed with another through gas bubbles.

History of the drink

Often people ask, where did this unusual name come from? Who invented this drink, and for what reasons did the author give him such a name? In the twenties of last century, Americans even carried out an entire investigation into this matter. After a long trial they came to the conclusion that highball is a cocktail, the discoverer of which is the bartender from New York, Patrick Duffy. It happened somewhere in 1895. As the main ingredients, he used liqueur and soda water. A little later his followers began to add to the drink also bitter spirits. This made it possible to significantly expand the assortment list and give vent to the imagination of bartenders. Among other things, fans of the fizzy product constantly tormented the question, why he was given exactly this name? It turns out that there is a direct connection with the railway. The word itself is translated from English as "fast train". In those years, the worker on the roads gave the driver a signal about the departure with a special staff in the form of a circle and a small handle. Then he was also called highball.

A vivid example

How to prepare a real highball (cocktail). Recipes for making such drinks are very similar to each other. In them only the components and elements of the decoration change. In the recipe, as you know, there should be two components: alcohol and effervescent beverage. And they are all prepared as follows:

1. In a highball you need to put 4-5 ice cubes.
2. Pour 50-75 milliliters of alcohol.
3. Add any gas-containing drink so that the contents almost reach the edge of the dishes.
4. Decorate the product with a slice of citrus.
5. Drink through a straw.

For example, you can consider a recipe for a cocktail called "Bacardi Buck".

It includes:

50 milliliters of white rum, 15 milliliters of Cointrreau liquor, half a lemon and 120 milliliters of ginger ale.

The preparation follows standard technology:

1. It is necessary to take a tall glass and put in it only a few ice cubes.
2. Add all the products in the following order: rum - liqueur - lemon juice - ale.

After that, you just have to mix the contents, and you can even drink without a straw.