After the Gold Rush.

To a new home in the sun.

After the Gold Rush.

The Gold Rush is a delicious and simple cocktail of just Bourbon, lemon juice and honey syrup that has long been a go-to cocktail for me when I’m feeling a little lazy but I’ve felt for some time that it could use a little more flavour complexity. It’s always a bit of a risk messing with a rock solid drink but I think my little modifications keep the spirit of the original while elevating it enough to be worthwhile of a new name. Inspiration was delivered unto me by a couple of other classic whisky cocktails, the New York Sour and the Penicillin. The New York Sour shows us that a whisky sour can benefit from an injection of some more tannic notes, in its own case a red wine float, but in the After the Gold Rush I went for the wonderful Italian amaro that calls itself Cynar and floated it naught but threw it right in the shaker with the other ingredients. It was a welcome bonus that the Cynar made the drink even more golden than the Gold Rush itself. From the Penicillin I took the sweet component of half honey syrup and half ginger syrup simply because it is such a balanced and tasty combination and, even though it just the smallest of tweaks from the Gold Rush’s honey syrup, the extra warmth it brings is well worthwhile. Unlike the typical presentation of other three I decided I liked this one served up and the icing on the cake was to give a little bit of a foamy head. In this case I used a few dashes of Fee Foam* although you could use some egg white, aquafaba or other foaming agent. I felt I couldn’t take the name too far from its roots so I had little choice but to name it after a particularly whiney Neil Young song that I don’t even like very much. After all I did go to college with Neil Young. OK not that Neil Young but another one that a certain cheeky lecturer insisted on calling Goldrush.