St. Agrestis · Cocktail library
Bourbon Renewal
Jeffrey Morgenthaler's shaken bourbon, lemon and crème de cassis sour, served over ice, in two published specs.
Go to the recipe ↓The Bourbon Renewal is Jeffrey Morgenthaler's drink: bourbon, fresh lemon, crème de cassis, a sweetener and a dash of Angostura, shaken and strained over ice in an old fashioned glass. He published it on his own site, and Imbibe printed it with credit to him at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon. The two printings differ in size and sweetener. His blog uses more bourbon and lemon with plain 1:1 simple syrup, while Imbibe's smaller build uses gomme syrup. The practical choice is which syrup you will make or buy, and how much bourbon you want against the same measure of cassis.
Imbibe (credited to Morgenthaler): gomme version
Contains alcohol
Ingredients
Original recipe quantities.
See the proportions
Share of the measured liquid, before ice. Unmeasured additions and non-volume ingredients are excluded.
Method as published
- Put the bourbon, lemon juice, crème de cassis, gomme syrup and bitters in a shaker with ice.
- Shake until chilled.
- Strain into an old fashioned glass filled with ice.
Garnish None given by the source.
- The syrup is measured in teaspoons. 2 US tsp equals one-third of a US fluid ounce.
- Imbibe says the gomme syrup adds some extra body. It gives no gomme recipe.
Recipe source: imbibemagazine.com ↗
Jeffrey Morgenthaler: simple syrup version
Contains alcohol
Ingredients
Original recipe quantities.
See the proportions
Share of the measured liquid, before ice. Unmeasured additions and non-volume ingredients are excluded.
Method as published
- Shake the bourbon, lemon juice, crème de cassis, simple syrup and bitters with ice until cold.
- Strain over fresh ice into an old-fashioned glass.
Garnish A lemon wedge, or fresh currants when they are in season.
- In a reply on the same page, Morgenthaler says he uses plain 1:1 simple syrup for this drink, not 2:1 rich syrup.
Recipe source: jeffreymorgenthaler.com ↗
Same cassis, different frame
Both specs use ½ oz crème de cassis and one dash of Angostura, and both set the lemon at half the bourbon. What changes is the base and the sweetener. The blog version raises the bourbon to 2 oz and the lemon to 1 oz, sweetened with ½ oz of 1:1 simple syrup. Imbibe uses 1½ oz bourbon, ¾ oz lemon and 2 tsp gomme. Because the cassis stays fixed, it is a larger share relative to the bourbon in the Imbibe drink. Gomme and simple syrup are different preparations, and Imbibe gives no gomme formula, so the syrup volumes alone do not tell you which drink is sweeter.
Cocktail Virgin made Morgenthaler's recipe at the blog quantities, using Evan Williams Bonded bourbon and Massenez cassis. It served the drink in a double old fashioned glass with ice. It names a lemon wedge or wheel, or berries in season, as the garnish, but marks the garnish as omitted.