Gold Rush Cocktail Recipe: Bourbon, Honey, Lemon

Ingredients

2 oz bourbone.g. Maker's Mark · Buffalo Trace · Woodford Reserve · Wild Turkey · Jim Beam
¾ oz lemon juice
¾ oz honey syrup honey and warm water 3:1 or 1:1

Garnish: Lemon twist · Ice: One large cube

Method

Add bourbon, lemon juice and honey syrup to a shaker.
Fill with ice and shake hard for 12 to 15 seconds.
Strain into a rocks glass over one large ice cube.
Express a lemon peel over the drink and use it as garnish.

Watch it made

Gold Rush

Taste

Warm bourbon with vanilla and oak, honeyed sweetness and a clean lemon finish. Medium strong, smooth and rounded.

History and origin

The Gold Rush was created around 2000 at Milk & Honey, Sasha Petraske's influential bar on New York's Lower East Side. It is usually credited to T.J. Siegal, and the idea is disarmingly simple: a Whiskey Sour that uses honey syrup instead of sugar.

The change sounds small, but honey gives the drink a rounder texture and more aromatic sweetness, and the Gold Rush quickly became a house staple. Its bigger legacy is the family it started. A few years later, Sam Ross used the same template with blended Scotch, ginger and a smoky float to create the Penicillin, now one of the best-known modern classics. The Gold Rush remains the simpler, sunnier original.

Bartender tips

Make honey syrup in advance: pure honey seizes up in a cold shaker and never mixes properly.
Different honeys change the drink a lot; a mild flower honey is the safe choice, a dark forest honey makes it richer.
A bourbon around 45% ABV keeps the honey from making the drink cloying.

Variations

Penicillin: Blended Scotch, lemon, honey ginger syrup and a float of Islay whisky: the smoky descendant.
Bee's Knees: The gin version with lemon and honey, a Prohibition-era classic.