How to Make an Amaretto Sour

As craft cocktails, and small batch spirits are making their mark on the world, liqueurs are mostly getting the shaft in the world of bartending it seems. Relatively speaking, anyway. Enter the Amaretto Sour. An Amaretto Sour is a spin on other popular sours, including classics like the whiskey sour, the Pisco sour, and the sidecar. This is a somewhat different kind of sour cocktail though.

The Amaretto Sour's strength is in it's flavor and sweetness. The necessity of sweetening your sour to balance out the citric acids disappear. Furthermore, while other sour cocktails almost always prefer the use of the milder lemon juice, this one is very palatable using lime juice instead.

Ingredients

• 2 oz of Amaretto
• 1/2 oz of lime juice (or half a lime)
• 1 egg
• 1-2 dashes of Angostura Bitters

First things first... my Amaretto of choice for this cocktail was the Sons of Vancouver small batch product which I recently acquired. You can use whichever you prefer, though, I went for this one, partly because I enjoy it, partly because it's available, and partly because it's local. The Sons of Vancouver distillery also crafts Amaretto Sours using their liqueur, which is what exposed me to the fine tasting cocktail to begin with (I'm not going to lie here, I'm sort of biased in the direction of bourbon sours or scotch sours, being the fan of whiskey that I am).

Boom! Sons of Vancouver.

Mix the Amaretto and lime juice, and in another glass or tin, separate the egg white. Note the suggestion to do these things separately. If you get eggshell or yolk into your other mixes, the cocktail will be unpure (not really, but it won't be the same).

Mix all the ingredients, and shake without ice (in the business we call it 'dry shaking' - make sure to wrap the tin with a cloth, as it won't properly seal without ice inside) for about 20 seconds, and then shake again with ice to chill the mixture. The process of dry shaking an egg white will create a thick layer of foam for you to play around with; but if it's not thick enough, by all means, dry shake it once more. Once your cocktail has reach desired foaminess, dash Angostura Bitters on top for that finished look.

That finished look.