The Gold Rush is one of the great simple drinks — bourbon, honey syrup, lemon, and nothing else. T.J. Siegal created it at Milk & Honey in New York around 2001, as a Bee’s Knees with bourbon in place of gin, and it has been quietly outliving flashier cocktails ever since.
This version swaps the honey syrup for burnt honey, and the change is bigger than it sounds. Honey cooked to a dark amber loses some of its sweetness and gains a bitter, toasted, almost savoury edge — closer to caramel than to a flower. Against bourbon and lemon it stops the drink being merely pleasant and gives it a floor.
Three ingredients, one of which you cooked. It is the best return on effort in this whole set.
Ingredients
- 2 oz bourbon
- 3/4 oz Syrup, Burnt Honey
- 3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
Ice
- 1 lemon twist
Directions
- Combine the bourbon, burnt honey syrup and lemon juice in a shaker.
- Add ice and shake hard for 12–15 seconds.
- Strain over a large cube in a rocks glass, or into a chilled coupe if you want it up.
- Express a lemon twist over the surface and drop it in.
Notes
The ratio is the classic 2 : 3/4 : 3/4 and it is worth respecting. Burnt honey is less sweet than plain honey syrup, so if it lands tart, go to a full ounce of syrup rather than cutting the lemon — you want the acid.
A higher-proof bourbon is better here than in most sours. The drink is only three ingredients and there is nowhere for a thin whiskey to hide.
The Bee’s Knees is this drink with gin, and it predates it by seventy-odd years. The Penicillin — Sam Ross, also Milk & Honey, a few years later — is the same family with Scotch, ginger and a peated float, and burnt honey is very good there too.
Charred lemon juice (see the Charred Lemon Bourbon Sour) on top of burnt honey is one step too far — two toasted flavours cancel rather than compound. Pick one.