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Something I love about cocktails: A drink with an extremely long ingredients list, such as the Zombie, can actually be pretty damn simple to construct and mix up for the home bartender once you have those ingredients. But at the same time, the opposite can also be true: A drink with an exceedingly short list of ingredients can also be much more complicated, at least on an aesthetic or philosophical level. That can be the case with the much loved but often misunderstood and misrepresented Japanese whisky highball.
Just saying “highball” implies a few things. Traditionally, any drink you would call a highball is going to be a “long drink,” which is to say a drink where the majority of liquid in the glass is a nonalcoholic mixer. They’re likewise traditionally served in taller, thinner glasses, like the sort we in the west refer to as a Collins glass. These drinks are traditionally served over ice, kept cold and relatively simple. You know many of them quite well–the whiskey ginger, rum and coke, etc.
The Japanese whisky highball, on the other hand, takes that simplicity and then applies a higher level of rigor and professionalism to it. Granted, some of the ornate, precise tradition we now associate with this drink comes as a result of our own American cultural appropriation–the image of the highly trained and skilled, borderline fanatical Japanese bartender has become a common one in the U.S., which has led to an erroneous belief that the making of a “true” Japanese highball comes down to an extremely strict set of rules that one must follow. These hokey rules have on some level constrained the perception of the drink, with some home bartenders believing, for instance, that a highball must be stirred a specific number of times, with the number “13.5” being one of the most hilariously anal figures thrown about. Suffice to say, this is an overapplication of the almost religious pageantry now associated with the Japanese whisky highball and Japanese bartending in general, and the reality of this drink is that it is made at many levels from slapdash to intricate throughout Japan. Likewise at home, it can ultimately be made as complicated or as simple as you want it to be.
What one should accept is that when you’re making a Japanese whisky highball at home, it’s going to be quite difficult or time consuming to replicate the way these are made at the standard of a world class cocktail bar. This is because each ingredient is often being held to very rigorous aesthetic standards at this level of sophistication. The ice, for instance, is meant to be crystal clear, which gives the drink its uniquely translucent look. The ice for a highball may also be hand carved or cut in an upscale Japanese bar. The soda water, likewise may be served from a special machine in Japan that can crank up the carbonation levels to an intensity far beyond what you’ll see in any conventional bottled or canned club soda. Some of these machines have since made their way stateside, but are you really about to buy one for your home bar? Elsewhere in Japan, a single machine may construct the entire drink on its own, combining chilled whisky and highly carbonated water, with the addition of the optional citrus twist/spritz/garnish.
Another thing about the Japanese whisky highball that rarely gets mentioned: Quite a lot of them in Japan are being made not with Japanese whisky at all, but rather flagship single malt scotch whiskies from the likes of Glenmorangie, Glenfiddich or Glenlivet. This preference is a relic of an earlier era when scotch whisky consumption was still the dominant mode of whiskey appreciation in Japan. Japanese whisky, on the other hand, has had a tumultuous up-and-down cycle, peaking in the 1970s/1980s before crashing down in the 1990s and 2000s to a fraction of its former high. It actually was the highball that helped to rescue the industry, as a push toward highball marketing in the mid-2000s ultimately reignited a national fascination with the drink that has persisted for the next two decades.
So with that said, here’s your basic Japanese whisky highball recipe. The techniques here are largely intended to preserve a chilled beverage and its carbonation.
— 1 part malt whisky or blended malt whisky (Japanese or scotch, potentially chilled)
— 3 parts highly chilled and carbonated soda water/club soda
— Two large, long ice cubes
— Citrus peel for garnish (optional)
Place your two large ice cubes into a long, narrow highball glass, and use a bar spoon to stir the ice around in circles in an effort to chill the glass. Pour out any small amount of melted water. On top of the ice, pour your malt whisky. Give it a couple gentle stirs along the outside of the glass with your bar spoon. Now, down the side of the glass (rather than on top of the ice), pour your soda water in order to preserve as much carbonation as possible. Either stir very gently, or simply use the bar spoon to gently lift the ice halfway out of the glass before gently letting it back down. Garnish with optional choice of citrus peel, coin or wedge: Lemon, grapefruit and orange are all used.
The goal there, as stated above, is to preserve as much chill and as many bubbles in the Japanese whisky highball as possible. For the home consumer, it may help to chill the whiskey, which is common in Japanese bars making large numbers of highballs. Don’t worry about somehow damaging the spirit in this way, as the idea that chilling whiskey somehow chemically changes it is a common myth or misconception in the U.S. in particular. You’ll also want to track down the most highly carbonated soda that you have access to, with two of the most popular and commonly found products fitting that bill being Topo Chico or Q Club Soda.
But at the end of the day, what we should really be repeating is this: Do this drink any way that you want to do it. A handful of ice in a glass, with some whiskey and soda, is still going to make a perfectly passable Japanese whisky highball, if not the most aesthetically pleasing one. We can enjoy the pageantry of this particular libation, and embrace it when convenient, without being slaves to it. As I always try to stress to people, don’t let the thought of doing something imperfectly stop you from doing it. A 10% worse cocktail is always going to be superior to no cocktail at all.
Jim Vorel is a Paste staff writer and resident beer and liquor geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more drink writing.