First of all, let’s get one thing straight: no tigers were juiced in the making of this DOTW post. Moreover, I’m pretty sure, the makers of Tiger’s Milk bars don’t actually have the courage to milk actual members of the feline genus panthera to make their product.

Now that we’ve got that straightened out, it’s my sad duty to report that I have no actual information about the provenance of this week’s drink or its rather silly name. It doesn’t appear to have been in any of the more famous classic cocktail books, though it’s certainly simple and straightforward enough that somebody must have made this drink back in the day. Who created it or where it came from before it lived in various places on the Internet is a mystery to me.

The real mystery, though, is why it’s not better known. I think Tiger Juice is another example of a cocktail alchemy at it’s best. Three simple ingredients that definitely add up to something greater than the sum of their parts. It’s juicy, refreshing, a bit alcoholic, and 100% tiger-cruelty free.

Tiger Juice

1 1/2 ounce Canadian whiskey
1 ounce fresh orange juice
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice

Combine the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with lots of ice. Shake vigorously and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Sip and appreciate the fact that you are both adjusting your attitude and getting a good chunk of your daily requirement of vitamin C, without any added sugar.

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The benefits of red wine notwithstanding, I’m willing to bet that Tiger Juice just might the be the healthiest alcoholic beverage yet developed. The relatively high amount of sugars present in the otherwise very healthy OJ are balanced out by lemon juice, which I’m guessing has at least many goodies for your body with less than half the sugar calories.

Of course, the downside of all that would be an overly tart flavor profile. Regular readers might remember that I’m a bit of a baby about that. To my utter surprise, however, I found that simply wasn’t the case. Combining the juices with Canadian Club — still my choice for the best bargain in booze at about $15-$18.00 for 1.75 ml bottle — yielded a drink that was neither particularly sweet nor noticeably tart. Instead, it was tasty, refreshing and just boozy enough to be interesting. For low calorie tipples, I’d place this next to something like a vodka martini among sophisticated drinks that go down very easy.

That did change, though, when I tried other types of whiskey. Noticing that some online recipes called for bourbon, I found the sweetness of Maker’s Mark acted like salt on a melon in reverse, emphasizing the tart flavors in a way I didn’t particularly love.

While most recipes wisely called strictly for Canadian booze, I figured that rye, Canadian whiskey’s close cousin, might be a worthy substitution. The usually outstanding Alberta Dark Rye, which is actually from Canada, was actually too flavorful and overpowered the drink. Old Overholt, on the other hand, proved its versatility as the craft bar’s default rye and worked reasonably well…but I still preferred the gentle simplicity of the Canadian Club.

And that’s the thing. Ordinary Canadian whiskey gets a bad rap among the cocktail cognoscenti because it admittedly doesn’t boast the complex flavor profile of a really good bourbon or rye. The thing is, sometimes you want a little flavor, not a lot. And, yeah, I don’t drink them as often as I used to, but there are times when a vodka martini is just the thing. Now, maybe there are going to be times when Tiger Juice is  just the thing.

I often praise simplicity in cocktails. This is partly because my mission in these posts is to show you how, taking very little time, you can make drinks that taste at least 100 percent better than what you’re likely to get at your typical bar. That’s because, unlike the staff of your standard dive or chain bar, you won’t use sour mix and you will have enough time to actually measure your ingredients.

The other reason I like simple cocktails is that I’m lazy! I have a day job and, while bellyaching about getting free booze in the mail and making mostly very good cocktails would be unseemly, doing the stuff that’s necessary for these posts does take a bit of time. So, especially during a week when I was recuperating from a cold I picked up on the way to Comic-Con, and then Comic-Con itself, and then the Dracula-like return of my cold, the simplest possible drink was bordering on a necessity.

Moreover, with a brand new bottle of very good Alberta Rye Dark Batch on hand after my earlier uncorking misadventure, the cleverly named Rye Ball pitched at me by the Alberta PR team seemed like the perfect beverage. It is, in fact, basically a highball (any hard liquor and any beverage, i.e., Scotch and soda, 7 and 7, rum and Coke, etc.) but with hard cider providing the fizz. A dash of bitters gives the thing some cocktailing respectability. See what you think.

The Rye Ball

1 ounce Alberta Rye Dark Batch
4-5 ounces hard cider
1 dash aromatic bitters

Build in a highball or collins glass with ice. Stir. See, I said this was simple!
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Considering the high proportion of hard cider here, your choice in this regard is obviously going to make an enormous difference. The Rye Ball is still something of a work in progress in that I have yet to find perfect pairing. Still, with a growing number of hard ciders on the market, the sky is pretty much the limit and I encourage folks to experiment with this refreshing cocktail concept.

I happen to enjoy hard ciders quite a bit, and I definitely dig them on the drier side. Still, to stand up to the whiskey and bitters, I definitely leaned towards the sweeter brews for a Rye Ball. Smith and Forge Hard Cider produced a full bodied blend, though I also enjoyed using the even sweeter Strong Bow Honey and Apple Hard Cider almost as much. No offense to the bottle of Henry Hotspur’s Hard Pressed for Cider I picked up at Trader Joe’s, but I was less partial to the result. It wasn’t bad, just a bit overly sophisticated and boozy tasting for my mood that night. I guess some part of me still expects cider to taste a little bit like apple juice.

The one thing I will say is that I strongly suggest going with four ounces of cider rather than five. I have no idea why this should be, but using more cider somehow resulted in a more medicinal flavor.

I should add, by the way, that the recipe doesn’t specify an apple cider, so feel free to try this with pear cider or whatever else you can find. While I still think Albert Rye makes a truly outstanding Old Fashioned, the Rye Ball is something of an unexplored drinking frontier, so there’s no need to be overly cautious.

It’s named for a terrapin turtle, not a rattlesnake, but this is a drink with a bite. Make no mistake about that.

Showing up in print first in Ted Saucier’s 1951 cocktail guide, Bottom’s Up, the Diamondback comes from the post-war boom in cocktail culture. That’s the one that inspired people to buy those cocktail sets that were handed down to some of us by our parents, grandparents,or great-grandparents. Nevertheless, as any true cocktail snob will tell you, that was a far cry from the highpoint of pre-prohibition cocktail creativity, despite the era’s booze-loving trappings. By the 1950s, cocktails were a pretty basic matter for the most part. In a funny way, the ingredients in a Diamondback feel almost like a throwback to a much earlier time in tippling history since both rye and apple brandies became increasingly rare in U.S. stores in the second half of the 20th century. Indeed, it was apparently the house drink at a venerable East coast bar, and it’s possible it’s history actually goes back a bit further than I know.

So, yes, the makings here are bit old school for the cast of “Mad Men” but not hard to find these days,though also not exactly inexpensive; the Diamondback contains chartreuse, an herbaceous and powerful product that a bunch of monks have a monopoly on; I hope they’re doing good works with the $50.00 or so you typically have to spend on one of their bottlings. Also, being comprised of three very potent brews, one a bit outre, this is a drink that Roger Sterling, at least, might have appreciated.

The Diamondback

1 1/2 ounces rye whiskey
3/4 ounce applejack (i.e., American apple brandy)
3/4 green chartreuse
1 cocktail cherry (garnish)

Combine your ingredients in a cocktail shaker or mixing glass with plenty of ice. You can stir this one if you like, but it will come out very, very strong. I shake it. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, add your cocktail cherry. You may toast our amphibian friend, the diamondback terrapin. More than one of these drinks and you won’t be moving much faster than one.

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According to cocktail blogger Doug Ford, the Diamondback was originally the Diamondback Lounge Cocktail and was the house beverage of the Lord Baltimore Hotel bar in guess-what-southeastern city? Originally, it was made with yellow chartreuse, which is milder, but most modern recipes call for the green variant. And let’s be clear, by “milder” we mean 80 proof. Green chartreuse clocks in at a stunning 110.

It gets worse, or perhaps better, because most of the people making this drink at various Internet locales are using 100 proof ryes like Rittenhouse and Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy, which is also bottled in bond, i.e., 100 proof. My gut reaction is to think that this might be a little too much of a good thing. In any case, the reality is that most of the boozes I actually had on hand this week were very slightly milder, which I thought might compensate to some degree for using the oh-so strong, but admittedly flavorful, green chartreuse.

The first time I made a Diamondback, I frankly found it a too strong. I used the last of the only 100 proof rye I had, 1776, but compensated for its strength via that fact that I’m too cheap to own a bottle of Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy at present; I went with Laird’s somewhat maligned  80 proof Applejack. (It’s blended with neutral spirits for a lighter taste which I think is very pleasant.) Then, I realized that, contrary to the cocktail snob’s dictum that drinks without juices should be always be stirred, the Diamondback was originally shaken. Especially as I don’t buy that particular dogma one little bit, I thought that made for a major improvement.

I also tried the Diamondback with 90 proof Bulleit Rye and Alberta Dark Rye. Both were just fine, but I give the slight edge to the one named after a Canadian province. It wasn’t the fact that it’s makers finally decided to send me a replacement bottle after the incident of the torn off plastic thingy, at least I don’t think it was. It’s just the gentler, sweeter flavor seemed to mellow out this fire-breathing turtle of a concoction.