Bourbon Honey Shooter
Bourbon, honey, and lemon — the Gold Rush cocktail created at Little Branch, NYC, around 2009 by T.J. Bhatt, compressed into a single cold shooter.
- 1½ ozbourbon
- ½ ozhoney syrup(1:1 honey to water)
- ¼ ozfresh lemon juice(freshly squeezed)
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The Bourbon Honey Shooter draws inspiration from the Gold Rush, one of craft bartending's most celebrated modern classics. Created by New York bartender T.J. Bhatt at Little Branch around 2009, the Gold Rush is itself a riff on the Bee's Knees, featuring bourbon, honey syrup, and lemon juice. Honey and bourbon have a natural affinity — the cereal sweetness of grain interacts with raw honey's floral complexity in a way that softens the spirit's heat without masking its character. As a shooter, the format compresses the Gold Rush's balanced flavors into a single sip, stripping out ice dilution and serving it cold. Honey syrups became a staple ingredient in craft cocktail bars during the 2000s and 2010s as bartenders moved away from refined sugar toward more nuanced natural sweeteners. The Bourbon Honey Shooter represents that ethos in its most concentrated form.
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