Yuzu-Ginger Whisky Highball Pitcher

The highball is Japan’s default bar drink, and it is built on restraint: whisky, ice, soda, and nothing else getting in the way. Batching one for a party normally ruins it, because a pitcher of premixed whisky-and-soda is flat within minutes. The fix is to batch only the parts that do not carry bubbles: the whisky, the yuzu and the syrup. Keep that in the refrigerator and pour the soda glass by glass.

Ginger syrup takes ten minutes and is worth making rather than buying. A cup of sugar, a cup of water, and a knob of ginger simmered together gives you a syrup with real heat, where bottled versions are mostly sugar with ginger flavoring. It keeps a month in the refrigerator and goes into iced tea, seltzer, marinades, and stir-fry sauce.

Bottled yuzu juice is the one specialty purchase, and a small bottle goes a very long way. A half cup makes eight drinks, and the bottle holds several batches. If you cannot find it, the standard substitute is two parts lemon to one part grapefruit juice, which lands close enough that most people would not name the difference.

Yuzu-Ginger Whisky Highball Pitcher

The Japanese highball scaled to a pitcher — whisky, homemade ginger syrup, and yuzu, topped with soda glass by glass so it stays as sharp as the single-serve version.

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 10 minutes mins

Total Time 20 minutes mins

Course Drinks

Cuisine Japanese

Servings 8 drinks

Ingredients

  

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 4 ounces fresh ginger unpeeled, thinly sliced
• 1 pinch salt
• 2 cups Japanese whisky or any smooth blended whiskey
• 1/2 cup yuzu juice bottled, or 1/3 cup lemon juice plus 2 tablespoons grapefruit juice
• 1/2 cup ginger syrup from above
• 1/4 cup cold water
• 6 cups club soda chilled, about 3/4 cup per glass
• 8 strips lemon peel
• 1 piece fresh ginger thinly sliced into 8 coins

Instructions

 

• Combine the water, sugar, sliced ginger, and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves.
• Bring to a bare simmer, then reduce the heat to low and cook for 10 minutes. Do not boil hard — a rolling boil makes the syrup thick and the ginger flavor harsh.
• Take the pan off the heat and let the ginger steep in the syrup for another 20 minutes as it cools. Most of the flavor arrives during the steep, not the simmer.
• Strain into a clean jar and refrigerate. The syrup keeps for 1 month.
• Combine the whisky, yuzu juice, 1/2 cup of the ginger syrup, and the cold water in a pitcher. Stir and refrigerate for at least 1 hour — a cold base means less ice melt and less dilution in the glass.
• Fill tall glasses with ice, right to the top. A full glass of ice melts more slowly than a half-full one, which is the opposite of what most people expect.
• Pour about 3 ounces of the base over the ice in each glass — the pitcher holds eight pours with a little to spare — then top with about 3/4 cup of chilled club soda, poured slowly down the side.
• Stir once — one gentle lift with a long spoon, no more — then garnish with a lemon peel strip and a ginger coin.

Notes

Japanese whisky has gotten expensive. A smooth blended Irish or Canadian whiskey costs half as much and disappears into the soda and citrus exactly the same way. Save the good bottle for drinking neat.

Do not peel the ginger. The skin holds flavor, the syrup gets strained anyway, and peeling a knobby root wastes a third of it.

The spent ginger slices from the syrup are still good. Chop them into stir-fries, or candy them by tossing in sugar and drying them in a low oven.

Yuzu juice is sold at Asian markets and online, usually five to eight dollars for a bottle that makes six to eight batches. The lemon-grapefruit substitute costs nothing extra if you already buy citrus.

Club soda from the store brand is identical to the name brand. Buy the 2-liter bottles rather than cans and open one at a time so the rest stays sharp.

Never premix the soda into the pitcher. A batched highball that sat with its bubbles in it is the single most common way this drink gets ruined.

Make it alcohol-free: replace the whisky with 2 cups of strong brewed hojicha or black tea, chilled, and add an extra tablespoon of yuzu juice. Roasted hojicha has a toasty, slightly woody character that stands in for whisky better than anything else in the cupboard.

Serving note: 2 cups of whisky across 8 servings is 2 ounces each, a little over one standard drink.

Keyword big-batch cocktail, japanese cocktail, whisky highball, yuzu