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Retro is in again, just check the clothing guys and gals are wearing around bars, the names like “Eveline” babies are getting and you’ll be assured. Other fields will follow this trend surely, and this is just the perfect excuse to learn the Rusty Nail recipe, one of the most simple and rewarding cocktails there is. The name sounds cool on itself, but the ingredients are what makes this drink a certified old school cool that so many people are into nowadays.
Rusty Nail Drink History
For a such an old school cocktail like the Rusty Nail, we must revisit its history and mention how it got such an interesting name. The first mixture of the two ingredients of the drink was recorded around the late ’30s, but then it was called the B.I.F., later it was referred as the D&S or Little Club No. 1. The cocktail got popularized in the 1960s at the 21 Club in Manhattan, New York, and the legend says that it got its name because it was stirred with a rusty nail. Something we definitely don’t recommend, so leave this part of the Rusty Nail recipe in the history books of bartending.
The new name got stuck when Gina MacKinnon, the chairwoman of the Drambuie Liqueur Company, gave the Rusty Nail endorsement in The New York Times. The drink was loved and popularized by the Rat Pack, a group of famous actors in the ’60s, centered around Frank Sinatra and Joey Bishop. Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford were also in the group that called itself “the Summit” or “the Clan”. So if these guys drank it, you know it’s old school cool.
Rusty Nail Recipe Ingredients
– Scotch
– Drambuie
– Ice
Rusty Nail Recipe Equipment
– Jigger/shot glass with measuring lines
– Old fashioned glass/stemmed cocktail glass
Rusty Nail Recipe
The Rusty Nail drink is one of the easiest cocktails to make, it just includes two ingredients, scotch, and Drambuie, which is why the former name was D&S. You’ll also need ice and lemons, but those are household items and you should really be able to make the drink in less than a minute.
There are two different and valid Rusty Nail recipes.
With the first one, pour three-quarters of an ounce of Drambuie in the old fashioned glass, then add and ounce and a half of an ounce of scotch. Put a big cube of ice in the glass and stir it well to chill the drink. Peel a lemon twist, squeeze it over the glass with the skin turned down, twist it up neatly and put it in the glass with one end holding on to the edge.
The second Rusty Nail recipe has the same ingredient ratio, just a different serving glass, and a slightly different preparation. Start by putting ice in a stemmed cocktail glass to chill it. Pour three-quarters of an ounce of Draumbui in a mixing glass or a general old fashion glass, then pour the half of an ounce of scotch and stir it after adding the ice. Take out the ice out of the cocktail glass, put a strainer on your mixing glass and proceed to pour the cocktail into this fancier glass. Garnish the drink in the same manner. This Rusty Nail recipe will make the cocktail look more elegant as the glass and the clearness of the drink add to that posh sense.
There you go, now you know the Rusty Nail recipe, a cocktail as old school and as manly as the Old Fashioned or the refreshing Whiskey Sour.
