Drink · 4 min · Amounts not specified
Tom Collins
A gin sour stretched tall with soda. Build it in the glass and add the soda last so it keeps its lift.
The sheet · 1 tall glass · 4 min
easyWhy tonight. A gin sour stretched tall with soda. Build it in the glass and add the soda last so it keeps its lift.
What it needs
Nothing confirmed on your shelf yet — this list is the whole ask.
- gin
- lemon
- simple syrup
- soda
Method
- 2 oz gin, 1 oz lemon, ½ oz simple syrup shaken with ice, strained into a tall glass of fresh ice, topped with soda.
- Shake the sour part first, then lengthen. Shaking the soda is how you lose the drink and the ceiling.
- Fresh ice in the serving glass. The ice you shook with is half water already.
- It is a sour you can drink in the sun, which is the entire reason for the Collins family.
Technique coach
What the method is trying to make happen
Sequence, correction, heat and texture, equipment workarounds, scaling, and component reuse are available with this cook sheet.
An educational pour, not a reprint of a licensed spec. No allergen or alcohol-safety claim.
Cook or pour it, then edit the shelf if you emptied a bottle or used the last of something.
The technique underneath this
- Building a sourSpirit, citrus and sugar in a fixed geometry, then adjusted for how strong the particular bottle in front of you is.thin and sharp · cloying · spirit disappears · no foam
- VinaigretteDispersing fat into acid so it stays dispersed for as long as dinner takes, which is all it has to do.separates immediately · greasy · too sharp · dull
Going wrong while you cook it? Say what it is doing and the triage will tell you what is happening, the smallest move, and the instinct to resist.
Watch the technique behind this one
Third-party video. Opens in a new tab — nothing is embedded and nothing is fetched from a video platform until you click.
Reviewed video matched to this method, not to the cuisine. Opens in a new tab.
- Syrups and citrusHow to make Cocktail Syrups: Simple, Ginger, Honey and Raspberry Vol. 1The Educated BarflySimple, ginger, honey and raspberry syrups in one sitting. The bar prep nobody films.Link checked 2026-09-08
- Cocktail structureMartini vs. Martini with Educated Barfly | How to DrinkHow To DrinkTwo martinis side by side, so ratio and stirring time stop being abstractions.Link checked 2026-09-08
- Cocktail structureHow to make a Whiskey HighballA Bar AboveThe pour that keeps the bubbles. A highball is mostly a handling problem.Link checked 2026-09-08
Why each of these is on the list
What the ingredients are actually doing
- gin
- Botanicals over a neutral base, and every bottle draws its own map — juniper-forward gin makes a bracing drink, a softer modern one makes a floral one.
- lemon
- Acid you add at the end, not the start.
- simple syrup
- Sugar already dissolved, which is the only form of sugar that works in a cold drink.
- soda
- Carbonation is a texture and it is the first thing you lose.
Missing one of them? The substitutions are written against those jobs rather than against a chart, so they say what each replacement costs this dish in particular.
Cooks from the same box
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A Collins that went through the garden. Slice, don't puree, unless you want soup.
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Ramos gin fizz
Gin, both citruses, cream, egg white and soda, shaken for a genuinely long time. The twelve-minute shake is folklore; two hard minutes is real.
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French 75
Gin, lemon and sugar lengthened with sparkling wine. It drinks like champagne and hits like a Tom Collins.
Next
Cook it, then tell the shelf what you used.
The ranking is only as honest as the shelf behind it. Empty the cream, and everything that leaned on cream should stop being offered.