Vodka, built
Moscow Mule
Barline 2,h,t,HLw
The code is the shorthand off my printed menu; the Key tab decodes every letter.
- 2 oz Vodka
- 1/2 oz Lime juice
- top with Ginger beer
Build in the glass over ice, then lift once with a barspoon.
Highball, iced, lime wheel.
Taste
Two ounces of vodka, half an ounce of lime, and ginger beer over ice. Ginger and lime carry it, with the vodka as weight underneath, so the drink gets sharper the hotter the ginger beer is. Lime wheel.
History
The usual story puts it at the Cock 'n Bull in Los Angeles in 1941, where John G. Martin of Heublein was trying to sell Smirnoff and the owner Jack Morgan was trying to sell his ginger beer. The bar's head bartender, Charles Wesley Price, said he made the first one and served it to Broderick Crawford and Rod Cameron. A competing account has Martin and Morgan working it out in New York first, and the Oxford Companion calls the whole thing possibly apocryphal. The copper mug was a marketing decision, and Martin went bar to bar with an instant camera photographing bartenders holding one. This menu pours two ounces of vodka, half an ounce of lime, and ginger beer over ice in a highball, with a lime wheel.
Same shape, other bottles
The Highball family, with the bottle that changed.
- Dark and Stormyaged rum for vodka
- Gin Rickeygin and soda water for vodka and ginger beer
- Kentucky Mulebourbon for vodka
- Mezcal Mulemezcal for vodka
- Gin & Tonicgin and tonic water for vodka and ginger beer
- Scotch and Sodascotch and soda water for vodka and ginger beer
This is one drink on my home bar's menu. Tick the bottles you own and the menu lists which of all 185 drinks they pour.