Cocktail Recipe: Bull and Bear

The Bull and Bear cocktail is a prohibition-era drink that’s usually made with bourbon. It’s flavorful and brings a nice combination of sweet and sour notes that are easily adjusted by playing with your quantities of citrus and grenadine. For example, I don’t have a sweet tooth so when I make mine I usually do 1/2 to 1/4 of a tablespoon (<.25 oz) of grenadine vs the 1 tbsp (.5 oz) the original recipe asks for.

Though I do get why this cocktail, like so many from this era, uses such a large amount of sweetener. The whiskey they had access to at the time wasn’t regularly the best stuff. Today we have a consistently good flow of sippable and mixable whiskeys. Instead of trying to cover up the whiskey, we want to celebrate it and this is just one of many reasons modern cocktails tend to use less sweetener and go lighter on fruit juices than olde tyme cocktails.

I mentioned above that I use a relatively light amount of sweetener when I make Bull and Bear cocktails for myself (<.25 oz grenadine). But depending on the day, or the whiskey, I might also increase the whiskey to 2 oz. I don’t recommend doing it regularly, especially at today’s pricing, but if you keep this exact recipe and use 2 oz of Booker’s you’ll have a perfectly balanced sweet, sour and earthy cocktail that packs a wallop!

Grenadine and whiskey are the only two ingredients I change up in this recipe for myself or if I’m making it for guests. If I know someone has a sweet tooth I’ll up the grenadine to the full 1/2 oz. If I know they like their cocktails boozy I’ll kick the bourbon up to 2 oz. If I know they prefer rye I’ll sub that in for the bourbon. Super easy to tailor this cocktail to your guests with just those two ingredients.

If you make a Bull and Bear, let me know what you thought of it and how/if you adjusted it.

Cheers!

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