White Russian Recipe

More About the White Russian

We didn’t have a lot to say about the White Russian in the recipe section here because there’s a lot on the history of the cocktail, beyond it featuring heavily in The Big Lebowski. That doesn’t make it a bad cocktail though. Sometimes the more well know cocktails are just like that. However, we like to reserve the end of our recipes with a few more opinions and thoughts on a given cocktail and its recipe. Take a look at the recipe first, of course, then feel free to read more about what we think of it.

Can I stir up more than one White Russian at once?

This shouldn’t be a problem. Just add more of everything to your mixing glass then serve out a few cocktails so you can share them with other people. The White Russian is a pretty simple cocktail, so it’s easy enough to just increase everything so you have enough for everybody.

Can I serve a White Russian later if I make it beforehand?

We’d suggest making this cocktail fresh. If you let the cocktail sit for too long, you run the risk of the ingredients separating and it not being as good. Thankfully, the White Russian is only three ingredients and doesn’t take much time to make!

When is a good time to drink a White Russian

Sorry to sound a bit repetitive, but we’re going to circle back to The Big Lebowski on this one. It’s one of our favourite movies over here at What Cocktail Can I Make and, like having a cocktail, we don’t often need an excuse to watch it. The Big Lebowski mixes humour with mystery, a little bit of drama, and it’s just a good movie all around! We have fun every time we watch The Big Lebowski and it somehow manages to keep surprising and amusing us every single time.

And if you haven’t seen The Big Lebowski yet, you’re probably wondering what we’re going on about! You’ve probably figured that it vaguely has something to do with White Russians, but that’s about it. The connection between this cocktail and the movie is that the main character’s cocktail of choice is the White Russian. The main character is known as The Dude and he mixes more than a few of these in the movie. That’s why we keep mentioning it!

So, in case we haven’t made it abundantly clear, the perfect time to enjoy a White Russian is when watching The Big Lebowski! Alternatively, it’s also great to enjoy a White Russian when bowling. Why? Because The Big Lebowski is also about bowling. So if you want to be like The Dude, go bowling and drink a few of these!

Is the White Russian a strong cocktail?

It’s a little on the strong side, but not super strong. It’s a little stronger than a lot of other cocktails you may encounter. Although Kahlúa only has an ABV of 20% (which is decent, but less than the Vodka!), the two tablespoons you’re adding is almost 30 mL, so, with the Vodka, you have nearly 90 mL of spirit in there, which is a good amount! Most other cocktail recipes keep things to about 60 mL of booze, so you can see that the White Russian is a bit stronger.

Going further, the Kahlúa and Milk make this cocktail very smooth and easy to drink. And even worse, there’s actually not a lot of liquid here! A lot of cocktails with this much alcohol are longer, so things are quite diluted. You’re not getting that with a White Russian.

So yes, a White Russian is a slightly strong cocktail. And it can be deceiving!

What kind of music goes well with a White Russian?

We’re going to continue to lean into the whole Big Lebowski thing and suggest listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival when having a White Russian. If you’ve seen the movie you’d get it, but if you haven’t, just know there’s a part of the movie where The Dude gets his car stolen and he mentions that he had his Creedence Clearwater Revival tapes in it. Later, when he gets his car back, his tapes are still there so he listens to them when driving.

Surprisingly though, this is the only time Creedence features in the movie though! So you’re welcome to spin some CCR or, if you want some variety, listen to the whole Big Lebowski soundtrack when having a White Russian. It’s a nice and varied soundtrack with some good tunes on it.

We have even more cocktail recipes for you to try!

Whether it’s because of the Vodka or because the White Russian is easy to make, we have more cocktail recipes for you to check out. We’ve linked them below:

All Vodka cocktail recipes: take a look through all of our recipes that have Vodka in them. We hope you find some good ones you like!

Top 10 Vodka cocktail recipes: we’ve also curated a list of our favourite recipes that are made with Vodka. Hopefully you’ll agree with us and find some favourites there as well.

All three ingredient cocktail recipes: a great thing about the White Russian is that it only has three ingredients. We have a whole section of the website that has recipes with three ingredients or fewer.

Top 15 three ingredient cocktail recipes: or, if you don’t want to browse through too many recipes, we also have a list of easy three ingredient cocktails that we like. Hopefully you like them too!