Man O' War

While the Mint Julep is the cocktail of choice for the Kentucky Derby, the Man O' War Cocktail, named after a famous race horse from Kentucky, is another race day favourite.

There's a certain balance to this cocktail that comes from the fruit juice and liqueur. You may want to play with the ingredient levels though to suit your tastes, as everyone is different. Use our recipe as a good basis of this standard then go from there.

The Man O' War is up there with some of the simple classic Whiskey cocktails like the Whiskey Sour, the Manhattan, or the Old Fashioned, with just a couple more ingredients to make it really interesting. This is a great cocktail to have in your repetoir.

Total Time 5

Servings 1 cocktail

Ingredients

60 mL Bourbon or Rye.
30 mL Cointreau
15 mL Sweet Vermouth
15 mL Lemon Juice
Garnish with lemon twist

Instructions

Add Bourbon, Cointreau, Sweet Vermouth, and Lemon Juice to a cocktail shaker filled about halfway with ice. Shake well until the shaker is too cold to touch.
Strain into an ice filled Rocks glass with fresh ice or serve neat in a coupe.
Add garnish and drink it.

Notes

You can get away with replacing the Cointreau with a basic Orange Liqueur, but you won't be getting the same cocktail. There's a reason why this drink needs something a little more premium, and it's worth it. Cointreau is a variety of Triple Sec, but, as mentioned, a more premium version. If you want to to experience this cocktail the right way, spend the extra money on Cointreau. You don't have to use it for everything that calls for a Triple Sec, as less expensive bottles will do you for a lot of cocktails. But here you need Cointreau.

This goes the same for your Bourbon. The taste of the Bourbon may get lost slightly behind the other ingredients, but you'll get a better drink with better Bourbon. And if it's a better, more robust Bourbon, you'll get more of that great taste coming through the cocktail and interacting with the other flavours.

Have fun and enjoy!

Our Review of the Man O’ War Cocktail

While maybe it’s not quite as well known as the Mint Julep, the Man O’ War is still a wonderful cocktail. There’s some fun stuff happening in this cocktail, and you probably already have the cocktail ingredients at home.

It’s cocktail recipes like this that show what you can do with relatively basic ingredients. The Cointreau is the most exotic thing in this recipe, and that’s a relatively common ingredient to keep in a home bar. And if you don’t have Cointreau, a decent bottle of Triple Sec will probably work as well, just not quite as well.

Because of all of this, as well as the ease of making a Man O’ War, I’m going to classify it as an “easy cocktail.” And that’s not a bad thing. If you’re new to making cocktails, then perhaps the Man O’ War is a good one to start with. If you’re more experienced in making cocktails, there’s nothing wrong with find a good, basic cocktail that you know you’ll have the ingredients to.

Although the Man O’ War has Lemon Juice in it, it’s not a lot, so it does lean on the sweeter side of things. So if you like that sort of thing, the Man O’ War may be something you dig. If you like drier cocktails, don’t shy away from this recipe though. It’s far from being too sweet, it even resembles a a Whiskey Sour in some ways, just with a couple minor modifications.

So my assessment is, if you’re a big drinker of Whiskey (especially Bourbon) based cocktails, you’ll probably like the Man O’ War. If you often shy away from Bourbon, the Man O’ War probably isn’t the cocktail that will suddenly make you love it. You won’t hate this recipe (unless you really hate Bourbon), but it’s not going to change your mind either. I’d still encourage all those Bourbon haters to give the Man O’ War a go, though, because it’s quite tasty.

7.5/10

Review by Chas

We’ve got plenty more Bourbon and Whiskey cocktail menus if you’re still thirsty…

Yep, we have tons of cocktail recipes. We’re assuming you’re after something with Bourbon or Whiskey, so take a look below for your enjoyment:

Top 10 Whiskey cocktail recipes: to make it easy, we’ve created a list of our top ten Whiskey cocktail recipes. Hopefully you’ll find a favourite here to.

All Whiskey cocktail recipes: if that’s not enough recipes for you, have a flick through all of our Whiskey cocktail recipes. You’ll be sure to find something.

All Bourbon cocktail recipes: if you’re just after Bourbon, we also have plenty of recipes that feature Bourbon. Check them out!