The Best Midori Sour: a sour green drink

A Midori sour is a super easy bright green cocktail that’s a balance of sweet and tangy sour. The melon flavor from the Midori makes it perfectly with citrus and sweet for a cocktail that works well for most any time.

What is a Midori Sour?

A Midori sour is full of sweet melon flavor combined with a tarty sour flavor that is reflected in most sour drinks. Midori sour is made of two simple ingredients: Midori and sour mix.

Midori is a sweet liqueur that is bright green in color. It originated in Japan in the 1960s, but was rebranded and started to get popular in the US in the late 1970s.

Midori taste like sweet melon. It has a muskmelon flavor which is very similar and taste to honeydew. This liquor has a 20% alcohol by volume.

There are multiple different types of sour drinks such as an amaretto sour and whiskey sour. All sour drinks use either pre-made sour mix or you can make your own with simple syrup and lemon juice. Sour mix is essentially sugar and lemon or lime juice that is premixed. It is typically a yellow greenish color.

Variations

We are going to be making this drink with our typical sour cocktail mixture. However, there are several different variations you can try:

• add vodka: this is a common variation for this cocktail. Vodka does not change the flavor much and it cranks up the alcohol content.
• use premade sour mix: If you want to make this cocktail even simpler, you can buy and use pre-made sour mix instead of making your own.
• use lemon and lime juice: sour mix can be based with lemon or lime juice. We will use lemon juice in the ingredients below, however, you could replace it with lime juice or you could split the amount and do half lemon and half lime.
• leave out the simple syrup. The Midori is already a pretty sweet liqueur and many recipes will leave out the simple syrup in this drink. You can replace it with extra lemon or lime juice.
• Top it off. You can top the drink off with soda water or with a lemon lime soda. You could even replace the simple syrup with one of these two ingredients.

Occasions for this drink

With its bright color, sweet and delicious taste and ease of making this cocktail is perfect for several different occasions. Here are a few you might want to try it for:

• St Patrick’s Day
• poolside parties
• Day at the beach
• Summer BBQs
• informal get togethers

A few other green cocktails you might like are: melon ball cocktail, irish trash can drink or the liquid marijuana shot.

How to make this drink:

This easy three ingredient cocktail can be tossed together in just a few minutes. This drink doesn’t take anything fancy like glass rimming or garnishes, just mix and enjoy.

Equipment:

• cocktail shaker
• jigger
• Hawthorne strainer
• Rocks/Scotch/Bourbon glass

Ingredients:

• 2 oz Midori
• 1 oz Lemon Juice
• .75 oz Simple Syrup or soda water
• Ice

Instructions:

Step one

Start out by making sure you have everything you need for making your drink. This should include your rocks glass, jigger, shaker, Hawthorne strainer, ice, Midori, lemon juice and simple syrup or soda water.

Note: Midori is already a very sweet liqueur. If you want to make sure that you don’t have two sweet of a drink, use soda water instead of simple syrup.

Step two

Go ahead and fill your rocks glass and your cocktail shaker almost the top with ice.

Step three

Pick up your Midori and your jigger. Use your jigger to measure 2 oz of Midori and pour that into your cocktail shaker with your ice.

Step four

Pick up your lemon juice and your sugar. Use your jigger to measure 1 oz of lemon juice and pour that into your cocktail shaker with your Midori and your ice.

Step Five

Pick up either your simple syrup or your soda water whichever one you choose to use and your jigger. Use your jigger to measure 0.75 oz and for that into your cocktail shaker with your Midori, lemon juice and ice.

step six

Put the top on your cocktail shaker and shake well. If you’re using soda water do make sure not to shake two vigorously or it will fizz up.

step seven

Remove the top from your cocktail shaker and place the Hawthorne strainer over top of the shaker. Then, for your cocktail from your shaker into your rocks glass.

Recipe