Tom Collins
- Medium
- citrus
A citrus, medium-strength cocktail, shaken over ice, served in a collins glass.
Serve in: collins glass
Ingredients
- 2 ozLondon dry gin
- 1 ozFreshly squeezed lemon juice
- 0.5 ozsimple syrup
- 1lemon sliceoptional
- 1maraschino cherryoptional
- 2 ozsoda
- Ice cubesoptional
How to Make a Tom Collins
Instructions
- Shake the first 3 ingredients with ice and strain into an iced filled glass.
- Top with soda and stir briely.
Garnish
Decorate with a lemon slice and a maraschino cherry.
Tips & substitutions
- Shake only the gin, lemon and syrup, then strain onto fresh ice and add cold soda last, pouring down a barspoon so you keep the carbonation. Never shake the soda water in, and stir just once at the end rather than mixing vigorously.
- No gin? Try vodka, tequila or white rum.
- No lemons? Try limes.
The glass
Serve this one in a collins glass. A collins glass is a glass tumbler which typically is used to serve mixed drinks, especially Tom Collins or John Collins cocktails. It is cylindrical in shape and narrower and taller than a highball glass.
Did you know
The Tom Collins descends from the gin punches of early nineteenth-century London, and specifically from a drink associated with John Collins, a headwaiter at Limmer's Hotel, whose gin punch was celebrated enough to be commemorated in verse. When bartenders began making the drink with Old Tom, the lightly sweetened gin style then common, the Tom Collins was born, and the two names have been fighting for shelf space ever since. Modern usage is fairly settled: a Tom Collins uses gin, a John Collins usually means whiskey, though bars vary.
The drink owes part of its fame to a joke. In 1874 New York was seized by the Great Tom Collins Hoax, a prank in which people were solemnly told that a man named Tom Collins had been slandering them at a nearby bar, sending the aggrieved marching around town demanding to see him. Newspapers reported the craze with delight. A recipe for a Tom Collins appeared in the 1876 edition of Jerry Thomas's bartender's guide shortly afterwards, and whether the drink named the hoax or the hoax named the drink, the two are permanently linked.
Structurally it is a Gin Sour lengthened with soda water, which places it at the head of a large and useful family. The distinction from a Gin Fizz is one of proportion and service: a Fizz is shorter, served without ice in a smaller glass, and drunk quickly, while a Collins is built long over ice in its own tall glass and meant to be lingered over. Vodka gives you a Vodka Collins, tequila a Juan Collins, bourbon a John Collins, and the same frame supports every seasonal fruit variation you can imagine.
It is also one of the most forgiving classics for a home bar: three ingredients you already own, plus soda, and no straining gymnastics required.
