Hot Toddies With Other Whiskeys

By Richard Thomas

The Hot Toddy is one of the oldest and most traditional medicinal whiskey cocktails, the classic remedy for chasing away winter’s cold chills. The lemons give you vitamin C for health, the honey soothes, and the whiskey numbs.

The traditional Hot Toddy is a Scotch drink, although some variations exist. A spin on the Hot Toddy from the American Mid-West uses ginger ale and Bourbon in place of hot water and Scotch, and looks more like summertime relief from the heat than a wintertime bracer against the cold. California puts tequila in Hot Toddies, much as it does with everything.

Yet before any of these derivatives is a simpler question: how does a Hot Toddy taste if a whiskey other than Scotch is used? I decided to experiment with Bourbon and Irish whiskey, using Town Branch and Tullamore Dew. My Toddy recipe otherwise remained the same, with no additional additives such as cloves or cinnamon.

The result was that there really wasn’t much of a change, which isn’t all that surprising. The lemon juice, honey, and equal part of hot water pretty much eliminates any subtle flavors from the whiskey. In a Hot Toddy, whiskey is simply whiskey, no matter what grain it comes from or how it is aged. The Hot Toddy, while a classic, is one of those cocktails where just about any whiskey will do, and therefore the good stuff is wasted on it. Still, that means this particular form of traditional medicine at least comes cheaply.