Summertime Corn Whiskey Drinks

By Richard Thomas

August is here, usually the most brutal month of the summer. Unless you are sitting in a heavily air conditioned vault, August is also the least palatable month for whiskey for many, what with the finish making things unbearable otherwise.

One of my solutions for beating the heat with whiskey is to start making mint juleps, but another, much simpler solution is turning to “the clear stuff.” Alas, the acquired taste for unaged spirits like corn whiskey is still just barely catching on, but that is no reason you can’t use some corn whiskey as a mixer in the best of redneck traditions. As an added plus, even good corn whiskey is still pretty cheap, even the Glen Thunder corn whiskey I used in refreshing my memory of these two examples.

Swamp Water
Where I come from, “swamp water” means either Ale-8-One or this simple cocktail.

Ingredients
12 oz. (approx 350 ml or one soda can’s worth) of lemonade
1 shot (1.5 oz or 45 ml) of corn whiskey

This is pretty straight forward. Pour yourself a mason jar or the equivalent of lemonade, and stir in a shot’s worth of corn whiskey. The corny sweetness blends in and balances the tarty lemonade very well, making for a cold, refreshing drink that beats the hell out of canned or bottled spiked lemonade any day.

Hillcountry Highball
The redneck equivalent of Jack and Coke.

Ingredients
8 oz. Mountain Dew4 oz. corn whiskey

Once again, this is pretty simple to make. Simply put two parts Mountain Dew and one part corn whiskey into a mason jar or something similar. Compared to Swamp Water, it’s much more for hard drinking, but the strong flavor of the Mountain Dew keeps the drink in suitable flavor proportions.