Wednesday Happy Hour — A Chocolate Banana Irish Whiskey Negroni

You might even have most of the ingredients already.

Yes, this week’s happy hour drink is just as good, and just as weird, as the headline makes it sound.

The name of the drink is Psycho Killer, presumably after the great Talking Heads song, and it originated with Jillian Vose, one of the New York cocktail scene’s leading lights and the current beverage director of The Dead Rabbit.

The Dead Rabbit’s vibe is a delightful blend of rowdy Irish pub and ultra-refined cocktail bar, and Vose’s drinks often straddle the line between the two. 

In the Psycho Killer, she takes the Negroni/Boulevardier formula — base spirit, sweet liqueur, and Campari — and gives it a decadent, delicious Irish whiskey spin involving chocolate and banana. 

Google around, and you’ll find some recipes for this drink call for cacao nib-infused Campari to achieve the desired chocolate flavor. You can try that if you want. But the easiest version to make relies on a mix of chocolate and banana liqueurs for the sweetener, a base of good Irish whiskey, and the usual bittersweet Campari. 

This drink is admittedly a little bit of a lift, ingredient wise. You might not be able to make it with bottles from an ordinary home bar. But if you’ve made the Rescue Team (which involves banana liqueur), a Negroni or a Boulevardier (both of which use Campari), and the Irish Soda Bread Old Fashioned (which is built on Irish whiskey), you’ll have most of the necessary bottles already. 

Vose’s recipe calls for a quality Irish whiskey, such as Redbreast 12. That’s a great bottle, and in some ways it defines what the upper end of the category should taste like. But at around $60, it’s not cheap, and for this cocktail you can definitely get away with something less expensive, like ordinary Jameson. 

You do need to use quality ingredients for the sweeteners, however. Cheaper bottles of creme de cacao or banana might seem like values, but far too many of them are frankly kind of gross. Banana in particular is a quite difficult flavor to capture in boozy form. Stick with bottles from Tempus Fugit or Giffard, which typically run $35 or so. 

As for the absinthe, I recommend Leopold Bros. or St. George. But with an amount this small, you can also use drops of Pernod or even, in a pinch, Pastis.

Here’s the recipe, lightly adapted from Spirited: Cocktails From Around the World.

Psycho Killer

• 2 drops absinthe

• ¾ ounce Campari

• ½ ounce chocolate liqueur, such as Tempus Fugit Creme de Cacao

• ½ ounce banana liqueur, such as Giffard Banane du Bresil 

• 2 ounces pot still Irish whiskey, such as Redbreast 12 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass.

2. Add ice, then stir until thoroughly chilled.

3. Strain into a coupe or Nick & Nora glass.

4. (Optional) Garnish with an orange peel. 

What I like about this drink is the way it takes a familiar idea and turns it into an unusual and unexpected flavor journey, using just a handful of well-paired ingredients.

In one way, it resembles a lot of Negroni-style drinks I’ve had before. In another way, it doesn’t taste like anything I’ve ever had before, and it cleverly matches the vanilla-sweet mellow profile of Irish whiskey with a pair of dessert-like sweeteners — and then pulls the whole thing together with the bittersweet Campari. It’s a fairly simple construction, yet also a remarkably clever one. 

(This newsletter uses Amazon Affiliate links, through which I may earn a small commission.)