Beals Cocktail

Here we have another scotch-based cocktail, but this one is a bit more balanced.

Beals Cocktail:

• 1 1/2 oz. scotch
• 1/2 oz. dry vermouth
• 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth

Stir and strain into 3 oz. cocktail glass.

I've often heard that if you want to take a dominant ingredient and make it play well with others, you have to introduce an equally dominant ingredient. Fight fire with fire, if you will. Well, there's not much to dry vermouth, but sweet vermouth has a bit more...character. Dry vermouth is understandably more refreshing and light, whereas sweet vermouth is, well, sweet. And deeper in flavor. Simply adding a bit of sweet vermouth really does do a lot to balance things out. It's still very, very heavy on the flavors in the scotch, but it's bearable. Not my favorite, but yeah. Bearable. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but then, there really aren't a lot of "good" classic scotch cocktails. For a reason.