Recipe of the Month: Balsa Glider

✈️ This non-alcoholic Paper Plane variation is for the adventurous but has enough appeal for everyone.

The Balsa Glider.

Not all cocktails should be simple and accessible.

As novelist Kingsley Amis once wrote, “Serving good drinks, like producing anything worthwhile, from a poem to a motor-car, is troublesome and expensive.” However, that doesn’t mean they should be mind-twisting or throat-burning, requiring obscure techniques like throwing or aggressively sour and bitter ingredients. There’s a healthy balance between mind-numbingly simple and profoundly puzzling cocktails.

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However, if you wish for a simple drink, here you go.

And, if you want drinks that take you years to master, here’s more.

This drink will take you about 15 to 20 minutes tops. Most of that time is ordering the ingredients from The Zero Proof. And it requires only a cursory knowledge of shaking and straining drinks, which I will provide a brief explanation for in the recipe.

Its precursor, the Paper Plane, was created by legendary bartender Sam Ross while he was at the The Violet Hour in Chicago. Originally, it was with alcohol. My version was created for a party hosted by another Sam — Sam Bail of Third Place Bar, and is either no- or low-alcohol depending on the bitter you use. It’s also appropriately named the Balsa Glider after the balsa wood airplanes I would punch out and put together as a kid.

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However, this isn’t a kiddie drink.