How long do I actually have to shake this thing?

Longer than you think and longer than you want. Plan on a solid two minutes total if you're being honest, split between a dry shake to build the foam and an ice shake to chill it. Your forearm will let you know when you've underdone it, because the foam will be thin and sad. There's no shortcut here that doesn't show up in the glass.

Why no ice in the serving glass?

Because the soda and foam need room to do their thing. You pour the shaken mixture into an empty Collins glass, let it rest, then add soda from the bottom, which lifts the foam up over the rim. Ice would just get in the way of the drama and water down the whole point.

Can I leave out the egg white?

You can, but then you're drinking a creamy gin sour, which is fine, just not a Ramos. The egg white is what makes the texture into that pillowy, sliceable cloud. Skip it and the drink is still pleasant. It just stops being the thing that earned its name.

The Ramos Gin Fizz: The Drink That Hates You Back

Somebody once kept twenty boys shaking these behind a New Orleans bar, passing the tin down the line like a bucket brigade. That tells you everything. The Ramos Gin Fizz is the drink that asks more of the person making it than the person drinking it. The reward is a glass of cold cloud, soft as a barbershop towel, that tastes like citrus and orange blossom and gin all agreeing to behave. It is worth the labor. Mostly.

2 ozGin

0.5 ozLemon Juice

0.5 ozLime Juice

0.75 ozSimple Syrup

1 ozHeavy Cream

1Egg White

3 dropsOrange Flower Water

Club Soda (top)

Garnish: None

Here is the part where people lie to you about how long to shake. You shake until your arm wants to file a complaint, and then longer. The egg white needs to emulsify with the cream and the citrus into a stable foam, and that foam is the entire point of the exercise. Dry shake first if you want, no ice, to whip the proteins. Then shake hard with ice to chill and dilute. Strain into the Collins glass with no ice in it, let it settle for a beat, then top with club soda from the bottom up. Done right, the foam rises above the rim and stands there like a soufflé that knows it's pretty. The three drops of orange flower water are non-negotiable and easy to overdo. Three drops. Not a splash. This is perfume, and there's a thin line between a drink that smells like a garden and one that smells like your grandmother's powder room.

This is a Daiquiri at its core, and that should reorganize how you think about it. The Codex puts the Daiquiri at the head of a family defined by a simple, brutal logic: a spirit, something tart, something sweet, balanced into a complete sour with no daisy liqueur stepping in to do the sweetening. Strip the Ramos down. Gin is the spirit. Lemon and lime are the tart. Simple syrup is the sweet. That's a sour, full stop, the same skeleton holding up a Bee's Knees or a Brown Derby or an Aviation. The cream and egg white and soda water are upholstery. Lavish upholstery, sure, but they sit on top of a structure that's pure Daiquiri arithmetic. Once you see the sour underneath the foam, the drink stops being a magic trick and starts being something you can actually understand and fix.

Henry Charles Ramos invented it in New Orleans in 1888, at a place called the Imperial Cabinet Saloon, and the legend of the shaker line is real enough to be repeated for over a century. The drink became such an institution that Ramos reportedly had his teams of shaker boys working in relay during Carnival just to keep up. Prohibition killed the original bar, but the recipe escaped, and Senator Huey Long was so attached to it that he supposedly brought a New Orleans bartender to New York to teach the staff at a hotel how to make one properly. That's devotion to a brunch drink. And make no mistake, this is a morning drink, or an afternoon one, the kind of thing you sip before the day has fully committed to ruining you. The modern craft-bar version of this drink sometimes gets weaponized, shaken for theater, the bartender making sure you watch him suffer. Skip that. The Ramos doesn't need an audience. It needs an honest arm and restraint with the flower water. Get those two right and you've got one of the most genuinely lovely things you can pour down your throat, a drink that feels like an apology from a city that's seen everything.

Open the Ramos Gin Fizz recipe card on Speed Pour

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FAQ

How long do I actually have to shake this thing?: Longer than you think and longer than you want. Plan on a solid two minutes total if you're being honest, split between a dry shake to build the foam and an ice shake to chill it. Your forearm will let you know when you've underdone it, because the foam will be thin and sad. There's no shortcut here that doesn't show up in the glass.
Why no ice in the serving glass?: Because the soda and foam need room to do their thing. You pour the shaken mixture into an empty Collins glass, let it rest, then add soda from the bottom, which lifts the foam up over the rim. Ice would just get in the way of the drama and water down the whole point.
Can I leave out the egg white?: You can, but then you're drinking a creamy gin sour, which is fine, just not a Ramos. The egg white is what makes the texture into that pillowy, sliceable cloud. Skip it and the drink is still pleasant. It just stops being the thing that earned its name.