Our Japanese Whisky Highball Runs at 42 PSI

A highball is whisky and soda. That is the whole drink, which is exactly why there is nowhere to hide in it.

Ours is built around a decision most bars make the other way, so it is worth explaining.

It Started on Eldridge Street

When we first got our full liquor license I was talking with Matt Resler, who runs the bar at Cocktail Omakase over on Eldridge. Before that he helped open Bar Goto, which is a few blocks from us and is where a lot of people in this city first had a properly made Japanese highball.

We got onto ratios and carbonation, and what Bar Goto does. Kenta Goto measures his soda rather than eyeballing it, and pours it so it slides down between the ice instead of splashing off the top, because every bubble you knock loose is one the guest does not get to drink.

That conversation is most of the reason our highball is what it is.

The Problem With Bottled Soda

I was already building a carbonation system at the time, for a reason that sounds small and is not.

Bottled club soda is not consistent. A fresh bottle and a bottle that has been sitting open in the fridge are two different products, and you cannot tell by looking which one you are holding. If the soda moves, the drink moves, and the guest has no idea why the highball they had last week was better than this one.

Bar Goto Niban hit the same wall and started carbonating their own during the pandemic. Same diagnosis, reached separately.

The Part Where We Go the Other Way

Here is the bit that is a preference rather than a technique.

Most highball advice tells you to chase maximum carbonation. Colder soda, higher pressure, more bubbles, protect every one of them on the way into the glass.

I do not actually like a highball that fizzy.

My reference point is soda, and it is going to sound ridiculous: I prefer the carbonation in Pepsi to the carbonation in Coke. It is softer. It does not scrub at your tongue. You can keep drinking it.

That is the quality I want in a highball, because a highball is a drink you are meant to have more than one of. Very high carbonation is impressive on the first sip and tiring by the third.

The System

So we built around that.

The water goes through a custom filtration system first, because a highball is mostly water and water is the ingredient people think about least. Then it carbonates off our beer CO2 system at 42 PSI.

Forty-two is where we landed. High enough that it is unmistakably a highball, with the lift and the aromatic push carbonation gives you. Low enough that it does not fight you. And the same every single time, which was the whole point of building it.

Ratio and Garnish

We played with the ratio for a while, and what settled it was remembering what a highball is for.

The idea is to make whisky crushable. Not to stretch it until there is nothing there, and not to build a stiff drink with a splash in it. Somewhere in between is a drink you can have with food, over a couple of hours, that still does what whisky is supposed to do.

No garnish. Nothing floating in it, no citrus oil sitting on the surface rearranging the aroma. It is whisky and soda and it should smell like whisky and soda.

Why Toki

The house pour is Suntory Toki.

Toki is a good whisky and, just as importantly, a name people recognise. A highball is often somebody's first Japanese whisky, and there is real value in the guest knowing what they ordered. It is clean, it holds its shape at the ratio we pour, and it does not demand that you concentrate on it, which is the correct behaviour for a drink meant to sit next to dinner.

The Matcha One

The matcha highball exists because Shinichi san at Wine of Japan asked for it.

He brought us Yame 10 Year and wanted to know what we would do with it. To my palate that whisky runs earthy, with a spiced edge to it, and the question was what would sit alongside that rather than argue with it. Matcha was the answer, and in hindsight it looks obvious.

Yame 10, a splash of matcha, soda. It comes out grassy and properly refreshing, and it is the one I want in August.

If you would rather go up than sideways, we also pour the highball with Yamazaki 12. That is the one to have when you are not having three.

Try It

It is on the menu. Order the Toki one first if you have never had a proper highball, and pay attention to the carbonation. If you have opinions about it, I would genuinely like to hear them.