Elk’s Clone

Elk's Clone cocktail adapted from Peter Sindar

The eighties were an exciting time for personal computing. If you like cocktails, you might say it was an exciting time for those, as well. Depending on how much you like good cocktails, you might add some air quotes to the word exciting to describe eighties cocktails …. It’s fun to make fun of those artificial, booze heavy, often neon and outrageously named drinks, but they were fun! I thought about making an eighties era cocktail for this toast but a computer virus messed with the program.

make one, then make another one …

There were many early computer viruses after Creeper first appeared, but the one that first went “viral”, so to speak, was the Elk Cloner, which replicated itself via computer game floppy disks. It was a prank created by high school student Richard Skrenta in 1982, designed to mess with the behavior of your Apple II computer and notably display a silly poem on the screen every so often. There is also, it so happens, a vintage cocktail called the Elk’s Own, invented by Peter Sindar in 1901 (as the Elk’s Fizz) which can be found in the pages of Harry McElhone’s Barflies and Cocktails, 1927. The drink is essentially a New York sour, which is a whiskey sour with a red wine float. The Elk’s Own substitutes red wine for ruby port, a very nice variation. I cloned the recipe with my own modifications. Here’s hoping it goes viral. Cheers!

hack this pair

Elk’s Clone adapted from Peter Sindar

1 oz rye

½ oz tawny port

½ oz Campari

¾ oz lemon

½ oz demerara syrup

1 oz egg white

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a coup glass. Lemon twist.

explore more: