Recipe

• 15 parts brandy

• 1 part mint liqueur

Mix together in a rocks glass with ice.

I've made a stinger before several times (1 2 3) and it's turned into a regular drink for me. It's quite easy to make – just two ingredients – and I've found myself tweaking the ingredients over time.

Firstly, I've found myself serving it on the rocks instead of "up" in a cocktail glass. This is easier to make, and also a more relaxed drink: it allows for sipping the drink over a longer period, savouring it a little more and not worrying too much about a little meltwater.

Secondly, I've found myself adding less and less mint liqueur. I happened to get a bottle of green crème de menthe, where the colour really shows up, and I realised the mint flavour is quite overpowering. I've ended up using the mint as a sort of trace ingredient, like the absinthe or bitters in a tuxedo.

That's led me to the absurd 15:1 ratio here: just under a teaspoon of crème de menthe mixed into a generous double brandy. The flavour really comes through and adds a delightful lift to the brandy, exactly what an aromatic ingredient should do to a cocktail.

As I've mentioned before in a previous post, there's an unbearable snobbery around how little vermouth people want in their martini ("Oh, extremely dry please", "Add a drop of vermouth from your finger", "Stir it carefully while looking at an unopened bottle of vermouth", and so on). Ernest Hemingway apparently used to demand his martini at a 15:1 ratio, which he named "Montgomery" after Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery who in the Second World War was said never to launch an attack without outnumbering his enemy by that ratio. In his memory, and in memory of cocktail snobs everywhere, I decided to give the same name to this stinger.

Dead easy, and highly recommended!