Ask the bartender at your favorite water hole for a pickle back. On me!

Bartenders have been drinking the now famed “pickle back” ever since back in the day when it was called a “the bartenders’ handshake." Brooklyn’s Bushwick Country Club prides itself on being first in all the five boroughs of New York to offer pickle juice at the bar and it may also be the original source of the trend. In 2006, McClure’s was using the bar’s basement for storing its pickle stock. Legend has it that one of the bartenders, feeling adventurous, tried drinking the pickle brine after a shot of whiskey.A customer soon after inquired and like wild fire it spread.
A Jameson representative was asked how the connection came together and he said he felt that any liquor could go into a pickleback, but that in applied experimentation, “Jameson’s is kind of sweet, so with Quino’s brine, it leaves this kind of grilly, meaty, hamburgery thing in your mouth.” On other brine-spirit combinations, however, he was breezily generous. “I’ve had them all over, with all kinds of brines. It’s like sex and pizza: even when it’s bad, it’s good." Amen.