Amaretto Stone Sour
Amaretto, lemon and orange juice over ice — a fruitier, egg-free cousin of the Amaretto Sour.
- Difficulty
- easy
- Prep time
- 4 min
- Strength
- 7% ABV
- Glassware
- Rocks glass
- Base
- liqueur led
- Serves
- 1
Ingredients
- Amaretto45ml
- Fresh lemon juice20ml
- Orange juice20ml
Garnish: Orange slice, Maraschino cherry
Method
- Add the amaretto, lemon juice and orange juice to a shaker with ice.
- Shake hard for 10–15 seconds until well chilled.
- Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.
- Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry.
Equipment
Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.
Cocktail shaker
Household swap: A jar with a tight-fitting lid, shaken firmly.
Citrus juicer
Household swap: Squeeze the citrus by hand.
Missing an ingredient?
Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.
Instead of Orange Juice
Best substitute: Lemon Juice
This is the modifier in this drink.
Quantity: Use the same amount of extra lemon juice, plus 5–10ml simple syrup to balance
Flavour impact: Removes the orange's fruity body and turns this into something much closer to a classic Amaretto Sour.
What changes
Lemon Juice moves the drink a long way — less sweetness, more acidity, more bitterness and more intensity. This is worth making deliberately rather than as a stand-in.
- Sweetness ↓
- Less sweetness leaves the acid and the spirit more exposed, so the drink will taste sharper and drier than it should.
- Acidity ↑
- More acidity makes the drink taste fresher and drier, and can push a balanced sour over into sharp.
- Bitterness ↑
- Bitterness builds across a drink rather than announcing itself, so this will read as a longer, drier finish.
- Intensity ↑
- A more intensely flavoured ingredient will start to dominate the components around it.
- Character
- you lose sweet, fruity, mellow and juicy, and you gain tart, bright, clean and citrusy. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.
To correct for it
- Add a little more syrup, a small amount at a time, until the edges come back together.
- Use slightly less of it, or add a touch more sweetener to hold the balance.
- Pour slightly less, or lengthen the drink a little, and let the sweetness catch up.
- Scale it back by a third and let the other ingredients hold their share.
Moderate confidenceA reasonable adjustment when orange juice isn't on hand, though it changes the drink's identity.Makes a different drinkBecomes a variation
Make it better
- Use fresh citrus for both the lemon and orange — this drink is built almost entirely from those two juices plus amaretto, so quality matters.
- Shake hard and briefly to chill it fully without over-diluting the amaretto's sweetness.
- Serve over fresh, solid ice cubes rather than crushed ice, which melts too fast and waters the drink down.
Rescue this drink
- Too sweet
- Add another 5–10ml of lemon juice to sharpen it up.
- Too sour
- Add a touch of simple syrup or a splash more amaretto to round it out.
- Tastes watery
- Use fresh, solid ice cubes rather than crushed ice, and don't over-shake.
- Tastes thin, with no weight to itgeneral guidance
- A short shaken drink with nothing rich in it depends on sugar and dilution for body. Try a slightly richer syrup — two parts sugar to one of water rather than equal parts — which adds weight without adding much more sweetness. Egg white or aquafaba does the same job more dramatically, and turns it into a sour.
- Served too warmgeneral guidance
- Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.
- Under-diluted (tastes harsh or too concentrated)general guidance
- For one serving, stir in a few drops of chilled water to open it up. For a batch, extend the shake time slightly on the next round.
- No cocktail shakergeneral guidance
- A jar with a tight-fitting lid, shaken firmly.
Make ahead & storage
Batch the base, finish at serving
Batch the base days ahead and add fresh lemon juice and orange juice when you pour.
Add about 27% water to the batch to replace what the ice would otherwise contribute, or it will pour noticeably harsher than a fresh one.
- Fresh lemon juice:
- Fresh citrus loses its aroma within hours and turns dull. Squeeze it on the day.
- Orange juice:
- Fresh citrus loses its aroma within hours and turns dull. Squeeze it on the day.
What it tastes like
The taste, and what drives it
sweet, sharp, light — a spirit and modifier drink served over ice.
Sweet
Dry → Sweet
Openly sweet, and balanced by something else rather than hidden.
What drives it: Amaretto — carries the most sugar into the glass.
Sharp
Soft → Sharp
Properly sharp. This is the axis the drink is built on.
What drives it: Fresh lemon juice — supplies the acidity.
Light
Light → Rich
Light-bodied. It refreshes rather than satisfies, which is usually the intention.
What drives it: Amaretto — adds most of the weight.
Moderate
Delicate → Bold
Moderate: assertive enough to hold its own, mild enough for a second.
What drives it: Amaretto — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.
What you smell first
- Citrus peelLeads
From Fresh lemon juice, Orange juice, Orange slice
- Nutty
From Amaretto
Every aroma here comes from the liquid itself; nothing is layered on top.
How it was worked out
Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. Almost everything in this drink has detailed ingredient data behind it.
How balance actually works →If it isn't right
What goes wrong with this drink, and why
Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — each with the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.
It's too sweet
- Likely cause
- Amaretto is carrying the sugar here, and it is the easiest thing in the drink to over-pour — syrup clings to a jigger and a "splash" is rarely the same twice.
- What to change
- Cut amaretto by about a third and rebuild. If it is already made, a squeeze of citrus is faster than starting again.
- What that does
- The drink will read sharper as well as less sweet, because the acid stops being balanced. That is usually the intention, but it is a bigger change than it sounds.
It's too sour
- Likely cause
- Fresh lemon juice varies more than any other ingredient in the drink. Limes differ by weeks of ripeness, and a sharp one can be half again as acidic as a mild one at the same measure.
- What to change
- Add sweetener a few millilitres at a time rather than diluting — you are correcting a ratio, not a concentration.
- What that does
- Sourness recedes and the drink gains a little weight. Overshoot and you will be reading the too-sweet entry above instead.
It tastes weak
- Likely cause
- Usually dilution rather than measurement: shaking adds water as it chills, and wet or small ice adds far more of it than cold, large ice does.
- What to change
- Use larger, colder ice and work faster. Adding more spirit fixes the symptom and unbalances everything else.
- What that does
- The drink gains definition without gaining sugar. It will also read as slightly sharper, which is what 'more presence' usually means in practice.
It's watery
- Likely cause
- Shaking adds water while it chills, and the two cannot be separated. Wet ice from a freezer door, or small cubes, will over-dilute before the drink is properly cold.
- What to change
- Use bigger, drier, colder ice and stop sooner. Chilling the glass first buys you time you would otherwise spend diluting.
- What that does
- More flavour concentration at the same temperature. Under-dilute instead and the drink will taste harsh — this is a target, not a direction.
It doesn't smell of anything
- Likely cause
- This drink's aroma comes from citrus peel and nutty, carried in the liquid. Serving it too cold suppresses that: volatile compounds do not leave a very cold drink.
- What to change
- Let it sit for a minute before drinking, and use a glass that narrows towards the rim to concentrate what does escape.
- What that does
- More of the aroma escapes and the drink reads as more intense. The cost is temperature: a drink left to warm also dilutes faster, so this is a trade against how long it stays right.
It tastes one-dimensional
- Likely cause
- With 3 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a spirit and modifier drink is exposed by design, so a dull one is usually a dull ingredient rather than a missing step.
- What to change
- Change the quality of what is there before adding anything new: fresh citrus rather than bottled, a better base bottle, a dash of bitters. Bitters add layers at a scale nothing else matches.
- What that does
- More going on at the same strength and sweetness. Adding a whole extra ingredient instead usually produces a muddier drink rather than a deeper one.
Taste profile
- Sweetness
- 3/5
- Sourness
- 3/5
- Bitterness
- 0/5
- Strength
- 1/5
- Fruitiness
- 3/5
- Freshness
- 2/5
- Creaminess
- 0/5
- Smokiness
- 0/5
Nutrition & alcohol
Estimate onlyAmaretto sugar content varies between brands.- Calories
- 125 kcal
- Sugar
- 15 g
- Carbohydrates
- 17 g
- Alcohol units (UK)
- 1.26
- US standard drinks
- 0.71
- ABV
- 7%
- Serving size
- 180 ml
Show calculation assumptions
Source: Calculated from standard measures
Calorie breakdown: ~70 kcal from alcohol, ~55 kcal from sugar and mixers.
Likely range: 94–156 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.
Assumes amaretto at 28% ABV, 20ml lemon juice and 20ml orange juice.
These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.
Variations
Amaretto Sour (egg white)
Drop the orange juice and add a dry-shaken egg white instead for the silkier, more traditional Amaretto Sour.
Whiskey Stone Sour
Replace half the amaretto with bourbon for a stronger, less sweet version.
What kind of drink this is
The structure behind the recipe
A shaken build: a spirit and modifier liqueur-led-based drink, served over ice — light and lively in the mouth.
Spirit and modifier
Spirit combined with an aromatised or flavoured modifier and little else — concentrated, and served small for exactly that reason.
Base
Amaretto
Modifier
Orange juice
Sour element
Fresh lemon juice
Drinks built this way are collected as the Sour family.
Technique
shaken
Ice is thrown against the liquid and against itself, chipping fragments off and driving air through the mix. Chilling, dilution and aeration all happen at once and cannot be separated.
A lighter, briefly frothy body and a cloudy appearance that settles as it stands. The aeration blunts alcoholic heat, which is why a shaken drink tastes softer than a stirred one of the same strength.
What it ruins: Clarity, and any carbonation. A shaken spirits-only drink arrives cloudy with ice shards floating in it, and shaking anything fizzy is the one rule with no exceptions.
Everything about shaking →How the technique works →Dilution
During mixing, then strained
Water from ice typically makes up around 30% of the finished drink for a shaken build (commonly 25–35%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.
Why dilution is an ingredient →Served
Over ice
Rocks glass · 180ml
Served on ice, so it keeps chilling in the glass. A larger, colder, slower drink than the same spirits served straight up.
Texture and aroma
Shaking whips air through the drink, giving a lighter, briefly frothy body that settles as it stands.
No dedicated aromatic component — what you smell is the spirit itself, which is a deliberate choice in a drink this spare.
Where to go from here
Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.
Where it comes from
Origin and family
Origin of the Amaretto Stone Sour
American bar classic, a fruitier variant of the Amaretto Sour that swaps the egg-white foam for orange juice, popular from the 1970s onward.
Family
Sour2 parts spirit · 1 part citrus · 1 part sweetener — shaken, strained, served up or over ice.
On drinks history
Cocktail origin stories are frequently repeated and rarely evidenced. Our history section separates what is documented from what is folklore rather than picking whichever version reads best.
History and culture →Try this next
- Midori Sour
Midori Sour
You may like this because it's part of the same sour family as the Amaretto Stone Sour.
Amaretto Sour
You may like this because it's part of the same sour family as the Amaretto Stone Sour.
- Bramble
Bramble
You may like this because it shares a sour-forward profile with the Amaretto Stone Sour, but uses gin instead of liqueur-led.
Use up your ingredients
Bought a bottle just for this? Here's what else it's good for.
Related tools
Scale this for a party
Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.
Recipe confidence
A well-known bar variant, though proportions vary between establishments.