Salty Dog Drink Recipe: How to Make a Salty Dog Cocktail

A Salty Dog is a variation on a Greyhound, a classic cocktail recipe with just two ingredients: fresh grapefruit juice and either gin or vodka. Its most notable distinction is a salted rim. Like the Greyhound cocktail, you can make the Salty Dog with your preferred gin, vodka, or tequila.

The classic Salty Dog cocktail is famous for its harmonies: the bracing, botanical notes of gin or sharp-edged vodka, and the puckering, sweet flavor of grapefruit, both brought to full volume by the critical addition of salt.

If you’re ready to learn how to make a Salty Dog, here’s what to know:

1. 1. Choose the style of salt. The key to an excellent salt rim, as seen on other famously salted drinks like the Margarita, is the texture of the salt you use: not too fine that it clumps or overpowers the drink, but not so coarse that it falls off the glass as the drink perspires. For best results, use kosher salt, or flaky sea salt, which you can lightly crush to help stick.
   
2. 2. Serve in a Highball glass. Traditionally, a Salty Dog arrives in a tall, narrow glass known as a Highball or Collins glass. Any similar styles of glassware, like a pint glass, will work. (You may just need to adjust the amounts of the cocktail ingredients to fill it.)
3. 3. Use fresh fruit juice. All grapefruit cocktails benefit from freshly squeezed juice, especially when the fruit is in season. Ruby red grapefruit and pink grapefruit juice differ slightly in sweetness; taste before using it in the cocktail to know whether you’ll want to add additional sweeteners, like simple syrup or honey.