Name: Screwdriver (Difford's recipe)
Total time: 3 min
Cuisine: Cocktail
Ingredients: 60 ml Vodka; 90 ml Orange juice; 5 ml Sugar syrup (2:1); 3 dash Orange bitters

Screwdriver (Difford's recipe)
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Serve in a Collins glass

Ingredients:
2 oz	Ketel One Vodka
3 oz	Orange juice (freshly squeezed)
¹⁄₆ oz	Monin Pure Cane Syrup (65.0°brix, equivalent to 2:1 rich syrup)
3 dash	Orange Bitters by Angostura

Read about cocktail measures and measuring

Garnish: Orange slice

How to make:

STIR (preferably with a screwdriver) all ingredients with ice and strain into ice-filled glass.

Strength & taste guide:

No alcohol

Medium

Boozy

Sweet

Medium

Dry/sour

More cocktails with similar strength and taste profile

Cocktail of the day:

14th December 2025 is National Screwdriver Day

Review:

The temperature at which this drink is served and the freshness of the orange juice are crucial to its success, but it's perhaps better made into a Harvey Wallbanger.

My own preference is to make my Screwdrivers with a whopping 75ml of vodka, 90ml orange juice, 7.5ml rich sugar syrup, and 3 dashes orange bitters. I like the grainy bite the generous measure of vodka adds but it's a punchy drink, so I have cut the vodka back to 60ml and cut back the sugar to 5ml to maintain balance. The only downside to this revised recipe is that the washline may sit a little low in the glass.

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Variant:

Harvey Wallbanger

History:

Legend has it that this cocktail first appeared in the late 1940s in Iran where parched American oil engineers working in the desert supposedly added orange juice to their vodka and stirred it with the nearest thing to hand, usually a screwdriver which was attached to their work clothes.

This is partly supported by the following reference to the drink in the 24th October 1949 issue of Time Magazine, "In the dimly lighted bar of the sleek Park Hotel, Turkish intelligence agents mingle with American engineers and Balkan refugees, drinking the latest Yankee concoction of vodka and orange juice, called a 'screwdriver'."

Nutrition:

One serving of Screwdriver (Difford's recipe) contains 190 calories

Alcohol content:

1.4 standard drinks
12.25% alc./vol. (12.25° proof)
19.1 grams of pure alcohol

More Classic/vintage cocktails

Difford’s Guide remains free-to-use thanks to the support of the brands in green above. Values stated for alcohol and calorie content, and number of drinks an ingredient makes should be considered approximate.

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Lorenz Kock

11th April 2022 at 22:35

The thinking men's vodka orange or "mische" as we say in Germany

Hunter Newsome

11th February 2021 at 23:18

Why 2.5 shot of vodka and not 2 shot in this one?

Hunter Newsome

25th September 2021 at 21:13

Initially I was just wondering, but now I understand that the bitters buffer the heat of the vodka, while the extra half measure adds some richer body to the drink. Both versions are great.