Name: What The Hell
Total time: 4 min
Cuisine: Cocktail
Ingredients: 45 ml Gin; 22.5 ml Apricot liqueur; 20 ml Dry vermouth; 5 ml Lime juice

What The Hell
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Serve in a Coupe glass

Ingredients:
1 ¹⁄₂ oz	Hayman's London Dry Gin
³⁄₄ oz	Luxardo Apricot Albicocca Liqueur
²⁄₃ oz	Strucchi Dry Vermouth
¹⁄₆ oz	Lime juice (freshly squeezed)

Read about cocktail measures and measuring

How to make:

Select and pre-chill a Coupe glass.
Prepare garnish of lime wedge .
SHAKE all ingredients with ice.
FINE STRAIN into chilled glass.

Allergens:

Recipe contains the following allergens:

Dry vermouth - Sulphur Dioxide/Sulphites

Strength & taste guide:

No alcohol

Medium

Boozy

Sweet

Medium

Dry/sour

More cocktails with similar strength and taste profile

Review:

Gin and dry apricot. On the 4th of September 2022, I reduced the volume of my previous recipe by 25% and while doing so I omitted sugar syrup from the recipe to be more in keeping with classic versions of this cocktail which call for lemon juice. (I prefer lime.) My previous recipe: 60ml (2oz) gin, 30 (1oz) apricot brandy, 22.5ml (¾oz) dry vermouth, 7.5ml (¼oz) lime juice, 5ml (1 spoon) sugar syrup.

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Variant:

Webster Cocktail

History:

Adapted from a recipe in Stanley M. Jones' 1977 Jones' Complete Barguide.

WHAT THE HELL
Cocktail Glass
Stir
3/4 oz gin
3/4 oz dry vermouth
3/4 oz apricot flavoured brandy
1/4 oz lemon juice
Stanley M. Jones, 1977

Nutrition:

One serving of What The Hell contains 172 calories

Alcohol content:

1.5 standard drinks
22.97% alc./vol. (22.97° proof)
21.2 grams of pure alcohol

More Aperitivo/aperitif 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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Peter McCarthy

28th April 2024 at 18:52

I'm curious about the reason behind the name of this one.

Paul Holdsworth

4th September 2022 at 16:24

Like a superstrength Webster Cocktail. Wallop!
But I'm gonna try a Webster and see if the bigger citrus component improves things - I'm finding this just a bit too toothsome.

Simon Difford

4th September 2022 at 20:41

Thanks, Paul. I've just revisited and re-jigged this recipe to reduce its volume by 25% and while doing so I have removed the sugar syrup to make it drier. I've also added a link to the Webster Cocktail.

Simon Difford

8th April 2020 at 19:15

What The Hell. Thought I’d give it a re-try after all these years. It’s an old-school recipe so is generous in its proportions. Dust of those large Martini glasses and fill them with What The Hell.

Kjell Eriksson

8th April 2020 at 17:54

I bought my first cocktail recipe book in the early nineties, and this drink was in it. I think the book was called something like 1001 Cocktails. A coffee-table kind of tome. The What the Hell in the book differed in proportions, as I recall, but it was so long ago that, having had the Difford variant for pre-dinner cocktail today I am not able to perform a comparative analysis. But then again, what the hell...