DOTD For Friday, November 14, 2025

This Drink Will Put Some Folks In A Real Pickle…

Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Pickleback cocktail inspired by National Pickle Day.

This annual celebration of all things pickle was first created by the Pickle Packers Association - now known as Pickle Packers International - an industry promotions group, that has celebrated this made up holiday every year since 1949.

You might laugh, but pickles have a long history. As far back as 2,400 BCE, ancient civilizations preserved vegetables, fruits, and meats in brine to extend their shelf life. Cleopatra is said to have credited her health and beauty to pickles, while Julius Caesar reportedly fed pickles to his soldiers, believing the preserved veggies made his soldiers stronger. In Russia, a glass of pickle juice or sauerkraut juice is considered a common hangover cure, though there’s no science behind it.

There are all kinds of pickles, from condiment, to snack, to side dish - & when you think of “pickles”, you probably think about cucumbers, but really almost any vegetable can be pickled. But whether you like half sours, full sours, kosher dills, Polish, Swedish, Bread and Butter, Danish or even Kool Aid Pickles (a Mississippi Delta area snack), there are all kinds of pickles.

So what exactly is a pickle? The word pickle comes from the Dutch pekel or German pókel, meaning salt or brine. Throw the right cucumber (or other veggie) in a brine and native lactobacillus go to work. They turn naturally occurring sugars into lactic acid that makes the saline environment inhospitable to spoilage bacteria.

Pickles can even get you in trouble - which is also known as being in a pickle. In 1948, professional pickle packers Sidney Sparer and Moses Dexler were arrested in Connecticut for selling pickles “unfit for human consumption.” The state Food and Drug Commissioner Fredrick Holcomb went on the record about how to check if you have good pickles. He told reporters that you can “drop it one foot and it should bounce.” The pickles in question did not bounce, the vendors were fined $500, and the pickles were destroyed

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What to do for National Pickle Day? Have some pickles, of course! They go better with booze than you might think. In fact, they’re really a pretty big dill.

And of course, with your pickles, you should enjoy today’s Drink Of The Day, a Pickleback Cocktail.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink: