Black Russian Black Russian The Black Russian is a cocktail of vodka and coffee liqueur. It contains five parts vodka to two parts coffee liqueur, per IBA specified ingredients. Traditionally, the drink is made by pouring the vodka over ice cubes or cracked ice in an old-fashioned glass, followed by the coffee liqueur. This combination first appeared in 1949 and is ascribed to Gustave Tops, a Belgian barman, who created it at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels in honor of Perle Mesta, then United States Ambassador to Luxembourg. The cocktail owes its name to the use of vodka, a typical Russian spirit,
Brass Monkey (cocktail) mL. At the time that the Brass Monkey cocktail was produced, liquor stores carried mostly beer, wine, and hard alcohol; there were very few premixed alternatives. The drink was named by Steve Doniger, an advertising executive, after an alleged World War II spy named H. E. Rasske. The ad campaign was created by Allan Kaufman, who crafted a series of stories about the alleged spy using an old photo of his father as the image of Rasske. Sales and popularity of Heublein's Brass Monkey spirit cocktail increased in the 1980s after the release of the Beastie Boys' song of the