If you aren’t much into the sweet flavors, or you just want to change up your cocktail for a night, consider drinking a dirty martini. The flavors can vary from how light or heavy you go on the olives, olive juices (or perhaps even pickle juice), vermouth, and vodka. Dirty martini’s are mainly for olive lovers, so if you aren’t a big fan of olives, then this recipe may not be for you. But it’s certainly worth a try as you may be surprised by the taste of this delicious martini cocktail.

A Dirty Martini For Olive Lovers

This recipe calls for a good amount of olive juice and olives, so if you love the taste of olives, then you will like this martini recipe. In fact, this might be considered an extra dirty martini, depending on how you much of the taste of olives you actually experience in this drink.

For this recipe, you will need vodka, dry vermouth, stuffed green olives, and brine from an olive jar. Some experts will argue that brine from a standard olive jar is not the way to go. There is an olive brine know as the Dirty Sue. This brine is double filtered, and only made from premium olives. Others will say that as long as you use straight olive juice that comes from a jar of high quality olives, the taste will come out excellent. This is where you can experiment and try out different olive brines. Once you find the perfect brine, then you’ll know exactly what to grab for your next dirty martini.

Making Your Dirty Martini

Using a cocktail shaker, combine 6 oz of vodka (your choice), a splash of the dry vermouth, an ounce of the olive brine, and then shake vigorously. Pour the mix over ice and the stuffed olives into a martini glass (or use a chilled martini glass if you don’t want ice).

Keep in mind that you can also substitute vodka with gin. In fact, the original dirty martini is made with gin, not vodka. So try them both out and see what suits your palate the most.

Dirty or Extra Dirty?

There are different levels of how dirty you want your dirty martini. Basically, the more olive juice you add to your mix, the dirtier the martini. So you decide on how dirty you want to go. Remember that because martini’s are very simple cocktails, you will taste every ingredient you put into this drink. So try different flavors, different amounts of each ingredient until you find the perfect blend to suit your taste! A fun way of discovering new martini drinks is to host a martini tasting party. Test out your skills and see what your friends will enjoy the most.