I mean is it too soon for Braveheart references
This is a post I wrote for the blog on the Bramble website; as if that excuses using the first-person plural.
In much the same way it happens for New Orleans in July, London finds itself the focus of the massive, weird and thoroughly fun world of cocktails, spirits, liqueurs, bars and bartenders for a week in October. London Cocktail Week just completed its sixth edition - and the first in its new home at Old Spitalfields Market - and, for the first time, we brought a little bit of George Street down.
London’s not super far from Edinburgh and we’ve wanted to do something during Cocktail Week for a while but this year was the first time we managed to turn a loose plan into an actual thing, thanks to all-round excellent person (not to mention genuinely published author) Ryan Chetiyawardana and the guys at White Lyan agreeing to let us take over their bar for one night. That in itself would make for an epic night but there’s one thing about White Lyan that made the project a) really interesting and b) not super easy.
White Lyan’s been open for just over two years and since its inception, they’ve committed to a philosophy that foregrounds the consistency of their drinks. That includes not using ingredients that can be variable or perishable and that precludes ingredients like fresh citrus juices and ice. It’s a unique approach to a bar and one that isn’t an impediment to quality: Time Out named them the number one cocktail bar in London and they hit 26 on Drinks International’s 50 Best Bars list. It is an approach, though, that means rethinking a lot of things that bartenders often take for granted.
The easiest example of this is the Bramble. It’s a simple drink - four ingredients plus ice - and yet so good we named a bar after it. Of those five components (gin, Creme de Mure, sugar, lemon juice and ice), two are off the table and that has a big effect on the drink.
On the face of it, lemon juice should be relatively easy to replace. A similar volume of citric acid solution with a concentration of around 6% by weight will provide pretty much the same amount of acidity; the downside is that while it provides the acid content, it doesn’t provide any of the other complex flavours bound up in lemon juice and in a drink that has four liquid ingredients, the absence of those other flavours becomes damagingly apparent.
To fill in those gaps, we ended up adding a couple of ingredients. Instead of using straight citric acid, we used a blend of citric, malic and succinic acid - the idea was to add some layers of flavour within the acid component, similar to the use of multiple citrus juices in a Zombie. To back that up and re-introduce some bigger citrus notes besides pure acidity, we added a little bit of Lillet Blanc; it’s a natural partner for gin and brings some freshness and some bitterness as well.
As for ice - it’s actually relatively easy to compensate for things like chilling and dilution. If you’re making a straight-up drink (let’s say a martini for an easy example), all you need to do is weigh the drink before you stir it and weigh it after; the difference in weight will tell you how much mass is added by the act of stirring and from there, it’s pretty easy to work out the dilution rate. Once you know that, you simply add water to that rate (~50% dilution is a pretty decent ballpark, BTW). All you need to work out the chilling effect is a thermometer and all you need to replicate that effect is effective refrigeration.
(Side note: yes, if you take this approach to a shaken drink you will end up with a different texture compared to a shaken version of the same drink. If you want a similar texture, you could use some carbonated water when you’re diluting your drink to serving strength.)
(Side note to the side note: serving strength is a whole other rabbit hole we’ll spare y’all right now.)
The thing with a Bramble is that we can compensate for chilling and for dilution but the removal of ice changes the character of the drink; it goes from a long drink to a short drink and one of its most interesting characteristics - the way it changes as the ice melts and the Creme de Mure integrates into the remaining liquid - is lost. We felt that was a hallmark of the drink so we did the obvious thing and split the Creme de Mure.
It’s only obvious, though, if you’re lucky enough to have a rotary evaporator. Running the liqueur through one gives two liquids - one clear, colourless distillate that has a light blackberry flavour and zero sweetness (which is pretty uncanny in itself) and a rich, darkly-coloured and super-sweet uberliqueur. We added the blackberry distillate to the gin, Lillet, acid blend along with some sugar, some water and a touch of soda; we made a paint from the other liquid with some pectin and a touch of citric acid.
Once we’d done all of that, we had a drink that was both a Bramble and not a Bramble. Without wanting to sound immodest, it was kind of popular.
There’s a whole bunch of people without whom, this entire endeavour would have been a lot less possible. So many, many thanks to Ryan, Robin, Maja, Tiernan and Iain along with everyone at the Mr. Lyan empire; our awesome DJs Fly T and Maxwell Pastor; brand ambassador buddies Ally Martin (Hendrick’s Gin), Grant Neave (Monkey Shoulder) and Metinee Kongsrivilai (Bacardi); our own social media maven Ericka Duffy; and, of course, everyone who came down for the great drinks, epic tunes and average chat!