Lockdown recipe diary #12: Bramble Italiano

Messing with classic recipes can be fraught. I tend to think that one of the reasons why some drinks stick in people’s mind is the simplicity of their recipes - not only are they easy to remember, they provide a good basis for experimentation.

A couple of years back, I wanted to add a long gin cocktail to the menu at the Last Word Saloon and I thought that the Bramble would be a good starting point. Putting a straight-ahead classic recipe version on the menu wasn’t an option as we were doing that at the Last Word’s sister which is even named after the drink, so I spent a bit of time thinking about how I wanted to keep a similar vibe while making this new recipe distinct enough to be considered its own thing.

Bramble Italiano

45 ml / 1.5oz gin
20 ml / 0.66 oz Cocchi Aperitivo Americano
10 ml / 0.33 oz orgeat
20 ml / 0.66 oz lemon juice

2 bar spoons creme de mure
1 bar spoon Campari

Pour the first four ingredients into a highball glass, and fill with crushed ice.
Garnish with a lemon wheel and a blackberry.
Mix the creme de mure and Campari in a small jug (a milk jug is perfect) and float on the top of the drink immediately before serving.

I decided that I wanted to bring a bit of an Italian aperitif feel, so I added a bit of Cocchi Americano rather than just having gin as the base spirit. I swapped in some orgeat instead of a basic sugar syrup to add a bit of texture and a bit of shading to the sweet element of the drink. Finally, the one base taste that’s not really present in a classic Bramble recipe is bitterness, and I wanted to bring some of that so rather than crowning the drink traditionally with creme de mure, I mixed that with some Campari.

The point of this drink isn’t to be “better” than a Bramble. It’s definitely an homage but the overall idea is to use the template of a drink that’s popular and known to draw people in trying things they’re less familiar with.

Lockdown recipe diary #11: Coco Fresca

The cocktail tradition is largely founded on alcoholic mixed drinks but more people are looking for great drinks that don’t contain alcohol.

Not drinking alcohol is a perfectly valid choice for any number of reasons but I know that as a bartender I haven’t always been respected that choice when presented with an order for a non-alcoholic cocktail. It’s easy enough to make something that tastes passable without too much effort and then you can get back to obsessing over Manhattans or whatever you’d rather be doing.

But, if someone who isn’t drinking alcohol has taken the time to come into my bar where the majority of people are drinking alcohol, shouldn’t I give them as much effort and attention as someone who’s ordering the painstakingly crafted cocktail with the homemade syrup and carefully infused spirit? Why would they be owed any less for their money?

So rather than just throw top up some fruit juice with soda water and garnish the hell out of it, I started trying to build up some solid, tested recipes for nonalcoholic cocktails, and the Coco Fresca was one of the first.

Coco Fresca

40 ml / 1 ⅓ oz coconut water
15 ml / ½ oz elderflower cordial
20 ml / ⅔ oz lime juice
Top with grapefruit soda

Pour all the ingredients into a highball glass over cubed ice, and garnish with a wedge of lime.

The basic template here is a Collins and I wanted this serve to be quite light and elegant. The coconut water serves almost as a substitute for a gin or a vodka but I found this is one of the rare occasions where the subtlety of its flavour when combined with other ingredients actually worked in its favour. For the grapefruit soda, something like Ting or Jarritos works fine but I’m lucky enough that company I work for collaborated on a salted pink grapefruit soda with Bon Accord that’s perfect for this.

Lockdown recipe diary #9: Scofflaw

One of the unwritten rules of bartending is that it’s generally considered good practice not to discuss particularly divisive topics with your guests, like religion or politics. I think it’s a convention that’s intended to reduce the potential for disagreement in a place where alcohol can affect how people react to being disagreed with, and there’s a sense that the barkeep’s role within society isn’t to judge their guests even if they disagree with them.

But we’re all in lockdown, so I don’t feel any reason not to tell the Prime Minister of Great Britain and his chief adviser to fuck off.

Scofflaw

30 ml / 1 oz straight rye
30 ml / 1 oz dry vermouth
15 ml / 0.5 oz lemon juice
15 ml / 0.5 oz grenadine
1 dash orange bitters

Pour all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker and fill it with cubed ice.
Shake it for 10-15 seconds and fine-strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with a twist of lemon zest if you want.

Lockdown recipe diary #8: Mexican Firing Squad Special Milk Punch

Clarified milk punches are kind of the new hotness over the past few years, even though there’s records of the technique being used dating back to at least 1711. It’s a relatively simple way of making clear drinks that have a wide range of flavours that you don’t often find in liquids that aren’t opaque.

For all that’s is theoretically simple, there are a few different steps that require a fair bit of attention and I remember finding a lot of conflicting information when I first started experimenting with the form - I wouldn’t describe it as difficult but it is a process that’s quite involved. Over time, I’ve found a work flow that seems pretty solid for how I work.

The basic idea is that adding milk into a cocktail recipe causes the milk to split and form curds. Those curds clump together, trapping all the particles that make a liquid translucent, and can then be filtered out pretty easily.

The first step is finding a recipe. I wanted to do a tequila drink because a) tequila is great, b) I managed not to post anything relevant around Cinco de Mayo, and c) tequila is great. Given that I also have a bit of raspberry syrup kicking around after last week’s post, using that would be ideal.

One recipe that caught my eye was the Mexican “Firing Squad" Special from Charles H. Baker’s The Gentleman’s Companion:

Mexican “Firing Squad” Special

Build in a Collins glass filled with shaved ice:

4 oz tequila blanco
1.5 oz lime juice
2 tsps grenadine, to taste
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Garnish with a slice of orange.
Garnish with a slice of pineapple.
Garnish with a red cherry.

On paper, there’s one element that really stands out - the four ounces of tequila. In metric, that’s 120 ml or near enough five shots for the UK drinker which is, uh, a lot for a single drink. It’s a lot for two drinks.

It’s possible that the fact the drink is served long goes some way to taking the edge off the booze but I’m going to rework things a little. The original recipe has eight parts of tequila to three parts of lime juice to 2/3 of a part of grenadine; for my purposes, I’m revising it to 5:2:1 and swapping in raspberry syrup for the grenadine, so the recipe now looks a little like:

75 ml / 2.5 oz tequila
30 ml / 1 oz lime juice
15 ml / 0.5 oz raspberry syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters

With a recipe sorted, we’re ready to start messing about with milk and stuff.

One of the first things to note about clarifying a milk punch is that it’s a technique that doesn’t lend itself to single serves - you’ll want to batch up a few serves at once, as getting from having your initial non-clarified drink to the final product takes a bit of time and repeating the process is, frankly, pretty dull. I started by pouring enough to make two serves into a mixing jug.

The next stage is the milk. I’m using full fat cow’s milk here - when using dairy, I’ve found everything goes a bit easier with full fat compared to semi-skimmed or skimmed. If you’re keen to keep things vegan, almond milk works as does oat milk if you want to avoid nuts.

I’ve heard and seen many people say that they recommend boiling the milk before doing anything but I can’t say I’ve found any benefit to doing that outside of wasting time and energy.

I’ve found using four parts of cocktail to one part of milk does everything I need it to. On this drink, I have just over 240 ml of pre-batched cocktail (the left-hand photo), so I measured 60 ml of milk into another jug (middle photo) and slowly poured the cocktail into the milk (right-hand photo). I’ve found better results pouring the cocktail into the milk rather the other way around but I’ve heard other folk claim the reverse.

I’ve found that the process of forming the curds is pretty quick but it’s worth leaving things for 10-15 minutes (longer if you’re doing higher volumes of liquid) to be on the safe side. If you’re not seeing the curds form, a little extra acidity will probably do the trick.

After that, we’re onto filtration and you shouldn’t need anything fancier than a coffee filter. Slowly fill it up and let it do its thing, refilling as needed until all the liquid is clarified. If it’s not totally transparent, you can run it over the curds in the coffee filter for a second time - they’ll work as a pretty effective physical filter in addition to the coffee filter.

Once everything's filtered and clear, you’re done - pour everything into a clean, labelled bottle until you want to serve it. There’s a bit of dilution that comes from adding the milk so I prefer chilling a clarified milk punch in the fridge and simply serving it over ice but giving it a bit of stir first won’t hurt it.

Lockdown recipe diary #7: Windrose

This is, I think, the most recent recipe I’ve posted so far - it’s a drink I created for the menu at the Last Word in 2019. I remember thinking that I wanted to do something like an equal parts recipe (along the lines of a Corpse Reviver #2 spec, or a Paper Plane), mostly because while the whisky I was using wasn’t inexpensive and that formula allows you to block in less pricey ingredients.

Price wasn’t the only motivating factor - the whisky is also pretty lively and more than capable of coming through against other flavours. On paper, I was aiming for something like:

1 part whisky
1 part citrus
1 part fortified wine / aperitif
1 part sweetener

I was set on making a sour-type drink but I wasn’t particularly interested in doing anything too outlandish here so that would be a straight choice between lemon and lime juice. I settled on ginger wine for the fortified/aperitif slot pretty quickly for more or less the same reasons I’d used it in the Alloway (which I posted about two weeks ago, but had put together something like two years before), and I initially left the sweetener slot open to see what worked. I had that down to a choice between an orange curaçao and a carob liqueur we’d made for the Lucky Liquor Co.

The curaçao was fine but the carob liqueur made the drink a bit more interesting without distracting too much from the other flavours, but I definitely remember the first version of this didn’t work exactly as I’d have liked. It was a little too heavy and needed some lighter, brighter notes so I decided to tweak the formula a little and bring in a little apple brandy, and ended up with:

Windrose

15 ml / 0.5 oz single malt whisky (Bramble Whisky Co. Glenglassaugh 6 yo)
15 ml / 0.5 oz apple brandy (Somerset 3yo cider brandy)
20 ml / 0.66 oz ginger wine

20 ml / 0.66 oz carob liqueur
20 ml / 0.66 oz lemon juice

Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker, fill it with cubed ice and shake for 10-15 seconds. Fine-strain into a chilled coupe/martini or Nick & Nora glass, and garnish with an apple fan.

It’s often the case that there’s a difference between what you want to do and what works best in the glass and the Windrose is obviously no longer an equal parts recipe. There’s three parts of spirit (split between the whisky and the apple brandy) to two parts of each of the other elements but I think it’s a better drink for having broken with my original intention.