Something trending in Mixology : Clarified Cocktails

Now the Clarified Cocktails 

When someone talks about cocktails, he also means array  of various hues , colors as well as flavors. This has inspired mixology enthusiasts  to innovate something different.

The in thing is now Clarified Cocktails. It is magic of creating tastes and flavors but the cocktail remains clarified . In simple words, a clarified cocktail is a clear, aromatic and well balanced drink. The bartender will remove any solid components listed in the recipe, leaving the liquid clear.

It is also true that creating clarified cocktail is not of very new idea. It’s origin goes back to the seventeenth century, when a glass-clear punch was concocted by English playwright Aphra Behn. Behn used milk clarification to extract the spicy and fruity notes of the drink in  a process where milk is added to a cocktail, curdled with lime, and the concoction is filtered through a muslin cloth. There are other processes subsequently developed, like the expensive rotovap, used for distillation for a higher concentration of flavour and aroma, or fat wash, where butter is mixed with the cocktail and kept in the freezer—butter freezes, alcohol doesn’t. It’s then filtered for hours, and finally  left with a drink infused with the flavours of butter. This is the technique used for the peanut butter infused Morning Brekkie.

Now a days, I am in UK and here clarified milk punch is one of the  popular craft cocktail , it is prepared with gin and milk.This classic gin milk cocktail recipe uses a process of clarification using a fine sieve and coffee filters. Traditional clarified gin and milk produces a transparent, bright and boozy citrus cocktail.

Prominent Indian mixologist predict that the  clarified cocktails would be a prominent trend in the coming years in India also. 

The piña colada and Negorani are famous cocktails since long time , piña colada is a soothing yellow and a Negroni has sunset hues. But in the clarified avatar both will  have a crystal clear variation, with their flavours intact.

Midnight Brekkie is a home grown clarified cocktail , developed at  Firefly, one of India’s top bars located in Goa. It’s  ingredients include peanut butter, fresh watermelon juice, strawberry syrup, vermouth, citrus and gin. With peanut butter and strawberry, it’s positioned as breakfast in a glass.

The Bombay Canteen (TBC) located in Lower Parel area of South Mumbai, it  has introduced a clarified cocktail called  ‘Hair of the Dog’ , it is infused with til-gud flavors, with no trace of sesame or jaggery. Last year, The Living Room opened at Mumbai-based restaurant Masque with a clear as spring water guava-infused gin cocktail named ‘Gamblé. The sublime flavours sit lightly on the tongue. Another popular cocktail ’-196 ´uses inventive techniques of extraction using liquid nitrogen and filtration techniques. My friends from Banglore suggest to try The Reservoire a cocktail bar worth trying.

But there is another school of thought which vehemently oppose the very idea of clarified cocktail. To Neil Alexander, the beverage director at the Windmills Craftworks microbrewery, clarification “means taking the life out of a cocktail”. Colour and flavour, he believes, have equal roles to play in the experience of a cocktail; so if a Negroni is stripped of its warm orange hues and served as a clear cocktail, its essence would be diluted. It must, he argues, look like a Negroni.

To my mind , the clarified cocktail is also worth trying , because innovation should be welcomed.