3 Modern Cocktail Techniques Changing The Way We Drink

Modern cocktail techniques are bringing a little bit of the laboratory into the bar, with bartenders borrowing tricks from professional kitchens to push the boundaries of what a drink can be.

Modern mixology is a far cry from the days of yore, when all that was expected of a bartender was that they throw some booze, juice, and ice into a shaker and serve you something that tastes as far away from battery acid as they can get it.

These days, some of the best bars around have borrowed a trick or two from professional kitchens to churn out drinks with flavours and textures miles beyond anything you could achieve with just a jigger and a bar spoon. Their workspaces have started to more closely resemble a laboratory than the back of a bar, but make no mistake, it’s not all just for show; here are some interesting modern cocktail techniques they’ve put those tools to use with.

Sous Vide Infusions

You might think of sous vide as that thing that chefs use to cook steaks in little plastic bags for an unnecessarily long amount of time, but it turns out that they can come in quite handy for drinks too.

Previously, if a bartender or mixologist wanted to infuse something, they’d have to throw their fruits, herbs, spices, and what have you into a bottle and then just wait it out. But now, with this method, bartenders can vacuum-seal the ingredients with the spirit and place them in a precisely controlled water bath.

This process not only speeds up the extraction considerably, but the sealed environment also helps preserve all the delicate aromatic compounds within. What you then get is an infusion with a freshness and vibrancy about it, as opposed to something that’s been stewing in the back of your cupboard for a couple of weeks.

A good example that comes to mind is strawberry-infused gin, which, through the use of sous vide, gives you a beverage with a bright, juicy pop rather than a mess more akin to strawberry jam.

Fat Washing

Fat and booze might seem questionable bedfellows on the surface, but it turns out that, with an added step or two here and there, they can come together to produce drinks with the kind of flavour that you’d be hard-pressed to obtain any other way.

Fat washing involves mixing a spirit with a fat such as brown butter, bacon fat, or coconut oil, and then allowing the alcohol to absorb all those lovely aromatic compounds before then chilling the mixture until the fat solidifies.

After that, you strain the whole thing out, leaving behind a spirit that’s picked up all the good stuff without any of the residual grease. It’s a particularly neat trick because fat carries flavours that alcohol otherwise can’t quite access.

Take brown butter, for instance; it can lend a spirit all sorts of nutty, toasted notes, while coconut oil can bring a subtle tropical richness to proceedings. And it does all this without making your cocktail feel the slightest bit greasy.

Milk Punch

This one might sound a little strange, especially if you’re sitting in front of a cocktail that doesn’t look the slightest bit cloudy. The basic idea here is to introduce an acidic ingredient, usually citrus juice or wine, to a cocktail that contains warm milk.

This causes the milk to curdle, after which you strain the mixture through a fine filter, allowing the curds to trap tannins, harsh flavours, and colour along the way. What you then end up with is a clear cocktail that’s been smoothed over and freed of any aggressive edges it might’ve had going in. It’s a bit like taking your drink out for a spa day, if you want to think of it that way.

And that’s the great thing about these modern cocktail techniques. They’re not just gimmicky, though there’s certainly nothing wrong with a bit of theatre, but they help bartenders achieve a heretofore unfathomed degree of control over the flavours, textures, and aromas of their drinks. As culinary techniques continue to be reappropriated and given new life behind the bar, the frontiers of mixology will ascend to yet greater heights, and that’s something to look forward to indeed.

Opening image: Szymon Shields | Pexels