Transcription
This is a whiskey sour, slowly dripping into my mixing glass while being clarified. Today, I'm gonna tell you all you need to know to nail the clarification every time. It takes a little bit of patience and a few basics; that's it.
All right, so first, let's clarify what a clarified milk punch is. It dates back from the early 1700s, and in 1763, someone by the name of Benjamin Franklin—photo here in case you don't know who he is—wrote his recipe and sent it to a friend, because said friend really liked Mr. Franklin's punch recipe. And today, you can still find some photos of this letter; it looked like this—pretty awesome, especially when you consider that this letter was written before 1806, which is the date where the word "cocktail" was first written in a newspaper. So the clarified milk punch predates the era of the cocktail, and it was using molecular mixology techniques—mind-blowing.
But aside from being awesome, why would you clarify a cocktail with milk? Because it is delicious. It gives a very nice texture to the drink, creates some very interesting flavors, and it smooths the rough edges of the cocktail. It is very interesting, and I must say, every time I post a clarified cocktail on Instagram, I get a lot of reactions and a lot of questions. Reactions be like, "What the hell? Milk and citrus in a cocktail? With curdles? That's gross; I don't want it." But you have to understand, there is no more milk protein in the cocktail; they'll be thrown away in the process, and you'll be left with all your clear liquid with a little bit of whey from the milk in the cocktail. And that's what's gonna give the new texture and flavor to your cocktail. It is delicious; you have to trust me on that.
And for the questions I get a lot of: "I've tried that several times; I've never been able to clarify properly. Can you help me out?" And the answer is yes, of course; that's what we're gonna be doing today. We're gonna make a clarified New York sour, because we can, because it is delicious, and because it looks awesome. The float of red wine on top of the clear drink is amazing. So if you guys are ready, you'll get your inner Benjamin Franklin, and we're gonna make that cocktail together.
So for the ingredients, all you're gonna need is bourbon, lemon, sugar, red wine, and milk. And for the equipment, a vessel, a funnel, and a cheesecloth or a coffee filter. So let's do it.
So first, we're gonna pour two ounces of your favorite bourbon into a mixing glass. Then you're gonna add three-quarters of an ounce of simple syrup and three-quarters of an ounce of fresh lemon juice. Then, in another mixing glass, I'm gonna add one ounce of whole milk. Now the important part: you're gonna pour your cocktail on top of your milk, and not the other way around, because as soon as your cocktail will touch the milk, it will start to curdle. And if you poured the other way around, the whole cocktail will not be in touch with the curdled milk. So it was very important that you pour your cocktail on top of your milk and not the other way around.
So in your mixing glass, you're gonna add on top the funnel and a coffee filter or a cheesecloth, and you're gonna pour your mixture on top of it. Usually, the first drops are a little cloudy, so what you're gonna do is you're gonna wait for maybe 30 seconds to make sure that the clarification process has started properly, and then you're gonna flip that, and you gotta pour this little cloudy mixture on top of your unfiltered mixture. And that's the way to get the perfect clarification every single time. You don't want to get rid of the curdles for a second filtration; if that's what you need, sometimes you need a second filtration to make sure to have the perfect clear liquid. So don't forget to pour over the curdles when you do a second filtration.
So I repeat: you need alcohol and acid in order to get the milk to curdle. So once you get that, pour your cocktail over your milk to start the curdling process, and then you filter it through cheesecloth or a coffee filter. And if the beginning of your clarification is a little cloudy, you simply pour those first drops over your unfiltered liquid, and then you're gonna get a perfectly clear liquid and cocktail every single time. It is guaranteed. There's a lot of saying online: "You have to eat the milk." Not true; I've tried it; it doesn't make a difference. There's also a lot of articles that say that you have to wait a long time before starting clarification. Not true; obviously, if you want to infuse some ingredients into your punch before clarifying it, yeah, the wait is important, but if only the goal is to clarify it with milk, the wait is not important at all—actually, not needed at all.
So now all we have to do is wait, and it can take a little time. All right, so we're done waiting, and as you can see, it's a little darker in the room; that's because it takes a little bit of time when you want to clarify a cocktail. So I recommend you plan it ahead of time when you want to do it. But don't worry, you can bottle it up and keep it in your fridge for almost forever, because the shelf life of a clarified cocktail is quite long. So don't worry, you just bottle it up, keep it in your fridge, and take it out whenever you're thirsty, when you have friends over, pour it over ice, and you're good to go.
But today we're making a clarified New York sour, and right now this is only a clarified whiskey sour, so we have to transform it, and we're gonna do it very shortly. But before, there's one more thing I want to say: I want to talk about dilution. Right now, we've just done this one, so it's not chilled; we want to serve it cold. But when you clarify a cocktail, you are incorporating more liquid into your drink because of the whey from the milk is gonna be in there, so that's gonna act a little bit as our dilution. So when chilling your cocktail with a stir or shake, you want to just chill it briefly and without adding too much water into your cocktail once again. So we're just gonna add a little bit of ice, actually, apply the ice, stir it briefly, then we're gonna remove our ice, jungle ice, and we're gonna strain our cocktail over.
So now the final touch: in order for this whiskey sour to become a New York sour, we want to add a little bit of red wine on top. So we're just gonna pour it over our big block of ice, so that's gonna help to place the wine delicately over the cocktail. And this, my friend, is a clarified New York sour. I really hope you enjoyed this video. Hit the like button if you did. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you're not already. Thank you very much for watching. Have a great weekend, and see you next week. Cheers.