Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, Clarified Espresso Martinis!

This one goes straight past mixology into mad science.

THE SAME COCKTAIL. The second one has a little cream and two days of science added to it.

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. I’ve shown off a few of the cocktails at Hemingway’s Underground, my brand new home. I poured you a drink for Labor Day. You’re well provisioned for the four-day work week. That gives me the luxury of digging deep into my mixology books and finding something really weird to show off. How does a clarified espresso martini sound? Buckle up, kids, we’re gonna do some science. Here’s the recipe.

Clarified Espresso Martini

8 oz Luskoya vodka

4 oz fresh espresso

2 oz Grind Double Espresso Liquor

1 oz demerara syrup

½ cup whole milk

¼ t 15% citric acid solution

Add all ingredients except for the milk and citric acid to a cocktail beaker and stir. Pour the milk into a container. Pour the cocktail slowly into the milk. (Important: Cocktail goes in milk, milk does not go in cocktail!) Wait 10-15 minutes. If the milk hasn’t started curdling on its own, slowly pour the citric acid solution into the cocktail until the milk breaks and curdles. Gently stir the cocktail, pulling the curds from the bottom of the container to the top of the liquid without breaking them, for 30 minutes. Cover the cocktail and let it rest in the fridge for 2-3 hours or overnight.

The next day, pour the cocktail through a nut bag. Filter the cocktail through a coffee filter 2-3 times. Repeat the clarification process as needed until the desired clarity has been achieved. Pour into a chilled rocks glass over ice. Top with whipped cream and espresso powder. Serves 2-3.

After reading this, you probably have some questions. Let’s tackle them in order:

“What the hell?”

Milk clarification was used in traditional milk punches dating back to the Colonial era. The invention of New Orleans Milk Punch is credited to Aphra Behn, a 17th-century English author, playwright, and spy for King Charles II. Per Virginia Woolf, “All women together ought to let flowers fall on the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” She wrote scandalous plays dedicated to King Charles’s mistress, recruited double agents for the King, and apparently made one hell of a cocktail. It’s worth making a drink in her memory.

“Why the hell?”

Clarifying booze with milk makes it better. The milk curds trap tannins and impurities in the liquor, removing much of the harshness. Ben Franklin wrote a recipe for a rum sour milk punch that still tastes great. There was a lot of bad rum floating around Colonial America. This trick filtered out a lot of the nasty bits.

In this case, the milk curds gobble up the tannins and astringency in a classic espresso martini. The whey from the milk remains in the cocktail, lending it a silky smoothness. The end result is pure alchemy. The clarified espresso martini is mellow and smooth, rich with umami, and has a distinct coffee finish that’s far less harsh than the standard espresso martini.

“So … I should try this at home?”

Hell no. Maybe. This is a ridiculously time-consuming process. I had to curdle milk twice to clarify the drink to the color in the photograph; to get it crystal clear, I’d probably have to buy a centrifuge. This isn’t a thing for the home bar unless you’ve got a lot of time to kill. But it’s a really cool experiment. Admittedly, the process looks gross, but the end product tastes oh so good. You be the judge. Make yourself a normal espresso martini to get your taste buds in gear and follow along with me as we talk ingredients:

First round of clarification. Yes, that’s curdled milk at the bottom.

Second round of clarification. Yes, more curdled milk in there, still gross. But you can see the transformation.

Luskoya Vodka: This Polish potato vodka is the rail vodka at Hemingway’s, so I wanted to use it as my base. A lighter, sweeter vodka like Tito’s would work well here.

Fresh espresso: My moka pot is a godsend for making fresh espresso quickly. Bottled espresso blends for espresso martinis are on the market, and we use one at the bar. Fresh is better, but the bottled stuff has become a solid second-best choice.

Grind Double Espresso Liquor: I don’t care how much you filter it, Kahlua is awful. Use a better coffee liquor for your espresso martinis. Grind is excellent. So is Mr. Black.

Demerara Sugar: Simple syrup would be clearer, but I use demerara in my standard espresso martini, and I wanted to see how the clarification process changed it.

Whole Milk: Non-dairy milks won’t work here. Likewise, anything other than whole milk won’t curdle correctly.

Citric Acid Solution: Add 15g citric acid to 85g water and stir well. Look for citric acid in the pickling section of your local big-box store.

Process: Pour the cocktail into the milk, not the milk into the cocktail. If you pour milk in the drink, the curds will form too quickly and won’t sop up any of the stuff you want out of the drink.

An acidic base cocktail might kick off the curdling process by itself. If the cocktail doesn’t curdle right away, add a touch more acid. Lemon juice works fine, but I got fancy and used the citric acid solution to jump-start the curdling process. You’ll need very little acid, no more than a ¼ teaspoon.

Gently stir the curdled cocktail a few times. You want to work the disgusting-looking curds up to the surface of the cocktail. The curds can sop up more of the dark solids suspended in the drink that way. If you stir too hard, the curds will break up, and straining the finished product will be more difficult.

My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday-Saturday, 4-10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by and I’ll make a drink for you … or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette. (But I won’t make this drink. It’s too much work.)

OPEN THREAD!