Elder Elixir

Vernal Verdancy in a Vessel

Grape, Meet Elderflower…

The brand of Elderflower liqueur used for this cocktail makes its liqueur by permeating elderflower petals in a neutral grape spirit soon after the buds are harvested.

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The Precocious Blossom of the Elderflower — so to speak:

But that doesn’t happen until late spring. Enter St. Germain & their unadulterated, artisanal liqueur that captures the essence of the exquisite botanical.

The Grape Falls for the Elderflower!

The folks at St. Germain engage in a year-long love affair — w/ the elder shrubs — that culminates for a few weeks right before summer begins. That is when their endeavour to arrest the elusive bud in a bottle is brought to fruition so that their patrons can indulge in the subtle-yet-sublime flavour of the flower any time of the year.

The Promiscuous Elderflower…

As amazing as Elderflower is on its own, it prefers the company of other neutral spirits & works wonders in the background with flavour-oriented spirits &/or liqueurs.

So, what do you do with such a versatile liqueur? Depending on the season & the spirit at play, virtually anything! My take?

A Silver, Cucumber Fizz

What a Fizz is:

A Fizz is a spirit-based cocktail with citrus (usually lemon &/or lime), a sweetener, & a carbonated mix — such as soda water. And the classic recipes are always served without ice.

In the 1800s, a fizz cocktail was a morning drink, & a sour cocktail was set aside for evenings. A Ramos (Gin) Fizz is the most notable example. The legend has it that the establishment that invented it would pass around the shaker among their ranks to emulsify the cocktail and get the rich, creamy head that an iceless fizz yields.

What’s Different:

Our fizz uses no syrup — uses sidecar orthodoxy & a liqueur — uses a flavoured, carbonated mixer; has a saline element; a cucumber infusion; & is a silver fizz — has egg-white.

The Cocktail Calculus — Crafting the Concoction

w/ the Reverse-Hard-Shake technique

Wet-Shake — The Addition of Ice:

The creamy-smooth, colloidal texture created by dry-shaking — step 2–happens because of protein denaturation. Another common way of achieving that is via hydrolysis — the addition of water. That’s why the addition of ice (instead of water in the old days), with the advent of the Reverse-Carnot technology, works wonders as:

• It dilutes & chills the cocktail to achieve the desired volume & temperature,
• And takes protein denaturation to another level by introducing hydrolysis — to break the weak peptide bonds between the long chains of amino acids.

Single-Strain w/o Ice:

When shaken w/ ice, the dilution is controlled, depending on the size and wetness of the ice; adding any more ice would lessen the flavour by diluting this delicate cocktail. Besides a Hawthorne strainer, using a fine-mesh strainer would not yield the creamy foam-head we’re looking for, so we’ll single-strain this concoction.

Dry-Shake w/ Egg-White:

• Why: To aerate an ephemeral-yet-elegant emulsion; that’s what this cocktail is — an emulsion*.
• What it is: An emulsion is a type of colloid — like gels & sols — containing two or more immiscible liquids suspended in a homogenous, relatively stable state.
• How it is done: Egg-white is an excellent emulsifier because of the abundance of albumin & the presence of both hydrophilic & hydrophobic amino acids (what proteins are made of). So, when you aerate the cocktail by dry-shaking, you agitate and uncurl the globular & other proteins in a manner that makes the hydrophilic amino acids stick inside where the water is & the hydrophobic ones pop out to form a smooth, creamy structure of proteins that holds the air that was introduced — by vigorously dry-shaking the cocktail.

*This emulsion will start to separate by virtue of creaming by gravitational separation & increase in temperature. That’s why the right technique will go a long way in making this delectable cocktail last longer .