Hi, Friends of Cocktails! It’s Air vs Water in this part 2 of the cocktail battle of the elements. And if you happen to be a Harry Potter fan you’ll know these two elements represent the two Hogwarts houses we haven’t covered yet: Ravenclaw and Slytherin. So today we’re making 2 cocktails inspired by them with a blue drink with an airy crown for Ravenclaw, and green, mineral-like drink for Slytherin. But even if you’re not into that, we’ll still go over plenty of interesting techniques, gadgets and flavor pairings today!
Starting with Ravenclaw, representing air with its eagle crest and blue and silver colors. Their students being known for wit and love of learning I figured a few DIY ingredients would be the right way to go. So we’ll make a homemade bitter-lemon soda, colored blue of course, and mix that with gin. And for garnish I got a magical tool, the Flavor Blaster Aroma Gun. This will help me give the cocktail an airy crown, or a diadem if you will.
If you want to replicate today’s cocktails, you’re in luck because now you can use the code COCKTAILTIME for a 10% discount on your own Flavor Blaster by clicking here - the link works site-wide so feel free to pick your favorite one! Now let’s make some Soda, it’s Cocktail Time!
Bitter Lemon Soda
● 50g Organic Lemon Peels
● 450g Sugar
● 6g Gentian Root
● 500g Hot Water
● 12.5g Citric Acid
● 10g Tartaric Acid
● 1.5 Ascorbic Acid
● 1.6g Blue Spirulina
● 1g 20% Saline Solution
Firstly I’ll make some lemon oleo saccharum, or lemon flavored oil-sugar. To get that I’ll add the lemon peels and the sugar to a container, give it a quick muddle, and leave it to sit for 1 hour. Through magic, also known as sugar's hygroscopic property, it will pull the flavorful oils from the lemon peels, making them softer and dissolving at least part of the sugar, giving it a bright, citrusy flavor. While that happens, we can also make some gentian tea.
So brew the gentian root in the boiling hot water for 5 minutes, strain, and let it cool down. We’ll need 450g of it that we’ll add to a blender alongside everything else. Now blend everything for about 51 seconds before addingour natural blue dye, blue spirulina powder. Blend it in, then it’s time to strain our blue bitter-lemon syrup through a cloth filter. To get the full yield you can use the classic Cocktail time hack by pressing what’s left on the filter with a potato ricer.
Once that’s done you can mix this with soda water, or add water and charge it with CO2, which is what I’ll do with this iSi Twist&Sparkle, which allows you to carbonate any drink. For this you want the syrup and especially the water to be very chilled. I’ll then need to fill this up to 800mL, so I’m adding 120mL of our syrup and 680mL of water, but if you plan to make only a single serve you can mix 15 ml of syrup with 85g of soda water.
To make sure we have plenty of carbonation, since this cocktail represents air, I’ll charge it with two CO2 cartridges in the span of 10 minutes. Don’t forget to bottle the leftover syrup, add a label and store in the fridge, but with that we’re now ready to make the cocktail I’m calling the Crown in the Sky!
The Crown in the Sky
● 45mL · 1.5oz Botanist Gin
● 120g Blue Bitter Lemon Soda
● Citrus Aroma Bubble
The cocktail itself is a simple build, so into a chilled highball glass with a clear ice spear add the gin and the Bitter Lemon Soda. I don’t want to lose the airyness by twice pouring into the jigger and then into the glass, so as I usually do with sparkling ingredients, I’ll use a scale. Give this a gentle lift with a barspoon to mix the ingredients, then it’s time for the garnish.
To help the crown of this cocktail stick to the top of the drink I’ll first spray it with water from the atomizer. Then, using the Flavor Blaster Aroma Gun filled with their Citrus Aroma I’ll carefully place this finishing touch on the cocktail. Looks like something that would be hard to wrap your mind around, but just make sure you don’t lose it too soon. Cheers!
The Crown of the Sky is citrusy, fresh, light and oh so blue. It would be a shame to have this hidden away in a secret room somewhere. But now, the final cocktail of the four, as their pride would dictate it, representing the Slytherin house and the element of water, let’s make the Green Monster. Their green and silver crest proudly bears a snake, and their common room is located in the dungeons with the windows looking into the Great Lake, and their attitude is often as cold as the dungeon itself.
So we’ll make an icy-cold, green, Mint Julep twist that you could sip on while looking into the eyes of the Giant Squid. To make this chilly water-themed cocktail I’ll use Aquavit, absinthe, rich syrup, mint tincture, and squid ink solution, in place of saline solution. To make it I combined squid ink and water in a 1:1 ratio by weight, which you may recognize as an ingredient for our first Halloween Cocktail Time Special episode 4 years ago, so it’s a throwback.
The Green Monster
● 60mL · 2oz Aquavit
● 2 barspoons Rich Syrup
● 1 barspoon Absinthe
● 6 drops Squid Ink Solution
● 8 dashes Mint Tincture
● Mint Bouquet
Let's grab a julep cup - silver of course - and add the ingredients. If you can’t get Squid Ink, you could add saltiness with the tears of students being bullied by Slytherins, but I got squid ink from the Giant Squid itself. Now fill the cup with crushed ice, stir with a barspoon until you see frost gathering on the outside of the cup. At this point we’ll top the cocktail with more crushed ice and finish it off with the final touches, 8 dashes of mint tincture and a rich bouquet of mint, to show that high class. Cheers!
The Green Monster is fresh, cool, somewhat bare, but still very herbal. It perfectly embodies the house and its element. Of the two cocktails however, I’d have to say the Crown of the Sky is my favorite, and with that we’ve made it to the Bottom of The Glass and this 2-part series. Don’t forget to check the first part out here, and until next time. Cheers and never tickle a sleeping dragon!
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