Hi, Friends of Cocktails! This is a post I wanted to make for a long time, because I’ll take you down my shopping list of special ingredients. From powdered acids, to emulsifiers, enzymes and more, today I’ll make sure you know where to get all the ingredients you need to make the ingredients you see on Cocktail Time. I’ll answer the question “where do I find all of these?”, plus how and why you should use them as well, and at the end I’ll also give you a perfect gift idea for the upcoming holidays!
Before we start - yes, you can make easy, delicious cocktails without specialty ingredients. But when you want to wow your guests or experiment with creating something special, these are the ace up your sleeve. During my time behind the bar and in many videos I’ve used all kinds of acids, emulsifiers, gelling and flavoring agents, powders, oils, you name it. And since finding them all can be difficult, I am excited to announce that today we’re partnering with Special Ingredients to get them straight to you.
Special Ingredients now has Europe and UK sites, with the latter also serving all of your Friends of Cocktails from the US. But starting with the ingredient I use the most, citric, malic, tartaric, lactic, and ascorbic acid powders are ones that you’ll find all over the channel and on the Cocktail Calculators on kevinkos.com. I’ve used them for things like cordials, where the acids lower the pH and bring up the sourness, so that paired with sugar, the cordial can play as both swee & sour in drinks.
Another use for acids too is providing mouthfeel, as highlighted in Liquid Intelligence by Dave Arnold. One worth mentioning is lactic acid. I really like playing with the savory sourness it adds, similar to lacto-fermentation, which is why I used it for the Strawberry Whey cordial a while ago. In short, always use the acids that make sense with the other ingredients in your drinks, and use online resources to find out which acids are dominant in certain fruits and vegetables.
It’s easy to find information for the major ones, like lemons, limes, grapefruits and more, all of which have vitamin C as well. Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, can be used to prevent oxidation as a preservative, but also enhances flavor, so it’s even great for liqueurs. That also means you could use it to improve your favorite Super Juice, and before we move on to the next ingredients, all of these are available in sizes from 100g, 250g, 500g, and even all the way up to 25 kg, which is... a lot!
Now let’s tackle the problem of things not wanting to mix, like oil and water. What if you want to make an olive oil syrup for example? That’s when you need things like emulsifiers and stabilizers. Here we also have some gelling agents, thickeners, and foaming agents, with some playing multiple of those roles at once. With these we’re really getting closer to the molecular gastronomy side of cocktails–and if you’re a chef that’s into that, this is right down your alley.
You’ve seen me use Gum Arabic plenty of times, because it’s fantastic for making homemade gum syrup or adding a silky texture to a cocktail. In many syrups, like orgeat or the Basil Olive Oil Syrup, where the fatty oils and water don’t want to mix on their own, it works in pairing with our next ingredient, xanthan gum. Xanthan gum is a stabilizer so it’s perfect for things like stabilizing foams but it also adds plenty of texture.
By using both xanthan gum and gum arabic, we can make sure thhese emulsions don’t break when they’re suddenly diluted and chilled. That’s why I used it in my Fluffy Jungle Bird cocktail, but this combo also works great when making Super Foam and Super Syrup recipes. Speaking of, to make that Vegan egg-white replacement, you’ll need methylcellulose, using a particular type of that many Friends of Cocktails couldn’t find.
As a note, no, carboxymethylcellulose or CMC is not a good option for making Super Syrup, so if you need to get the right kind make sure to get yours at Special Ingredients. But hey, don’t want to worry about it if the eggs really are fresh enough to enjoy that raw in your cocktail, because they have an option for that as well - egg white powder. Just mix with water in a 7:1 ratio to reconstitute and you’re ready for a busy shift or a night of New York Sours with your friends.
A while back we even made an egg-white comparison video, and powdered egg white actually beat out fresh and pasteurized egg whites for the best appearance and thickness of the foam, so it’s a great option to keep in mind. You can also use this to make different meringue garnishes, like on the Love Road Margarita, or the BBQ Mint Julep. And speaking of beautiful looking cocktails, I have been called out on a few occasions for liking my cocktails as clear as possible, so you know I like to use agar agar.
This is a vegetarian gelling and thickening agent, so it can work for foams as well, but we often use it to clarify cordials or juices, especially in acidic mixtures like citrus juices or cordials. Unlike a milk wash it doesn’t add any flavor or mouthfeel, but it just traps the solids in a soft gel, which you can strain out with a cloth filter. Last in this list is Soy Lecithin powder, an emulsifier, stabilizer and preservative that was the key ingredient when making the Club Clover and the orange air from Netflix’s Drink Masters.
Speaking of Drink Masters, these next special ingredients get you one step closer to being one yourself. First, sodium citrate, which can be used as a preservative, but it’s also essential for direct spherification, as shown in our Drink Masters episode with the Martini cocktail served with Vermouth Spheres, and the Modern Tequila Sunrise cocktail, where instead of adding grenadine, I made Sunrise Boba Pearls for the same color effect and a bigger wow factor.
For larger spheres you’ll need a combination of Sodium Alginate & Calcium Lactate for a process known as reverse spherification, which we used to make lime cordial spheres for an elevated Caipirinha. Pretty cool, right? I already mentioned I like to make clear cocktails, and here’s another thing that can help with that - Pectinex.
Enzymes are proteins that speed up chemical reactions, and Pectinex–also known as pectinase– is a specialty enzyme that breaks down the structure of pectin, a natural fiber found in fruits, especially apples and citrus. So to make those juices, fruit purées or even liqueurs clearer we add a small amount of pectinex, leave it to sit in the refrigerator, then strain out the sediments.
On to the next group, the flavoring and coloring agents. As the name suggests, these add flavor or color to your ingredients or cocktails. Let’s start with flavor drops and oils. I used Almond Flavor Drops to make Clear Orgeat after I noticed the almond flavor faded during clarification. So to bring back that distinct almond taste with added a few of these flavour drops.
Special Ingredients has an extensive list of different flavour drops for you to choose from. Just be careful not to add more than the recommended dosage of 0.3% to 1.0%, as they’re highly concentrated! Whenever we used essential oils I highlighted the importance of using 100% natural and food-grade oils, which is exactly what Special Ingredients offer. You’ll be able to find lemon, lime, orange, and mint flavoring oils.
For additional tips on using essential oils safely, check out our episode on Homemade Crème de Menthe. These flavor oils and drops are perfect for creating liqueurs, and sprays for your cocktails, while the drops can also be used for foams and syrups in a similar way that we did with tinctures a few weeks ago. That’s because the flavoring drops are water-soluble, and the flavoring, or essential oils are not, so keep that in mind for your use cases.
Staying with flavoring agents we have vanilla–one of the most-used spices on the channel, especially in 0% ABV creations, or to add depth to liqueurs like the cacao liqueur. It’s also the second most expensive spice in the world, right after saffron. Which means you really want to make sure you get the good stuff. Special Ingredients offer Vanilla Flavour drop, Vanilla Extract, Vanilla Powder, and my favorite, Vanilla Pods.
Another fun way to add flavor or smokiness to your ingredients and cocktails is using wood chips. Special Ingredients’ wood chips are food-safe and ideal for infusions and cocktail smoking, especially their hickory, cherry or whiskey-soaked oak wood chips. I used wood chips while making homemade Lillet and when smoking a lime cordial for a Gimlet, but you can of course smoke the finished cocktail as well.
Now for the color, I love using beetroot powder. It’s a natural red coloring agent that, even when adding small amounts, has the ability to turn your cocktails, foams or sodas into beautiful shades from pink to deep red. We used it to color Pink Grapefruit Sodas, the Negroni Foam for an Eggroni cocktail, and to add a beautiful beetroot paint garnish to a clarified sour, which slowly melts and adds subtle flavor.
Speaking of garnishes, here’s one more ingredient that can make your cocktail stand out - isomalt. Isomalt is a sugar substitute used for sugar art cake decorations. What makes it great is how stable it becomes once it hardens. For the elevated Gimlet we created beautiful discs decorated with a mixture of crushed pink rosebuds, pink peppercorn, dried lemon peels, butterfly pea tea leaves and a little salt. When I made a Baklava Punch cocktail, it shaped isomalt into small cups holding tiny molasses caviar.
Just make sure isomalt doesn’t touch your skin while it’s hot. And if this feels like a lot to take in, we have you covered. My friends at Special Ingredients created a curated collection of my favorite items on their site, so you can browse through them and select what you want. But I also promised a great gift idea, remember? So here it is! Their Modern Gastronomy Kit, a bundle of 11 different ingredients, equipment, including a precision scale of course, and recipes developed by an award winning modernist chef, everything that’s needed to bring the cocktail game to a higher level is a great gift.
Or consider getting it as a treat for yourself this holiday season. I know I’d love a gift like that, so share this post with somebody you think is awesome enough to get you a kit of Special Ingredients–that’s what I’d call a true Friend of Cocktails! Until next time, cheers!