Bohemian Cocktail

In keeping with the Tales of the Cocktail inspired Molecular Mixology theme, I’m going to give you a quick cocktail that employs the technique of fat-washing.

Used popularly by esteemed colleagues in New York (see Tailor and PDT), fat washing is an easy way to add flavors to alcohol that wouldn’t have led to favorable results before this technique. Essentially, fat washing entails infusing high fat foods in alcohol and then freezing the alcohol in order to separate the fatty solids from the liquids. In this cocktail, I’ve used bacon-infused bourbon, but when it comes to this technique, the sky’s the limit (I’ve used popcorn-infused Cognac to good effect as well).

This cocktail was also submitted to that good Slovak magazine, hence the use of Becher’s Cordial, the sponsor of that issue.

1 ½ oz bacon-infused bourbon
½ oz Cordial
4 dashes cherry bitters
stir all ingredients with ice
strain into a chilled cocktail glass

Bacon-Infused Bourbon

slow-cook two pieces of bacon
place bacon (along with fat) in a jar with 10 oz Bourbon for at least six hours, shaking occasionally
remove bacon
place jar into a freezer overnight
strain out solid fat pieces
filter bourbon through a coffee filter

The honeyed texture of Cordial practically screamed at me to add this to my bacon-infused bourbon, and indeed it did pair nicely. Cherry bitters were a nice foil to the sweetness of the cordial, but Angostura would work just as well.

Try experimenting with different types of bacon, the one that I used for this cocktail was cherry-wood smoked, (hence the addition of cherry bitters) but different types of bacon are sure to work just as nicely.

Stay tuned, as there will be one more molecular mixology inspired “drink” before I go off to Tales.

Picture by:
Jamie Boudreau
Cocktail Whisperer

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~ by Jamie Boudreau on July 10, 2008.