One Good Ritual

"What if the drink lasted longer in memory than in taste?"

Original Direction

I have been working on this cocktail for a few weeks now. The Pink Pony is a descendent of the Sour family of drinks.

This was my first designed drink and all I wanted was to use blueberry cheong to support a Gin backbone. It worked but for me it was better as a highball for the lengthening the lemon soda water gave it. However, after refining my Sazerac I immediately revisited this spec and have finally achieved what the drink wanted to be.

After trying the drink again and listening to the story it was trying to tell, I realized the drink wanted to look fun, playful, sweet but at the same time it needed to be fleeting and ethereal. I set out to refine the drink to disappear almost immediately after drinking and I can say with some certainty that I achieved that personality

Original Spec

Original Spec:
2oz Gin
0.75oz Blueberry cheong
0.25oz Lemon Juice
1 Dash Orange bitters
1 Dash Lavender bitters

In this original spec, it actually transitions into a Highball quite nicely, it makes for a great porch pounder on a nice summer day. The problem is that in a cocktail, the lemon juice became too abrasive. The drink overstayed its emotional welcome.

Why it failed

The original spec Pink Pony didn’t really have a specific direction other than being built around blueberry cheong and gin. I knew it needed acid for balance and turning it into a highball was a way to cover up for the drink being abrasive from the lemon juice

Current Spec

2oz Gin
0.5oz Blueberry cheong
3 Drops Citric acid solution
1 Dash Orange bitters
1 Dash Lavender bitters
5 Dashes Eggless Foam Solution
2 Sprays atomized St. Germain

This drink, house specs, and experiments on the bench can be found in this living GoogleDoc.

The Acid Problem

The first problem to tackle was the acid. I’ve recently been testing citric acid solution in another experimental drink that needed an acid boost so this was my first route. I knew the drink didn’t want lemon flavoring or the accompanying abrasiveness but I knew it needed lift. My concern was that whether a few drops of the citric acid solution would provide that lift, it did. I started with five drops because I wasn’t aware how powerful the solution is on its own. On the next iteration I used 3 drops and that was just right. The drink was lighter and the sweetness of the cheong actually stood out more because it was no longer competing with the lemon juice.

Weightless Sweetness

The second change I made, to make up for the lack of sweetness was to fabricate sweetness while keeping the drink light and floral. This led me, naturally, to the elderflower liquor St. Germain, but I didn’t want it in the drink because St. Germain can be quite a bully and I liked the taste where it was, it just needed a bit of sweetening. I filled up an atomizer, gave the chilled glass two sprays (similar to an Absinthe rinse for a Sazerac) and this got the atmosphere above the drink the bright, floral sweetness that helped soften the drink’s structure.

Foam

The third foundational change was egg-white foaming. I used carton egg-white and after a few experiments, and possibly due to my own lack of shaking technique, the drink ended up too heavy. I was on the verge of declaring the drink not-ready or not-compatible with foaming. In the “Mixer” section of my grocery store (Wegman’s) I found a bottle of Fee Foam eggless foaming solution, decided to give a try. 5 Dashes and some decent shaking later and the drink at the top of this entry was poured.

Glass

The final point of development was: Coupe vs Nick & Nora. My hesitance for starting with the Nick & Nora was that I did not want to lose the headroom and the floral layer above the drink. The coupe worked well in this regard, but it also made the foam layer feel separate rather than integrated. As you can see, the Nick & Nora gives the drink the exact look it was going for. Nice, delicate foam layer on top of the translucent pink drink. Bonus, the lack of headroom isn’t an issue; moving in for a sip still puts all the flowers right up to your nose.