Milk Punches are a dime a dozen. And rightly so, done well they're absolutely delicious. But they're not a new thing. Having been around since roughly the 1700's the drink has seen many a revival in the last few years. Hitting critical mass around the early 2020's, when you couldn't walk into a modern drinking den without seeing one feature on a menu.
So how do we as bartenders elevate a serve, that has already seen a thousand variations and combinations? Delicious standouts like Disrepute's Chiaroscuro spring to mind. Or *that* Grasshopper I was teased with, that one night, in Nocturnal Animals, thanks Reuben Clark. It still lives rent free in my head.
Personally, for ourselves at Mesen, we looked closer at what dairy we were adding into the mix and whether it subtracted or added additional levels to the drink in question.
So, when developing the Raspberry Daiquiri, we envisioned an unctuous, rich velvety mouthfeel, so somewhat easily achievable with classic milk punch method you'd point out, but something that didn't feel overly sweet and claggy on the palette and was obviously super smashable.
Similarly to how we produce the food in the kitchen, we want the drinks list to perform alongside it, i.e. under promise, overdeliver. Just as with the food coming over the pass, stripped back presentation, but all delivering on the flavour, the drinks should follow suit.
To achieve this, we decided on a drinks list of twisted classics, original right? It's a fun double-edged sword to tread, because whilst it's fun to put your DNA on a well-travelled classic, people will have a predisposition on what that beverage is going to taste like even before they even order it. Instead of trying to combat that directly, we tried to take an approach where we subvert expectations and lean into the "this reads like a classic daiquiri”. Whilst, just like the kitchen, overdelivering on technique and flavour driven serves. This is how we landed on the White chocolate & Raspberry Daiquiri.
Going down the route of a "white chocolate and raspberry daiquiri", automatically takes down quite a sweet and sickly path. So, to heighten and enlighten the serve, we wanted to add the extra layer of white miso. It would help massively in stripping back the sweetness and season the drink perfectly.
The only issue being we were struggling to get the white miso into the drink in any conceivable way. But this is where working in and around a kitchen came in handy…
To borrow from Charli's previous article on 'The rise of food menus in bars'
"Cocktail bars are no longer just about exquisite drinks and service. A new trend is blending the artistry of mixology with culinary delights, transforming these hotspots into destinations for both exceptional cocktails and stunning plates."
After putting our collective minds together, we decided to turn the dairy in question, into a white chocolate miso ganache. Being able to bind the dairy, layer in the white chocolate flavour, in white chocolate buttons, and balance the white miso, without the chocolate or the dairy curdling *before* being added to the punch was the tight rope we had to tread.
Interestingly the use of vegan milks and yoghurts once again came in handy, with the added protein that these milks, typically soy milks, have, they split in punch production, very, very easily.
Below is the detailed spec for how we do it at the restaurant:
BATCH per drink:
25ml East London White Rum
15ml Cocchi Rosa vermouth
5ml G.Miclo Raspberry Eau de Vie
5ml Giffard White Chocolate liqueur
20ml Cordial* (1:1 white sugar syrup, 4% by weight acid (2% malic, 2% citric))
30ml Cold steeped, weak, raspberry leaf tea (for dilution instead of water)
DAIRY: (makes enough dairy for 40 drinks - 4ltrs)
Heat in bain-marie
250g white chocolate buttons
Add 250g alpro yoghurt, when buttons melted
Add 100g soy milk
Mix until heated through
Add 250g miso broth (175g hot water, 75g white miso paste)
Add to batched daiq when heated through.
Refrigerate, strain, smash.
"Rasp Daiqs higher than the NASDAQ's" - Action Bronson, probably.
