admin

In this episode, we’ll feature a milk punch recipe created by everyone’s favorite syphilitic founding father, Ben Franklin. To make it, you’ll need:

 One 25 oz bottle of Cognac

½ whole nutmeg (grated) (or ½ tsp ground nutmeg)

The peels of 8 lemons

16 oz water

8 oz lemon juice

12 oz whole milk (this is important – any other type of milk won’t work as well)

¾ cup of sugar

This is about a 2-day process, so if you’re smart, you’ll start on a Wednesday evening in preparation for having your drink finished and chilled for Friday night.
Day 1: Peel your 8 lemons and then let the peels infuse into the Cognac in a large mason jar. This is the easy part.
Day 2: Strain out those lemon peels and discard them. Then get out two saucepans: a large one and a small one. In the large saucepan, combine your cognac, water, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon juice, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Then, put your milk in the small saucepan and heat it gently until it’s just about to boil. When it boils, add the milk to the rest of the mixture, give it a gentle stir, and then place it in the fridge (covered) for several hours or overnight.
Once you’ve let your mixture sit for a little while, you’ll notice that the acid in the lemon juice has denatured the proteins in the milk, separating the solid curds from the sugary, liquid whey. This is the “sciencey” part of milk punch because you’re basically using these proteins to strip away any particulate matter that makes the drink cloudy.
Now it’s time to strain, and the problem with straining is that most people either have very rough strainers (like sieves or Chinoises) or very fine strainers like coffee filters. The problem with this is as follows: If you strain your milk punch from a sieve into a coffee filter, you’ll only catch the largest particles, and anything that escapes will immediately clog your coffee filter.
So, what we’d recommend doing is purchasing something called a nut milk bag or a jelly bag. These are usually made of nylon, which means they’re super re-usable, and they serve as an excellent intermediate step between your rough pass filter and your finishing coffee filter. And for anyone who’s rolling their eyes right now thinking that the nut milk bag is overkill – that’s fine. You’ll have plenty of time to reconsider your stance while you’re staring at a coffee filter filled with goop.
At the end of the milk clarification process, you should have a golden-colored punch that is completely clear, and the real mind-boggling thing about this beverage is that it doesn’t look like there’s milk in it – and yet you still get this creamy, rich mouthfeel from the whey. For more in-depth info on the history of milk punch and even more tips for making it at home, check out Episode 76, which I’ll link to in the show notes page.
One last piece of housekeeping for this recipe: clarified milk punch still contains lactose, so it’s unfortunately still off the menu for folks with sensitivity to that compound – but for the rest of us, it’s a fun way to bend the relationship between what you see in your glass and how you think it will taste.
What is Molecular Mixology?
Molecular mixology is a trend that builds upon the molecular gastronomy craze popularized by Spanish chef Ferran Adrià (elBulli) and British chef Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck) in the early 2000s. In general, molecular gastronomy is characterized by manipulation of physical or chemical forces (temperature, texture, pressure, chemical composition, etc.) to deconstruct or otherwise transform the ingredients in a dish. Likewise, in molecular mixology, many of these techniques are applied to cocktails. Some popular methods and ingredients in the molecular mixology space include: LEGGI TUTTO

I’ve already got 40 recipes logged in that spreadsheet, which will remain under lock and keyboard until I’m ready to unveil it, but I also wanted to have a community aspect to this project. So if you have a favorite Bloody Mary recipe – either from a book, a magazine, the internet, or a maybe even a secret family recipe – please do give us a shout by emailing [email protected] or sending us a message on Instagram @ModernBarCart. Ideally, I’d like to pump up the number of recipes on the spreadsheet to at least 100 so we can hit that triple digit mark, so any help I can get along the way from our listeners’ informed palates would be A-mazing.
Now, just because I’m out there on my Pequod hunting down my zesty, red nemesis doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally have time to work on other stuff as well. So here’s a quick rundown of other things we have in the works.
Episodes in the Works
On the “Bar Cart Essentials” side of things, I’m really looking forward to a couple important episodes that are long overdue.

One of them is the topic of smoked cocktails. This is admittedly a bit of a blind spot for me, but I did recently acquire a smoker, and I’ve been busy testing a few techniques that I’m excited to share with you. We’ll of course talk about what smoke is (in case you were under the impression that it was wood ghosts), how to use it to infuse drinks, and which flavor pairings are most smoke friendly.

Another bar cart foundations episode we’re lining up for later this year is a deep dive on hydrosols, the most popular of which are rose water and orange blossom water. These are ingredients in some pretty epic cocktails, including the Ramos Gin Fizz and the Mai Tai, but few people really understand how they’re made and how one might go about preparing their own hydrosol, so we’ll also be diving deep on that topic.

On the interview side, we’ve got lots of exciting things in the works. We’ll hopefully be able to snag someone from Tales of the Cocktail and/or Bar Convent Brooklyn to talk about how these really huge cocktail conferences are going digital while we continue to battle this pandemic. And I’m super excited about that because it presents awesome opportunities for home consumers who might not have the budget to jump on a plane and fork out for a hotel room in New Orleans or New York City. So stay tuned for that.
We’re also lining up some interviews with folks who are doing important work in the spirits world as it pertains to equitable treatment of workers who harvest grapes and agave, as well as some folks who are doing interesting things with water (you know, that thing that usually comprises more than 50% of the volume of a distilled spirit…) and alternative distillate bases, which are whey cool (pun intended).
Reach out with Your Suggestions!
If YOU have any other subjects you’d like us to cover or folks you think would make for great interviews, please do drop us a line and let us know. We always love hearing from you, and it’s your interest and enthusiasm that make this show possible in the first place.
That about does it for this little mini preview episode. Going into this Fourth of July weekend, where I know a lot of us are gonna do our best to get out and enjoy the warm weather in a safe way, please know that we’re still hard at work here at Modern Bar Cart trying to give you everything you need to make the most out of cocktails this summer. If you haven’t already, please check out our new glassware and bar tools over at ModernBarCart.com, and get ready for even more new product launches and partnerships coming this fall. LEGGI TUTTO