2012 Cocktail Trend Predictions

What will be hot this year?

As the New Year begins, lists start to pop up all over the web, filling us in on the hot trends of the year past and those to emerge in the year to come.

Many of these tend to focus on fashion and food, with the two becoming ever more interchangeable as foodie dining becomes more and more "in fashion" itself. With that growth in novelty eating, the popularity of unique cocktails and liquors is growing as well.

As we enter 2012, this interest in more peculiar and novel liquors will continue to grow, bringing along with it plenty of new cocktail trends. Of the possibilities, we've put together a list of those which we feel are sure to catch on in 2012.

Herbal infusions

While we’re on the subject of the health implications of drinking (and just to return to the first point, I’m sure we’re all in agreement that responsible, moderate drinking can be part of a healthy lifestyle), I think we’ll see more herbally infused beverages and cocktails in 2011. Not only are these complex flavors appealing and still in their novelty stage but they can be used to create drinks that are less sweet than fruit-based cocktails and may pack in potent curative powers.

Better bitters

The Angostura panic of 2009-10 launched a slew of new bitters. Couple this with the resurgence of herbal infusions and you have the perfect storm for better bitters. The selection of new and inventive bitters, most creatively playing sweet against savory, is not only arming mixologists the world over, but it’s allowing home bartenders to make cocktails that once were the provenance of the pros. As shown in our Booze and Weight Loss article, bitters are a great way to add a bit of flavor to a cocktail without overloading on calories. For both this and their more interesting use in unique drink recipes, bitters-based cocktails will gain popularity through 2012.

Aged Tequilas

2011 was the year of aged whiskeys and rums, and we see aged tequila following suit. With the popularity of barrel aging increasing across the board, these aged, more flavorful tequilas are sure to make their mark on the market during 2012.

Adult cocktails

While we’re at it, I think we’ll see more pre-mixed cocktails that riff on nostalgia-based drinks. I’m thinking Yoo-hoo with alcohol, punches made for adults (look for goji and acai super fruit flavors, so we can feel good about drinking them), and “healthy” cocktails sweetened with alternative sweeteners such as agave syrup, cane sugar and stevia.

Herb and spiced Martini

A simple, classic martini for any occasion. If you order a martini, without any other instructions, this is what you should get. You can turn this into a dirty martini by adding a splash of olive brine.

If you are looking for a vodka martini, we have that too, but shhhh, don't tell the old school martini drinkers. They refuse to call a drink made with anything but gin a martini!

It has been invented around 2007, when some mixologist was trying to twist the classic to sophisticated drink. Combination local product and botanical would be the best choice to mix by hand of Mixology.

Molecular Mixology

Art of Drinks

Molecular mixology is the long-established bartending practice of layering ingredients in cocktails at the earliest time. This experimentation with the density and viscosity of fluids uses the principles of scientific investigation that are fundamental in creation of greater intensities and varieties of flavour combinations and different ways of presenting drinks, for example using gels, powders, foams, atomised sprays where the scientific equipment and techniques of molecular gastronomy were used. Today it's popular and consider as 'The Art of Drink' belong to the cutting edge bar lover's worldwide, 

Lately cocktails have been in a renaissance. There has also been an increased interest in making them a culinary equal. Molecular mixology is one of those trends that is being mirrored from the molecular gastronomy is the food equivalent. The basic idea, about both of these techniques, is to apply scientific analysis and techniques to cooking and mixing and mostly working with foams and gels to create unique drink textures and flavours. For example the Fat Duck, a Michelin three star restaurant, combines oysters and passion-fruit jelly as one dish, where as another dish combines spice bread ice cream and crab syrup. Odd combination's, but supposedly they taste very good together.

Molecular mixology, so far, is just being developed and the principals are a little more basic. The first example of molecular mixology would go back many, many years and would be the layering of drinks (density and viscosity), so the pousse cafe was probably the first example of the principal. Currently, it looks like molecular mixology is mostly working with physical properties of drink. This is done by making foams, gels and mists, looking at vapour concentrations and using an appropriate glass, determining cooling properties with ice and also applying heat to caramelize sugars. Some of these creations border between food and drink, much like a Bose-Einstein condensate, which is a unique state of matter. 

Here's an example; if you extract the albumen protein from an egg white, and then dehydrate that protein to store it for an extended period, does that make it synthetic or unnatural? Does it only become unnatural when it is rehydrated and added to a Ramos Gin Fizz? From the stand point of molecular mixology, this is a perfect solution to getting the chemical compound needed to create a good stable foam. From a culinary standpoint, you would be missing all of those "extra" compounds that add flavour and texture. When I read about molecular mixology, I see a chemistry or physicists approach, which, in the lab, means working with pure components or specific physical conditions to create a new and unique compound or solution. It's not unnatural, just very precise in what we work with.

There is some dubious hoodo-voodo going on with some of the molecular mixology stuff, or at least from my perspective as a chemist. Foods and drinks contain thousands and thousands of unique compounds, and even if they contain similar compounds, there might be compounds that react to form other less desirable combination's when combined. For a lot of this, it will go back to trial and error with flavours. Also, everyone has different tastes so a lot of this will be subjective. But out of a thousand failed experiments, there will always be one or two significant discoveries. This is exactly what science is, trial and error.

The true area where molecular gastronomy and mixology will shine is in applied techniques and methods. Using science to perfect cooking is a sound idea. For the most part, I like the principal of science and food, I think it makes a lot of sense. In the future I will see what I can do to combine my chemistry and bartending experience.

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Red Berry Caviar

Been thinking how to have a delicious caviar without killing Beluga or Salmon fish, today you may enjoy your sustainable caviar with any fruit flavour, herbs even spicies.

These how we do it

ingredients

Textura Algin 1 g 

Red Berries juice 200 ml

mix all ingredients using baloon whisk, you may also change the juice with any flavoured liqueur, herbs even spicies

Textura Calcic 3,25 g 

Water    200 ml

mix all ingredients using baloon whisk

Method

Step 1 

place the first two mixed ingredient into bottle squeeze

Step 2

place the second two mixed ingredient into a bowl as #1

Step 3

start to squeeze the mixed juice carefully to create a single caviar in every drop  into a bowl #1 and let it soak for about one minutes (note; more longer the liquid soaked in the bowl, more solid you'll get the result)

Step 4

in another container/bowl, pour fresh water to rinse the caviars for about two minutes and strain

Now the caviar is ready to enjoy

Cheers,

By D'agisna Ramdhani

barlordz

Old Fashioned

ZACAPA OLD-FASHIONED –

Ron Zacapa rum, orange and angostura bitters, sugar

Martini's

Watermelon Martini
Served  with a thin gel membrane watermelon spheres  

In Praise of Un-Scotch

Suntory founder Shinjiro Torii was already something of a spirits globalist by 1923 he’d been importing Western wines and liquors for nearly a quarter of a century, and had created a sweet-grape cocktail inspired by Lisbon Port in 1907. But that was the year, with the construction of Suntory’s Yamazaki Distillery in Osaka, that Torii authored what might be the single most significant turning point in the modern biography of whisky.

Yamazaki was something new entirely: its copper pot stills were the first of their kind outside of Scotland; its master distiller, Masatak Taketsuru, was born in Hiroshima but studied organic chemistry in Glasgow and learned to make whisky in the then-thriving Cambeltown distilleries. But Torii’s ambition – and Taketsuru’s, too – was deeply rooted in that hyper-productive nationalist vanity so ordinary to incubating Empires. If Scotland can create great Scotch, well, so can Japan. Thus was more-or-less born the notion of Scotch-style whisky.