Mezcal is one of the hottest spirits in cocktails right now, and it’s great for making simple but delicious drinks like a mezcal margarita, Old Fashioned, or Paloma. But as today is National Mezcal Day, we’re exploring some of the more ambitious uses for this complex and beloved spirit.
We’ve got a recipe from the Hilton Cancun Mar Caribe, a hotel in Cancun which has its own cocktail mixologists working on ways to make use of mezcal. They have come up with a highly unusual mezcal recipe which makes use of milk for clarification. This technique is mostly seen in clarified milk punch, but can be used with other ingredients too to both give your drinks a beautiful clear appearance and to add a rich and silky mouthfeel.
Clarification sounds technical but it’s fairly easy to execute — just mix up your ingredients first, then add them to plenty of whole milk by pouring in slowly. The mixture will curdle, but that’s exactly what you want to happen! Leave to sit for a few hours, then you can filter or strain out the curdled material, leaving you with an elegant clear drink with a great texture.
This recipe includes wine, jam, juices, and even a hit of coffee as well as the essential mezcal, giving you a deep and complex flavor that is enhanced with a few drops of hot sauce and some bitters. There’s also a salt and lime foam as garnish, which you can make by adding a little lecithin to a salt, lime juice, and water mixture and blitzing it in a blender to create a light and frothy texture.
Mezcalita at Hilton Cancun Mar Caribe
Ingredients:
- Espadín Mezcal
- Chardonnay Wine
- Apricot jam
- Orange juice
- Lime juice
- Tabasco sauce drops
- Angostura bitters
- Coffee
- Whole milk (for clarification)
Method:
Mix all the liquid ingredients together. Add 100 ml of whole milk and let the mixture sit for 3 hours. Strain through a fine cloth strainer to clarify. Once clarified, use a mixing glass to chill the drink. Serve in a rocks glass with a spoonful of apricot jam, and top with salt and lime foam.
