Foam Cocktails

[thebartrainer]

I recently read (and participated) in the fantastic Q&As with both Ferran Adria and Harold McGee and it got me to thinking about the possibility of creating cocktails made from foam.

Experimentation has, so far, taken in such avenues as egg white, agar agar, gelatin and pectin as stablising agents but with no truly successful results.

I found a thread on eG that suggested Lecithin and, after a quick trip to the health food shop, that is tonights science project.

The question is.... does anyone have any experience of either drinking (if that's the word) or creating alcoholic cocktails made from foam or "air"

Cheers

Ian

[jackal10]

Not good.

Imagine drinking only cappucino foam

Also air is a dilutant. Hard too get enough flavour or alcohol..

[sco-v]

Maybe it's just me but the thought of raw eggs or ground up horse hooves in my drink is somewhat less than appealing.

[DrinkBoy]

Eben Klem in New York has done some "foam" based cocktails. As I recall he was using gelatin. Audrey Saunders (also New York) has also done some experiments with getting cocktails to foam properly without getting all weird. I can't recall her specific results at the moment.

It's not that the entire cocktail is foamed, but that you end up with a foamy component on top, or within a semi normal cocktail.

sco-v: I take it that you don't drink Campari either?

-Robert

[sco-v]

sco-v: I take it that you don't drink Campari either?

please don't tell me that Campari has eggs or gelatin - i like it yes. i am more a fan of Fernet Branca and Amer these days but still - anything bitter with alcohol i am usually a fan of.

[Chef Shogun]

Jose Andres at Oyamel Restaurant has a margarita with 'salt air' on the menu. It's a pretty neat effect, actually, but the bar staff haven't individually gotten the forumla for the foam down, so it has a pretty wide variation in consistancy and saltiness. Pictured here when we tried it on our outing there. I personally kind of liked it. It's a definate gimmick, but was a nice enough effect. Better than a heavy salt rim, anyway. The Ferran Adria-esqueness of it all stems from the fact that Andres worked with Adria for a time, IMMSMC.

[thebartrainer]

Thanks for this.

The point is not really to produce a quaffable drink to quench the thirst but more to try some different stuff with both texture and presentation.

In an ideal world I see the result as more of a palate cleanser during a meal rather than something I would drink sat at a bar.

Jose Andres... is that the guy from the Minibar at Cafe Atlantico? If so then I had thought of using another idea of his as a garnish. I'm trying to blow sugar bubbles and fill them with liquid so that the garnish is a kind of a cocktail filled losenge.

The end result will hopefully be a foam cocktail with a liquid centred sugar ball as a garnish.

sco-v: try a campari sour with a dash of egg white!!

Cheers

Ian

[BTR]

sco-v: I take it that you don't drink Campari either?

please don't tell me that Campari has eggs or gelatin - i like it yes. i am more a fan of Fernet Branca and Amer these days but still - anything bitter with alcohol i am usually a fan of.

I think Robert was referring to the fact that Campari is colored with cochineal, which is made from ground-up beetle shells. It used to be quite common as a colorant; I don't know if it still is.

[slkinsey]

Interesting, I was just talking with some of the gang about this not too long ago. Raw egg whites have, of course, been used in cocktails for a long, long time. Some classics (the Pisco Sour comes immediately to mind) have raw egg white as an essential ingredient. CocktailDB has about a zillion recipes with raw whole egg or raw egg white or raw egg yolk as an ingredient.

Anyway, I was given to understand that cocktails-with-flavored-foam (as opposed to a foamy cocktail such as the aforementioned Pisco Sour) is by no means a new thing. For example, we have the Apple Core served at First, which is made with apple vodka, Berentzen Apfelkorn apple schnapps, lemon juice, a splash of cider and a top of apple foam. In terms of a relatively stable foam of alcohol... that might be difficult. Here is the bit on cocktail foam from Harold McGee's Q&A. From what I hear, the big downside to using gelatin is that it tends to look like vomit when the foam breaks down.

[thebartrainer]

Lecithin experiment went well initially. Cold water plus lecithin granules whizzed with an imersion blender (hand held stick thing) does produce foam like the stuff you would have in the bath. It is very stable and is still there as I am typing!

However when tried with whisky the foam vanished very quickly.

Dissappointed, I persevered and made a simple whisky/lemon juice/gomme mix and added lecithin. The foam forms but gradually dissappears. If you taste it the impact of the flavour is bigger than when drinking the same mix.

Maybe this is why the luminaries that have been name checked so far have gone for partial foams rather than the whole thing.

Cheers

Ian

[sco-v]

Interesting - Lately I have been collecting 40's, 50's, & 60's cocktail recipe books on ebay and I have noticed the abundance of egg white drinks.

When I was a bartender the only 'like' drink I ever served was the Ramos Fizz and that was only one time.

I always figured the fizz style drink was one thing that would likely not make a comeback... Interesting.

BTR & Ian thanks for the info

[Mrs. P]

The bar at Jackie's restaurant in Silver Spring, MD was experimenting with foams for topping specialy drinks. They offer a raspberry martini-ish drink with a raspberry foam, as well as a coffee martini. They use a whipped cream canister with cartridges to create the foam, though I am not sure what they put in the foam. The foam subsides so quickly (and looks fairly unappealing) that they were experimenting with new stabilizers. I'll have to stop by and see if they've had more success.

[LindyCat]

I love frothy drinks made with raw egg, as do most of the people to whom I've given them. However, they tend to have a rich character, even when just made from the white, something like a milkshake, not really a very light foam like what is being sought here. Surprisingly (and pleasantly), they don't taste of egg at all in the way you might expect. I think many of these drinks are called "flips," though, and a fizz is made with club soda? We are big fans of a Cupid Kiss, a sherry flip made with a Pedro Ximinez and a dash of cayenne. Shake until foamy, serve in a wine glass.

I've noticed my liquor store sells "bar foamer." What is this for?

Edited for spelling.

Edited February 11, 2005 by LindyCat (log)

[ariggsby]

A couple of years ago I was in a Madrid restaurant to which Adria has some formal connection (as a consultant or some such thing), and they opened the meal with a foamed mojito. As far as I could tell, it was a fairly straight version of the cocktail, shot out of a compressed gas canister into a tall, narrow shotglass. The idea was to drink it immediately (there's not much real volume in a shot like this). I've since tried this a home, and it seems to work well.

Andrew

[slkinsey]

I think many of these drinks are called "flips," though, and a fizz is made with club soda?

The definition of a "flip" has changed somewhat with the times.

Back in the 17th and 19th centuries, it was a drink made by mixing sweetened ale with spices and maybe a dash of rum, and then plunging a red hot loggerhead into the cup warm the drink, thicken it and make it foamy. It's unclear to me, but I get the impression that eggs eventually began to find their way into this kind of flip at some point.

As the ubiquity of ice changed the American cocktail forever into something approximating its current form, the original flip either metamorphosed into or was replaced by a cold drink made by shaking a base spirit, sugar or some other sweetening ingredient and egg with ice.

As far as I can tell, the only thing these two drinks have in common is the foam and the sweetness.

[oesophagus]

Some bartenders at Moog Wine+Food (now sadly departed) in Sydney were doing foamed drinks in 2004. They did a rather good one called the Bittersweet - Campari shaken with pink grapefruit juice served up, topped with a Grand Marnier foam. Not sure what else was in it, but it came out of a pressurised whipped cream gun a la Adria. They had a few other foamy things plus some drinks which played with contrasting temperatures and what they called "dosages" (as in methode Champenoise).

It worked in the context, too, as the wine list was wilfully esoteric for Sydney (Argentinian malbecs, Austrian pinots, Oregon pinot gris etc) and the food also featured dishes involving foam and Pacojet action. There was a beautifully creamy ganache made with nothing more than couverture and water.

In non foam-related news they did a really neat twist on the regular dirty martini using caperberries and their brine.