Bacon! Everyone loves bacon! Putting that good ole bacon flavor into cocktails has been done in the past, and the most famous example of that is the Bacon and Bourbon Old Fashioned. Today we’ll cover the basics of Fat Washing and experiment with seasoning the fat with other flavors to see if it carries through into the final cocktail.

PHat washing with a PH. That’s still a popular thing to say ….right?

Procedure:

1. Chop up the prosciutto and place it in a saute pan in order to render and season the fat with the rosemary towards the end to avoid burning .
2. I added around 1 teaspoon for every 4 oz of alcohol I was infusing. Then allow the infusion rest for a few hours.
3. Place the spirit and fat infusion in the freezer for 6 hours to solidify the fat at the top.
4. When you are ready to separate the fat and the alcohol, simply cut away the edges of the “fat cap” remove it with a fork or spoon and strain everything through a cocktail strainer. Take care not to touch the fat with your fingers as even the slightest amount of body heat can begin to melt the fat.

Conclusion:

The infusion did not carry the flavor of the rosemary that I was hoping, but there are so many other techniques to choose from to deliver the rosemary flavor to the cocktail. At least we covered the basics of fat washing and this is only part 1 of this experiment.

Further experimentation:

Now that I have a fat washed vodka, I’m going to try and infuse the flavor into salt. In the past I’ve tried to infuse salts with oils, but you are left with a clumpy, unappealing mess. Since the flavor is now in the alcohol, and there is little to no oil in the spirit, it should be easy to transfer the flavor to the salt and not have the clumping problem. That’s the idea anyways, we’ll see if it works!

Let us know other ways on how to fat wash spirits!

Fat Washing for Cocktails is a post from: A Bar Above Mixology