Embrace The Foam-o: 5 Tips To Ace Frothy Home Brews And Cocktails
One of the singular pleasures in life is getting a foam moustache after sipping on a particularly frothy drink. This foam is soft and airy and quite playful as it tickles your lips when you take a sip of a drink with a frothy garnish. Making cocktails with a froth on top is as pleasurable an activity as drinking this foamy concoction. You can make frothy cocktails easily at home by shaking a drink with the addition of lots of ice or even egg whites. Flip cocktails are the perfect numbers for frothy moments because the egg whites give the drink an appealing foamy quality.
Yet, getting your froth right so that it retains its spot atop the drink without disappearing too quickly requires some serious skill. You need a tad bit of practice to make sure that the froth does not dissipate even before you have transferred the drink from the shaker into a serving glass. Simultaneously, you also need to be careful with the proportion of egg white and ice that go into frothing the drink so its flavour components remain intact.
Here are a few handy tips for home brewers and mixologists preparing frothy drinks, to get this layer of garnish just right:
Good Old Whisk
The handiest trick in your culinary cookbook to nail frothy drinks is to make use of a whisk. And not your electric whisk or your whisking wand, but your garden variety hand whisk with which you can whisk a foam to top up your cocktail after it has been prepared. This is a particularly neat trick when you want to serve festive drinks with lots of milky and creamy components like eggnog or cocktails containing creamy liqueurs. A touch of nutmeg added to the milk or cream you are whisking will elevate the flavour of your frothy garnish.
Dry Shake-Wet Shake Method
This is a hack used by many mixologists to heighten the foamy content in a drink. The technique essentially means that you first shake all the ingredients that go into making a cocktail like your booze, mixers and bitters. After that, you add ice to the drink and shake it again to emulsify the mixture and increase the amount of foamy textures in the cocktail. The dry shake-wet shake method is particularly useful when you mix sour or flip cocktails containing egg whites.
Use Fresh Egg Whites
Julia Child was dead serious when she warned you against using stale eggs. Not only do stale egg whites carry an unappealing smell, they are also a flat mess so when you try to foam them you might not get the desired effect. So, when you are making flip cocktails using egg white foam, try sourcing the freshest eggs possible. Adding this component to a cocktail gives it a very smooth and luxurious finish so use good quality egg whites to amp up the deliciousness of your flip drinks.
Be Generous With Ice
This is an especially useful trick when you are crafting frothy cocktails. Most times, the foam can be attributed to cream or milk that has been shaken well enough to introduce air bubbles into its composition. But adding ice to the mixture further enhances the emulsification process because of its low temperature and allows the drink to acquire a much thicker and denser foam. This technique works splendidly when you want to craft dessert cocktails with a thick layer of froth.
Adjust The Temperature
When you are preparing flip cocktails, make sure you keep one eye on the temperature of the drink otherwise there is a chance that you would cold cook the egg white. To prevent this, avoid preparing flip drinks in bulk, so you shake only one glass at one moment that is served immediately to your guests. The same goes for your home brewed beer too – when you serve it, make sure it is chilled and poured gently so the froth settles at the top of the glass.
