Skip the Milk: Clarifying with Fruits & Vegetables!

Hi, Friends of Cocktails! Today we're clarifying cocktails using only fruits and vegetables... really. We won't be relying on traditional methods like using milk, agar agar, or specialty enzymes. Instead, we'll just use a technique that has become popular on Instagram to make 3 different clarified drinks using a surprisingly simple process that only needs blending, waiting, and straining.

If you’ve been around for a while, you might remember us showing this exact technique in the past back in 2020 with a summer cocktail featuring grilled watermelon, but recently after stumbling across some amazing reels by likeablecocktails and katelikescocktails on Instagram, I felt inspired to revisit it and to take it further. Along with that I’ll also add some carbonation to the mix using a tool that might become my new favorite way to carbonate drinks.

But first a quick look at how this process works. Fruits and vegetables contain both soluble pectin and insoluble cellulose. When a cocktail and fruit or vegetable get blended together, these compounds get distributed throughout the liquid and help capture suspended particles during filtration. With the right amount of pectin, the result is a cocktail that becomes surprisingly clear. So let’s see this in action by starting with the cocktail that inspired it all: the Smoky Worm. It’s Cocktail Time!

Smoky Worm

● 400g Watermelon

● 120mL · 4oz Irish Whiskey

● 90mL · 3oz Mezcal

● 60mL · 2oz Lemon Juice

● 28g Sugar

● 8 drops 20% Saline Solution

Blend all the ingredients together, then leave the mixture to sit in the fridge for 12 hours. Once the solids have separated, filter slowly through a coffee or muslin filter until clear and bottle your clarified cocktail.

To serve, pour 90mL or 3oz into a shaker and throw it between the tins, increasing the distance with each pour to gently aerate the cocktail. Strain over a clear ice cube in a stemmed glass, then finish with a few drops of soy sauce over the ice for a touch of umami. This is still one of the more unusual cocktails I've created, but the clarification makes it look as elegant as it tastes. So I was really excited when I saw reels on Instagram, which inspired me to try the same technique with carrots and tomatoes.

The inspiration for the next cocktail came specifically from Kaitlyn Stewart from likeablecocktails, who credits Mary Allison Wright from Yacht Club Bar for showing her this technique. It also gave me the perfect excuse to try a new carbonation system I've been playing around with recently - but first, let's make the cocktail.

C.C. Highball

● 210mL · 7oz Jameson Triple Triple

● 120mL · 4oz Carrot Juice

● 30mL · 1oz Orange Liqueur

● 30mL · 1oz Lemon Juice

● 8 drops 20% Saline Solution

Since we’re starting with carrot juice already, we’ll just mix all the cocktail ingredients together, then pour into the carrot juice and stir to combine. You'll quickly start to see curdles form, which is a good sign, just like with classic milk clarification. Leave for approximately 12 hours, then filter through a coffee or muslin filter until clear.

Next, to carbonate the cocktail for added texture, add 150g of ice to the clarified cocktail in a Preshh carbonation bottle, then carbonate and shake to help the CO₂ dissolve into the liquid. Getting to chill, dilute, and carbonate the cocktail all at the same time is something you don’t get to do with a traditional carbonation system. Preshh does this and more, even letting you use the CO₂ tanks for home or bar use, meaning you won’t need to waste disposable CO₂ cartridges.

This feature means you can also pressurize the bottle from above after serving to make sure you don't lose carbonation for future serves. You can learn more about Preshh by clicking here, but all that’s left to test out this highball is to serve it in a highball glass with clear ice. You can garnish with carrot greens for a better connection to the ingredients of the cocktail, but I’ll go with mint. Now let's finish things off with the most unexpected ingredient of the three: tomatoes.

I've already shown that tomato juice clarifies itself with freeze clarification, but by starting with frozen tomatoes their cellular structure already breaks down, which means clarification starts much faster than if using fresh tomatoes. For this cocktail I wanted to test a crossover between a Martini and a Gimlet, and the tomatoes make it possible to do both at once.

Tomato Gimletini

● 180mL · 6oz London Dry Gin

● 60mL · 2oz Dry Vermouth

● 160g Frozen Tomato

● 41g Sugar

● 4g Lime Peel

● 3.2g Citric Acid

● 1g Malic Acid

● 8 drops 20% Saline Solution

Blend everything together, blending a little longer than usual to account for the frozen tomatoes. Just like with the previous cocktails, leave this to sit for approximately 12 hours and you'll notice the solids beginning to separate quite quickly. Filter through a coffee or muslin filter until clear, and even though this cocktail is clear as is, we’ll make the drink lighter by adding some of it to a shaker with ice, shaking hard and then double straining into a chilled coupe glass. 

For garnish I’l go with tomato greens cut into a star shape, and all that’s left is to enjoy. The lime peel, citric and malic acids work together with the tomatoes to create a bright, cordial-like character you'd expect from a Gimlet, while the gin and vermouth bring the Martini backbone. Even though this is a clarified cocktail, shaking it adds extra aeration that really rounds out the flavors and makes the drink even more expressive.

And that’s it! Three completely different ingredients, one clarification technique, and not a drop of milk in sight. What I love most about this method is how simple it is. Just blend the ingredients, give them some time, and let filtration do the rest. Then just pour it, throw it, or even carbonate it, and enjoy. If you discover another fruit or vegetable that works well with this technique, let me know in the comments. Cheers, Friends of Cocktails, and see you next time!