Cereal cocktails have been with us awhile. The parade of milkshake-like drinks is no less than as outdated as Instagram, and the aptitude has solely gotten extra animated for the reason that arrival of TikTok. The style favors a playfully maximalist aesthetic. Image complete cereal bits resting atop tuffets of snow-white foam, glassware rimmed in cereal mud, Cheerios impaled on cocktail picks.
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Past the theatrics, there’s good purpose skilled and novice bartenders alike have saved returning to the breakfast staple as an ingredient, prompting cereal cocktails to outlast different faddish obsessions of the drinks world. First, think about dry cereal as a culinary instrument. We’re speaking crannied puffs of rice, sugar-dusted flakes of corn, tori of toasted oats—the stuff is engineered to mingle effortlessly with liquid (often milk), launch its immediately identifiable taste and but by some means keep structurally intact. Plus, it’s extensively accessible, has a protracted shelf life and isn’t too costly. If that isn’t an infuser’s dream product, then what’s?
Cereal flavors additionally maintain significance in our minds, able to dislodging reminiscences of deep-seated pleasures, like spending complete Saturday mornings glued to cartoons with a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. That’s some alluring magic for a bartender.
Naturally, lots of the cocktail preparations lean closely into dairy, anchored by cereal milks and cereal-infused milk punches. However newer avenues of experimentation are leaving the cow behind and getting again to the classics, proving simply how versatile an ingredient cereal may be.
On the French-Viennese restaurant Koloman in New York, bartender Meg Lazar just lately launched a cereal cocktail primarily based on the Boulevardier. Known as the Bitter Reality, the drink includes a mixture of Japanese whisky, Campari, housemade candy vermouth and apricot liqueur, all infused with Cocoa Puffs. The stirred cocktail is completed with chocolate bitters and served with an orange twist.
Lazar says she was creating a cocktail supposed to scale back waste from leftover bits of Sacher torte (a sort of Austrian chocolate cake) that the kitchen was serving on the time. Simply as she was about to launch the drink, the cake was taken off the menu, however she nonetheless needed to seize the chocolatey, dessert-like taste. She discovered her resolution in cereal: “Everybody loves the milk on the backside of the Cocoa Puffs, proper?”
Koloman’s Austrian chef, Markus Glocker, and its beverage director, Katja Scharnagl, had doubts, however finally the drink gained its place on the cocktail record. “I wager my beverage director,” Lazar says. “‘Let’s particular it for an evening. If one will get despatched again, we gained’t put it on the menu. If we promote out tonight, we put it on the menu.’ And lo and behold, after all, we offered out that night time.”
Lazar says the cereal ended up being a more sensible choice of ingredient than the cake, not solely as a result of the style of Cocoa Puffs is acquainted and nostalgic for a lot of American palates, but in addition as a result of it’s a neater infusion. “You don’t want a centrifuge, [and] you don’t even want a fine-mesh bag or a nut bag,” Lazar notes. As a substitute, the cereal may be filtered out in a strainer, making it a simple method to attempt at house.
Whereas Lazar’s recipe requires infusing a batch of the drink with Cocoa Puffs, others infuse only one ingredient, providing dimension to a variety of cocktails. On the Milwaukee cocktail bar Misplaced Whale, bartender Tripper Duval has lengthy been tinkering with cereal. Years in the past, he made a Brandy Alexander with Cookie Crisp milk that he says Whale patrons adored; his present menu showcases how the confection-like ingredient can shine in tropical functions.
For the Oops Not Berry’s (a reputation that pays tribute to tiki maestro Jeff Berry), Duval infuses coconut milk with multicolored Oops All Berries, a fruity cereal belonging to the Cap’n Crunch bloodline. Impressed by his Wisconsin childhood, he additionally creates a syrup from the state’s personal Jolly Good fruit punch soda. These add fruit taste to a mixture of house-blended bourbon, rye, amaretto, lemon and Bittercube bitters (one other Wisco product). To tie every thing collectively, Duval turns to almond liqueur. “The amaretto is actually the opposite half of the fruit punch … a union of sunshine and darkish flavors.” The drink is served over crushed ice in a Jolly Good soda can with the highest lower off. It’s a tropical cocktail, by the use of the Third Coast.
At Philadelphia cocktail bar R&D, in the meantime, bartender Resa Mueller is at present presenting a 12-drink menu themed across the months of the 12 months, and the August cocktail—impressed by the flavors and aromas of tenting—is a Corn Pops–infused riff on the Outdated-Long-established known as the Corn Hub. To make it, Mueller begins by soaking Corn Pops in mezcal, then amplifies that smoky-sweet profile with Mellow Corn whiskey, Demerara syrup and Bittercube Chipotle Cacao bitters.
“When friends attempt it, it type of tastes like a s’extra… however in a extra subtly suggestive approach,” says Mueller. “It has that smoke part. It has that little little bit of sweetness and that earthiness. And once I inform folks, ‘Yeah, you possibly can completely make this at house,’ that simply places a light-weight on of their head.”
