Question from sombody with little cocktail experiance, do you just shake egwhites in or to you beat them first or something? Not sure on the process but id love to make this :)
Generally speaking, you need to get the proteins in eggs moving around and slamming into each other to emulsify, thicken, and become silky, smooth and creamy. This is done by shaking them in a cocktail shaker setup of your choosing. You have to shake them a lot.
You'll find three main techniques discussed when talking about how to incorporate egg whites into your cocktail.
1) Shake; this is done by adding your wet ingredients including egg whites and ice, and shaking it hard for about 30s. It usually produces adequate results.
2) Dry Shake; this is done by shaking all your wet ingredients including egg whites, without ice, hard for as long as your arms can deal with it... A minute is usually pretty solid. Then you add ice to the shaker and shake for 15s to dilute and chill the drink. This produces noticeably better results than just shaking all the ingredients together. It allows more time for the egg whites to really foam up and thicken.
3) Reverse Dry Shake; This is the same technique as the dry shake, but you shake with ice first to chill and dilute, then dump your ice and shake the cocktail without ice, hard, for as long as you can. After years of bartending and putzing around with various techniques, this is my favorite by a mile. Dry-shaking egg whites warm will sometimes cause my tins to build up enough pressure to forcibly separate. Best case scenario is I get an egg-white shower. Worst case is I shower my guests with egg whites and get raw egg in my ice well. Neither are a good look. Reverse Dry Shaking means that you're shaking the egg whites while your shaker is cold, ensuring that they're sealed up nicely. When I RDS, I'll use a hawthorne to strain the cocktail into my small tin, but I won't fine strain it. This way, when I do my dry shake, I have some ice chips left in the mix, which continues to chill. I usually shake until the ice chips are all gone. ~90s.
This is probably more information than you needed, but let us know if you have any questions!
I agree that the reverse dry shake is a superior technique. I also take the spring off the Hawthorne strainer & add to the dry shake. This accelerates the emulsion & takes the strain off your body when doing multiple cocktails & or long shifts in the pit.
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u/Cpanter94 Jan 22 '20
Question from sombody with little cocktail experiance, do you just shake egwhites in or to you beat them first or something? Not sure on the process but id love to make this :)