Fat Washing: Putting the Flavour of a Fat into a Spirit

Fat washing in short

Where booze washing takes flavours out of a spirit, fat washing puts them in. Dave Arnold calls it simple enough for anyone. Choose a flavourful fat or oil, such as butter, bacon fat, olive oil, peanut butter or sesame oil, and make sure it tastes good: properly rendered bacon fat is delicious, fat from overcooked bacon is gross, and so is butter that has sat unwrapped in the fridge.

Your fat needs to be fresh and delicious.

Then judge how strong it is. For strongly flavoured fats such as smoky bacon fat use about 120 grams (4 ounces) per 750 ml of liquor, and for delicate butter about 240 grams (8 ounces).

1. Melt the fat if it is solid at room temperature.
2. Add it to the liquor in a wide-mouth container, close it and shake, to increase the surface where liquor meets fat. The wide mouth makes the later separation easier.
3. Rest an hour or so, agitating now and then during the first half hour.
4. Most of the fat should now be on top. Put the container in the freezer for a couple of hours; most fats form a solid puck.
5. Poke a hole in the puck and pour the clear, flavoured liquor through a coffee filter into a bottle.

If the fat does not set, as olive oil will not, use a gravy separator or a separatory funnel, which is what he uses. The funnel lets you drain the heavier booze off the bottom without disturbing the oil on top, and its steep cone settles the layers and gets nearly every drop of gin away from the oil. To fat wash gin with olive oil, combine them in the funnel, close it tightly, shake violently several times a few minutes apart and let it settle.

He does not use fat washing often, because friends were its real pioneers: Sam Mason and Eben Freeman, formerly of Tailor, Tona Palomino, formerly of wd~50, and Don Lee, formerly of PDT.

Peanut Butter and Jelly with a Baseball Bat

In 2007 Tona Palomino, then running the bar at wd~50, made a carbonated peanut butter and jelly cocktail called the Old-School. Since it was carbonated he took great care to keep the liquor clear, spreading a thin layer of peanut butter in the bottom of a hotel pan, covering it with a thin layer of booze and leaving it covered in the fridge for days. A shaken drink does not need that, so Arnold’s version is quicker.

Peanut butter and jelly vodka. 750 ml of 40 percent vodka, 120 grams of creamy peanut butter and 125 to 200 grams of Concord grape jelly.

1. Mix the vodka and peanut butter thoroughly, cover and settle in the freezer for several hours.
2. With a centrifuge, spin it for a yield of around 85 percent (635 ml). Without one, pour it through a cloth napkin to remove the big particles, then through a coffee filter, which clogs often so you need several; the yield is 60 to 70 percent (450 to 525 ml) and the booze is clearish.
3. Add a shade over 30 grams (a heavy ounce) of grape jelly to every 100 ml of peanut butter vodka, shake or blend, and strain out stray jelly particles.

Do not use expensive vodka.

PB&J with a Baseball Bat makes one 140 ml drink at 17.3 percent alcohol, 9.0 g/100 ml sugar and 0.77 percent acid: 2 1/2 ounces (75 ml) of the peanut butter and jelly vodka (32.5 percent alcohol), half an ounce (15 ml) of strained lime juice and 2 drops of saline or a pinch of salt. Shake with plenty of ice for just 6 seconds, because the drink is not good over-diluted, and strain into a chilled coupe.