Thinking clearly: clarification is all the rage in summer cocktails

Let me be clear. This minimal drinks trend isn’t just an eradication of fancy garnishes and various things to lick off the side of your glass. It’s now an eradication of pigment.

I think the first time the clarification process was properly explained to me was when I first went to A Bar With Shapes for a Name (also referred to as Shapes, also symbolically denoted with the shapes are a yellow triangle, red square and blue circle). I say I went to A Bar With Shapes for a Name: I managed to snag a standing table at the front, which, at 2am, gave me a nostalgic after-the-club kebab vibe.

The drink I had in my hand was some kind of milky, apricot yoghurt cocktail, with a creamy lactic mouthfeel that slid over the palate, at odds with its crystal clear appearance that’s more often associated with fresh, crisp cocktails. A clarified drink can be a bit of a headspin, in the best way. It’s the opposite of all design and no flavour. These are drinks that speak for themselves, so confident in their flavour and vision that they don’t even need colour as proof of concept.

Paul Lougrat of A Bar with Shapes for a Name is keen to make the distinction between a simple-looking cocktail and a simple method. “For us, the simplicity is more about the guest experience,” he says. “No long waits, no forced explanations, something that makes sense straight away. But behind the scenes it’s actually getting more and more technical, with processes like distillation, fat-washing and an ever more precise understanding of sugar, acidity and texture.” Clarification is something that fits into this focus on process: the legs that peddle precisely and doggedly beneath the surface so we can all enjoy the graceful swan.

And there are many ways to clarify a drink. At A Bar with Shapes for a Name, they tend to use gravity straining through filters. This is something that can be easily replicated at home: simply start by straining a liquid through something coarse (such as a sieve), then repeat the process with gradually finer filters – a muslin, a coffee filter.

Centrifugation is also used, but a lot less easy to do at home and inaccessible (unless you make enough clarified cocktails to warrant buying your very own centrifuge). Here, the apparatus spins the cocktail at high speed. This extracts particles and clarifies the drink.

There’s also a process called milk-washing, where the cocktail is added to whole milk. You can have fun with this in home experiments: any acidic citric component in a cocktail (such as lemon juice) will cause the milk to curdle and trap the colour and particles within it. Then you can rest the mixture for a while before straining with a muslin or coffee filter to get something clear but creamy.

Many clarification processes lend themselves well to batched cocktails – making a whole load of cocktail in one go. Simply scale up, keep it in the fridge and then serve with the desired ice or garnish. Become the swan yourself, with a cocktail that appears effortless and that yields excitement and admiration from thirsty guests. Maximum effort, sure, but with maximum payoff.