I couldn’t tell you the last time I drank a glass of milk. Ice cream, the odd dip of an oreo, even the odd Starbucks frozen concoction (Jon Reynolds, manager of crudo nudo, proprietor of the Night School pop-up, and former barista describes the latter as “adults complaining about drinking milkshakes for breakfast”), but a full glass of milk? No way.
I think about milk, however, almost every day. Every hour of some days. For the last several years, I’ve worked with Campari Academy as their de facto Milk Man (they would deny this is an official title).
Back in 2021, I was asked to write a training guide for the Campari Academy website. This lead to a kitchen full of quart containers and reusable coffee filters as I tested all of the “rules” about making clarified milk punch. I use the quotation marks because my theory (proven true) was that because the practice of making clarified milk punch is so old, it was very likely that many of these so-called rules were just…how some guy did it once.
Chemically, clarified milk punch is pretty simple. Milk, and it’s alternatives, are a homogonous suspension of protein and fat in water (I have said this a dozen times in an hour on more than one occasion). To break the suspension, one simply changes the ph, generally by adding citric acid in the form of citrus juice. Fairly straightforward!
These early experiments proved two of the more commonly accepted practices were unnecessary: Heating the milk before making a milk punch often made the punch LESS likely to break, and “resting” the broken milk punch made no significant impact on flavor. To test this, I made a milk punch out of a very basic vodka sour, assuming that there would be fewer flavors to get in the way of effect, and rested a milk punch for 24 hours, 12 hours, 6 hours, 15 minutes, and not at all. The differences were borderline imperceptible, and certainly not worth the extra time standing between you and a finished product.
I got to present these findings and more in a training at the lovely Campari Academy Headquarters in New York. Two days of talking clarified milk punch with some of New York’s best bartenders in person allowed for some great Q&A and a bit of a nerdier deep dive on some discoveries. Chief among them is that you don’t need citrus to make a clarified milk punch! Shocking, I know, but with our demo recipe, the Boulevardier of Broken Creams (I can’t believe they let me name my own drinks), we demonstrated that a simple Boulevardier riff with coffee-infused whiskey is more than enough to break a milk punch.
Some other points that were made and discussed in this class are that alternative milks (coconut, soy, almond) work! Oat milk kind of doesn’t.
Infused milk, such as with cereal or graham cracker, absolutely contributes flavor. This was a correction from a guess I made on a Portland Cocktail Week virtual class over quarantine where I guessed that it wouldn’t. Not only was I wrong, I was super wrong. What’s more, is the solids leftover even in the sludgiest infusions are handled by the microscopic filter of curds.
In October, I got to teach a 2.0 class on the topic in the hilariously named “Wild Salmon Room”, for a Campari Academy event alongside Michael Moberly, of Monin, and Camper English, Alcademic, who taught about frozen drinks and clear ice and its carving, respectively. This was designed to be an even nerdier class, so we got a little more insular over 3 hour long classes in a single day. Exhausting and enlightening!
Highlights of this class were a discussion more along the lines of why we use alternative (i.e. nondairy) milks at all?
Dietary restrictions are an obvious reason to use alternative milks, along vegan accessibility and dairy sensitivities, but the biggest reason is flavor!
We also discussed the golden ratio of milk punch; 4:1. What this means is that for every liter of cocktail you intend to clarify, you need 250ml of your milk or milk alternative of choice.
My top methods for straining have also been determined. For small batches for sample testing or home use, a reusable percolating coffee filter and a quart container are unbeatable. This lets you easily make around 600ml of milk punch at a time, strains relatively quickly, and prevents the pesky risk of using a ton of your employer’s product to test a recipe that doesn’t quite work.
For medium-sized batches, a large pitcher, a conical strainer, and a clean restaurant linen do the trick. An average restaurant linen, fully soaked with water and then wrung out, only holds about 50ml of water – functionally nothing. Using a saturated linen means you’re keeping that extra bit of cocktail, and helps the curds catch more quickly. This is best for when you need a few bottles at a time; a feature, or a single cocktail menu item. They fit conveniently into a reach-in cooler as well, so they can be left overnight with no concerns for food safety.
The Mack-Daddy of milk punch volume lies in a perforated hotel pan sandwich. Half or whole perforated hotel pans with a big linen (half) or restaurant tablecloth (whole) sandwiched between them absolutely crushes volume. A half pan fits over a tall but low-footprint lexan / cambro, which makes it my favorite method. This is for when you need punch quick for a crowd. This is how they do it at Thunderbolt, and those guys know from volume.
The last, and possibly coolest discovery isn’t my own, many folks have figured this out, but hibiscus is a clarification silver bullet. Put flor de jamaica in your milk punch, it’ll break every time, and the color is GORGEOUS. Now you know, if you didn’t already.
The next step I’m working on is a tincture to replace the usual citric acid solution to help finnicky breaks. Ascorbic acid works a treat for this and doesn’t add much flavor, but I’m not married to this as the solution. More to come.