A cocktail called Raw Milk is my creation for Mixology Monday.  MxMo is a creative way for mixologists from all around the World Wide Web to share recipes and have a bit of camaraderie.  Each MxMo has a theme that guides what people contribute.  This month’s MxMo theme is Dizzy Dairy.

my raw milk label (redacted to protect the source)

Using raw milk as an ingredient takes this cocktail right back to the Prohibition  era.  U.S. governmental agencies do not like raw milk.  To be fair to them, there was a very bad period in the country’s milk history when people got quite ill from contaminated raw milk.  Pasteurization pretty much solved that.  These days, however, there is a new push to give raw milk another chance (under more sanitary conditions), and it’s one that I support for various reasons (mostly flavor, as my milk consumption is pretty much limited to my morning coffee).  If you want to know more about it, I highly recommend Nina Planck’s book Real Food.

Luckily for us raw milk lovers, there are ways around governmental intransigence (don’t worry, it hasn’t turned to tommy-guns and untouchables).  Luckily for you cocktail lovers, this all inspired me to create a new cocktail honoring our modern day prohibited beverage.

Doing justice to this illicit ingredient was challenging.  We only have access to a half gallon per week, so the milk deserved center stage.  I’m familiar with the brandy milk punch, but wanted to create something with a little more zing.  Of course, milk drinks will tend toward sweetness (if you drink milk and sugar in your coffee, late summer raw milk is so sweet that you must scale back on the added sugar), but I don’t like my drinks overly sweet.

The problem I found with almost any liquor was that they tended to give the drink a flat sort of taste.  The liquors I tried seemed to strip some of the milk’s natural sweetness.  Even worse, too much liquor caused the milk to separate.  Remember this is raw milk we’re dealing with.  It isn’t homogenized.

The key ingredient was skulking toward the rear of my fridge: Stone’s Original Ginger.  I discovered Stone’s about six months ago.  I’ve been using it in place of sweet vermouth ever since.  Unlike many liqueurs or flavored beverages, when Stone’s says ginger, it means ginger.  The stuff zaps the tongue.  Yet, it is a wine made from currants and has tangy underlying sweetness.

I took Raw Milk in a fruity direction to bridge the gap between milk and Stone’s: maraschino liqueur and a splash of orange bitters to make sure the drink had the zip I was looking for.  I didn’t just go fruity because fruit is sweet (in the case of the bitters, fruit didn’t bring sweet along anyway).  I probably would have gone for a spice flavor (e.g., cinnamon) in the winter, and herbal in the spring.  Alas, it is early fall/late summer, and those cows have been eating sweet green grass.  You can really taste the sweet, late summer air.  If the milk were tasting like the barn, I’d have to go a different direction.

How to make the beverage:

Ingredients

3/4 raw milk

3/4 maraschino liqueur

1 Stone’s Ginger currant wine

6 dashes orange bitters

Combine the above ingredients in a shaker with some large ice cubes.  Shake it hard.  Pour into cocktail glass (this will take some more shaking as a heavy foam layer will develop – give it time to empty).

How to light it:

Ingredients

1 small round section of reddish fruit skin (nectarine, apricot, whatever)

dash high proof rum (clear/white)

Turn the skin inside out so the colorful part forms the inside of a bowl.  Place the fruit skin in the center of the drink, letting the little bowl nestle in the foam.  Pour some rum in the fruit bowl to create a small puddle.  Don’t fill the bowl; don’t overfill the bowl.  Light the rum.

With hindsight, I must admit a couple things:

• I used nectarine, not apricot as stated in the video.
• A match would have worked better than a torch.  The torch is too powerful, blows the flame out, and fries the foam a bit.  My torch is awesome.

Alterations

The basic drink could easily be served sans flame outside a cocktail glass.  Served either on the rocks or very cold without ice, it would be a good replacement for brandy milk punch.

One might consider stirring the drink to avoid excessive foam.

I actually served Raw Milk on the rocks at brunch this morning with great success.