We wade through the fizz to put a new twist on a classic cocktail,
A classic gets an Ontario twist and drops the dairy — but mind the details
These days, when we talk about “fizz,” it’s usually a reference to bubbly wine.
If you’d asked for a fizz, say,100 years ago, the bartender would have handed you a gin cocktail, since the gin fizz was one of the most popular drinks of the day.
What made it so popular? Aside from being delicious and refreshing, having a carbonated cocktail was still a bit of a novelty. Carbonated water was invented in the 1700s, but it wasn’t until the soda siphon (a.k.a. a seltzer bottle, making water fizzy with carbon dioxide cartridges) became widely available and affordable that bubbly cocktails became common. For home bartenders, that was in the 1920s.
Fancy bars had carbonated water for making sparkling cocktails earlier. One of the most famous and flashy fizzy cocktails was the Ramos gin fizz, invented in New Orleans in 1888 at the Imperial Cabinet Saloon and a veritable cottage industry within 20 years of its creation. Some of its appeal was the spectacle of teams of bartenders shaking fizzes for exceptionally long times, which was part of the secret to getting a frothy top.
The other part of the trick was adding an egg white, which, when added to a drink and shaken, turns foamy, pretty much the same way an egg white turns into meringue when whisked. The final touch comes from adding soda water at the end — just like a soda fountain drink, it makes the bubbles rise even higher.
Because it contains cream, the Ramos gin fizz is really an indulgent, boozy soda-fountain drink. It’s delicious, but it’s next-level cocktail-shaking and I prefer to steer clear of dairy in the hot summer months, so I thought it best to use a different “fizz” for this column. There are plenty of options, since the family includes at least a dozen different recipes. (Some people even include the mojito and the Tom Collins.) I have a soft spot for the silver gin fizz — gin, lemon, egg white, sugar and soda water.
For this 100-mile version of the recipe, we’ve tweaked this classic slightly by using lime instead of lemon and Beattie’s farm-crafted potato gin ($39.95; LCBO 645622), distilled from potatoes in Alliston, Ont. The distillery uses the oddsized potatoes (chip-industry rejects) to make vodka and gin, so it’s part of the zero-waste movement, too.
Alliston Fizz
2 oz Beattie’s gin 1 oz lime juice 1 egg white 2 t easpoons special f i ne granulated sugar 1 tiny pinch of salt 2 oz soda water
Add ice, gin, juice, salt, sugar and egg white to a cocktail shaker and shake rigorously for 60 seconds — until the shaker is ice cold. Strain into a tall glass with four or five ice cubes. Slowly pour soda water to make it froth up. PRO TIP: Many bartenders keep a small bottle of saline solution at their stations and add a couple of drops to a range of cocktails, including the Fizz. It’s used for the same reason it is in baking — it helps bring out flavour.
A lot of cocktail technique is actually pretty similar to baking, such as the use of egg whites or specific grades of sugar. Cocktail recipes may seem finicky, but details are important. Special fine granulated sugar, for example, is much easier to dissolve in the cold shaking process than the normal granulated stuff you stir into your coffee.