Fat-washed cocktails are an adevnture in a glass.
A cinnamon-dusted bacon slice drizzled with chocolate adds to the allure of Deviation’s Bacon Churro Old Fashioned. PHOTO BY JONI SCHRANTZ
New York City, 2007: Don Lee is behind the bar at a speakeasy called PDT (Please Don’t Tell) when inspiration stirs. Using a centuries-old perfume-making method, he infuses the rich taste of bacon fat from Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Ham into Four Roses Yellow Bourbon.
The Benton’s Old Fashioned has inspired countless cocktails and a mixology movement with fat-infused spirits at their core. Combining fat into a cocktail gives it a subtle aroma and powerful flavor. “It adds character,” says Tiago Amaral, head mixologist at Denver’s Deviation Distilling (deviationdistilling.com). “You’re creating texture that will blow people’s minds.”
While pros like Amaral use a variety of infusing techniques, in general, the process involves adding liquid fat to a spirit, blending, allowing the mixture to rest and then skimming the fat off the top, often after an hours-long freeze. Deviation Distilling’s Bacon Churro Old Fashioned—which combines housemade amaretto liqueur, orange bitters, Aztec bitters and Angostura bitters with bacon fat-washed ZinFin Bourbon—uses the OG pig-based fat, but many of the distillery’s cocktails enlist vegan-friendly oils from pistachios, sesame seeds and hazelnuts.
A handful of elevated drink programs around the Mile High City have added fat-washing to their lineups. Cooper Lounge in Denver Union Station uses brown butterwashed Woodford Reserve bourbon in its Lovely Bones cocktail. While fat-washing is on-trend, it’s far from commonplace. The infusion process takes precision and time— and it’s labor-intensive. That’s precisely why Deviation has adopted it. “The public wants things diff erent than just the ordinary,” Amaral says. “Life is an adventure. If you’re here for that, you should try a fat-washed cocktail.”
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