Intro

Cocoa Butter Vieux Carre, Hot Buttered Zombie, Pearl Diver's Punch, The Headless Horseman

As you can probably imagine, adding butter to a cocktail gives it a rich sweetness and creamy mouthfeel. But when it comes to elevating cocktails with butter, there's a lot more to it than cutting off a pat of butter and plopping it into your cocktail shaker.

The use of butter and other types of fat in cocktails became a lot more popular with the rise of a technique called fat washing. Popularized by Don Lee — a former bartender at the Please Don't Tell speakeasy in New York City — fat washing involves adding a liquid fat to a liquor, mixing it, placing it in a freezer for several hours, and skimming off the resulting fat layer. The result is a spirit with a richer mouthfeel that's been infused with the flavors of the fat. Lee used the technique to create unique spins on an Old Fashioned and a highball. Bartenders around the world have followed his lead and many of them have developed new ways to elevate cocktails with butter.

Cocoa Butter Vieux Carre

Used to make white chocolate, cocoa (or cacao) butter is a product of the cocoa (cacao) bean. After the beans are harvested, they are fermented, dried, roasted, and ground. The grinding process produced cocoa butter and cocoa mass, which is turned into cocoa powder. Like dairy butter, cocoa butter is solid at room temperature but has a melting point that's lower than body temperature.

Adding a fat wash of cacao butter is a great way to elevate a classic New Orleans cocktail, the Vieux Carré. Made with rye whiskey, Cognac, sweet vermouth, Bénédictine, and two kinds of bitters, the Vieux Carré is a bold, spirit-based cocktail. If you're not a fan of potent potables, you might be open to a Vieux Carré with fat-washed Cognac. The resulting cocktail has all the fruity and spicy notes of a classic Vieux Carré, but with a lingering velvety mouthfeel that ships hints of chocolate.

Hot Buttered Zombie

The Zombie is a classic cocktail invented in 1934 by Don the Beachcomber and it's known for being pretty potent. Made with three kinds of rum, lime, grapefruit juice, and a couple of spicy syrups, you might not think of the Zombie as an ideal candidate for butter-fication, which is the technical term for adding butter. However, it does have a lot in common with the hot buttered rum cocktail. Both drinks are very rum-forward. The batter for hot buttered rum includes sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Likewise, the Zombie calls for cinnamon-flavored Don's Mix syrup and falernum, which is a clove-flavored concoction.

At the now-defunct Butchers & Barbers restaurant in Hollywood California, barman Avery Underhill showed it's possible to bridge the gap between hot buttered rum and the Zombie by adding cinnamon butter to the batter. The hot drink also forgoes butter-curdling citrus juice but retains the flavor of grapefruit through the use of Pamplemousse liqueur. The result is a high-octane drink that splits the difference between old-school cocktails and tiki drinks.

Pearl Diver's Punch

Tiki icon Don the Beachcomber was known for his secret recipes, and these were all kept in Don's head and never formally published. The only time they were ever shared was when the bartenders at Don's establishments had to be trained. Even many of don's bartenders didn't know what was in some of the syrups, cordials, and other mixers they were using. For example, a cocktail might call for half an ounce of Don's Mix No. 2 or a garnish of Don's Spices No. 3.

While some of those recipes have been lost to history, Don's butter-based Gardenia Mix has been reformulated by tiki entrepreneur Jeff "Beachbum" Berry. To make it, honey, unsalted butter, cinnamon syrup, allspice dram, and vanilla syrup are heated in a saucepan and whisked until smooth. The most iconic use for Gardenia Mix is in the Pearl Diver tiki drink, which is essentially a cold buttered rum. At the now-closed Lost Lake tiki bar in Chicago, Gardenia Mix was emulated with a butter fat wash to create the bar's Mystery Gardenia cocktail.

The Headless Horseman

Is there another spice blend that's inspired as many memes as pumpkin spice?

To be fair, pumpkin spice is great any time of year, and if you're looking to make a pumpkin spice cocktail, pumpkin butter is your turnkey solution. Not made with any dairy, pumpkin butter is a kind of preserve that is typically made with pumpkin purée, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. It should be easy to find pumpkin butter in your local grocery store or online. You can also make it yourself at home with minimal effort.

As a cocktail ingredient, pumpkin butter brings a ton of flavor and texture. In The Headless Horseman cocktail, you can totally pair it with bourbon, triple sec, lemon juice, and an egg white. The result is a hearty cocktail that is as comforting as lying under a fleece blanket in front of a crackling fire. That's even better than a pumpkin spice meme.