Clarified milk punch is to bartenders what pork fat used to be to cooks. Weak analogy. I’ll think of another. I haven’t had the correct dosage of coffee yet. The boy came in our room and woke us up at 3:00 a.m. Nightmares, who knows what else. A child’s nightmare soon becomes a parent’s nightmare. After we soothed him and he fell asleep, I ended up tossing and turning the rest of the night and all I could think about was tonight’s service and how the hell I was going to make it through.

Thing is, I always do. The projection of our own demise is always worse than the demise itself. Once we’re at the crossroads, immersed within the task we so anticipated would be horrible, it’s usually not so bad and once it’s over there’s a relief. Like going to the dentist or to Costco.

At any rate, milk punch is like a magic trick. Smoke and mirrors. Guests go absolutely gaga over it. It’s great for service because you can just pour it over a rock add a citrus peel and forget about it. All you have to do is make sure it’s totally clear all the way through. Easy right?

The feces touch is still strong with me. I made some passionfruit husk vermouth in the closet but it turned out to be too astringent. It’s not good. A bunch of cocktails on the seasonal menu are about to expire with no replacements as of right now. I have no ideas. Citrus season is lasting way too long because of all the damn rain. Some farms were just completely washed away. I have no ideas circulating. We absolutely have to make a few cocktails without dairy. Ugh. What a goddam beautiful, silky crutch it’s become. We also need something stirred so we don’t go down in flames when it gets busy.

There’s some hootch I made by adding vodka to the kumquat syrup leftovers. Oh my it’s so tasty. Remember the Bar Hack: Sort of Fermented Kumquat Syrup? No. Read it here, sucka. Take the scraps and dump vodka into them. Easy.

Oh god, I just realized this blog is turning into one of those horrid recipe pages where the person drones on and on and all you want is the damn recipe. Goddammit. You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. Ok. From now on I’ll put up the recipe lickety-split

Here it is:

2 cups La Bamba*

2 cups Milk

2 cups White Rum

2 cups Barrel Aged Cachaça

2 cups Fresh (ish) Lime Juice

Two Cups Strong Thai Tea**

1.5 cups Strawberry Honey***

.5 cups Fresh (ish) Orange Juice

.5 cups Navy Strength Jamaican Rum

.5 cups Banana Liquor

20 Dashes Orange Bitters

2 Guajillo Chilis, Hand Torn

10 Black Peppercorns

Makes 2.5 liters/quarts, whatever.

I could just leave you with this, but I’ll be nice. Note, I refrain from adding booze brand names in here. Pretty much any decent store bought stuff will do. Talk is cheap, rum is cheaper.

Everything about this recipe is two fold: increase creaminess and boost the strawberry flavor. This will all make sense when the next strawberry cocktail comes about, if I don’t screw it up.

Another note: We only use organic produce which pumps the price up quite a bit but increases the tastiness, decreases the glyphosate.

* La Bamba is one cup heavy cream, one cup condensed milk, two split vanilla beans (scrape the vanilla dirt out and put it in there). Stir over a boiling pot in a bowl for five minutes. Let cool. You can drink this shit, hence the name.

** For punches I make tea with eight tablespoons tea and two and a half cups of hot water from the urn which, after straining, becomes two cups of finished tea. This one is six tablespoons Thai tea and two of Earl grey. Let it steep for five minutes or so. If it goes too long it’ll impart too much of the weird yellow number five flavor. It really boosts the color and flavor of the punch, however. Something about the tannins.

*** Strawberry honey is simply 1:1 fresh strawberries to good, local honey by weight. Put it in a blender and go! Then strain. Then try not to lick the rim.

Put everything together except the dairy items. Give it all a nice stir, then add the dairy, cover and let sit for the night. The hardest part about any clarified punch is the method of straining. The fancy asses cheat and use a centrifuge. I have a technique that gets it ultra clear in just an hour or two. No, I don’t use coffee filters.

Straining the punch is all about the Cone of Enlightenment. I can’t get into the details of it at the moment because then you would have all my secrets. It’s easy if you know and may as well be going to the moon if you don’t.