Dry January – You Worry Me

The third cocktail in this little series on non-alcoholic tea drinks, is a daring Penicillin variation. You see, I love Lapsang Souchong tea which is heavily smoked. So, I figured it would be the perfect base for recreating the smoky and ginger as well as honey flavoured whisky cocktail. On top of that, I also used Aromatic Water which was a first for me.

Smoked tea and boiling water

As with all teas used in cocktails, you should brew it stronger than you would when sipping it on its own. This means using more tea per water and maybe longer extraction times. I would not, however, increase the brewing temperature, e.g. still use 90 °C hot water for this particular tea. For the Aromatic Water I used the recipe provided by Distiller’s Cut using 20 g orange peel, 5 g cacao nibs and 20 g raisins steeped in boiling water for 1 hour. By the way, the remaining “botanicals” make a perfect base for a bitter or spiced rum. For the final drink, I added lemon juice, and homemade ginger and honey syrup.

Smoked, hot honey

Well, the resulting drink carries all the flavours of its ingredients. This means, at first you get the smokiness from the tea. Soon after that, the hot ginger comes to the front, which is accompanied by the acidity of the lemon juice. Finally, the honey smoothens the whole drinking experience. The Aromatic Water adds more complexity, and the drink would lack something without it. In the end, you know that you are sipping a non-alcoholic drink, but with the combination of umami, spiciness, acidity and sweetness a damn tasty one at that!