Lavender Gin Sour

How much lavender could I use in a cocktail? While most people exercise moderation, I wanted this cocktail to be an exercise in how much of an ingredient can be used in something while still having it taste phenomenal.

While searching "lavender gin sour" on Google might reveal some common recipes to use as a baseline, I didn't start there. Rather, I first took inspiration from this video by More Savory Goods showcasing a Jasmine Gin Sour. It's amazing, by the way, and was the stepping stone in getting into tea-infused liquor for me. Following a similar ratio with that video, I acquired some lavender bitters from a visit to Marin County and decided to try turning that jasmine gin sour into a lavender variant.

Originally, I tried just adding around a quarter syringe's worth of lavender biters to the jasmine gin sour recipe (using normal gin instead of jasmine gin, of course), but the color wasn't quite right. After a cursory Google search, I found many people used Empress 1908 Indigo Gin since it created a wonderful lavender purple when shaken with an egg white. However, I didn't want to buy a bottle specifically for colored gin and wanted as much control over the process as possible. So instead, I went out and bought butterfly pea flowers myself to turn into indigo-colored gin!

This meant I could color any of my liquors or liqueurs indigo if I wanted to, and rather than having to rely on a gin to add color, I could add it myself. After making some of my own indigo gin, I then tried it again and the color turned out much better. But I wanted the lavender flavor to not just be a hint, but the front and center stage on the cocktail. Instead of regular simple syrup, I bought a lavender-infused simple syrup from Sonoma and wow, did it pack a punch! I had to halve the ratio of simple syrup used in the cocktail because the lavender flavor was just too empowering, even for my experiment. And if water will be added from dilution during the shaking process, why not add a bit of lavender flower water just for taste? It added just a hint more of lavender onto the foundation of lavender bitters.

While I enjoyed the lavender gin sour in this form (honestly, it's already a pretty solid recipe and one that I served friends and family for months), I had been relying on London dry gin colored with butterfly pea flowers up until now. It served its purpose, but at the end of the day it was merely a generic foundation on which the drink was built upon, not allowed to shine in its own light, rather only there to provide booziness and not much more.

But my last trip to Hokkaido led me to the last piece of the puzzle that really pushed this cocktail into its final form: Ohoro lavender gin. Only made in limited quantities and unavailable outside Japan (and even then, barely outside Hokkaido), it's made with lavender flowers collected in Niseko. The lavender flavor from this 47% ABV gin is absolutely exquisite and is a lot more forward than you would think at first. Coloring this lavender gin with butterfly pea flowers gave me the perfect base for this cocktail, and now I present it to you:

• 2 oz Ohoro lavender gin

• dried butterfly pea flower

• ½ oz lemon juice

• ¼ oz lavender syrup

• ¼ oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur

• ¼ syringe lavender bitters

• 3 dashes lavender water

• 1 egg white

Instructions:

• Color Ohoro gin with butterfly pea flowers in a mixing glass (this should take around 5 minutes)

• Add all liquids and egg white to shaker

• Dry shake

• Wet shake with one ice sphere

• Hawthorne strain into Collins glass with large ice cube

• Garnish with four drops of lavender bitters