Mind Flayer

Alright, yes, I'm a day late for Halloween and five days late for the Stranger Things Premier, but in the long run that won't matter. Most of my traffic comes from the long tail (an excellent name for a drink), so I'll post when I want and call it what I want. There is an evil presence in the air, whispering to artisans of all types, offering them a dark pact: turn your work into a series of ads for pop culture trends and I will bring you traffic. Iguess that makes me Dr. Faustus.

I made this drink because there was an instagram competition held by Death and Co NYC to make a drink to commemorate the new season of Stranger Things. Be sure to check out the hashtag https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/strangerthingsab/. In particular take a look at this beauty by Ashley Minette, I think it captured the aesthetic of the show more than anyone else.

In order to bring some 80s nostalgia, I decided to make a classic staple of 80s drinking, the tequila sunrise. First, let me say that the tequila sunrise is a terrible drink, best left in the 80s along with mullets and neon spandex pants on men (they’re coming back.) That said, sometimes we can make familiar things strange, so I decided to try to update this drink to suit modern tastes by using seasonal ingredients. Instead of the usual orange juice, I used fresh persimmon juice, which is a stunning shade of orange. Persimmon, of course, is a fall crop.

In lieu of the usual pomegranate grenadine, I made a cranberry grenadine using fresh cranberry juice, sugar, and orange flower water. I treated both of them with powdered malic acid to find an appropriate balance of flavors. Because of the layered nature of the drink, we don't necessarily get to taste the ingredients together, and we want to ensure a pleasing balance between acidity and sweetness throughout. In practice this is difficult to achieve, but we can get close. As always with these things, it comes down to an exercise of your fine personal taste.

Mind Flayer

2 oz fresh persimmon juice (seasoned with malic acid)

1.5 oz mezcal

dash of simple syrup

.5 oz Cranberry Grenadine

Pour the grenadine into the glass, then shake the other ingredients and carefully pour them over the grenadine, creating a gradient effect.

[Spoiler Alert]The fog from the dry ice is meant to be evocative of the scene where the Mind Flayer possesses Will Byers. I tried using activated charcoal in the liquid that I poured over the dry ice, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) the resulting mobilization of CO2 vapor did not mobilize any of the charcoal particles. I did some reading and it turns out it is not possible to make colored fog using dry ice.

Erlenmeyer flasks suck as drinking vessels. The narrow neck kills any aroma that might come off of the drink, and it impacts your perception of the flavor quite a bit. They look good in the photo but they aren't fun as serving vessels, not even with a straw.

Cheers.