🍸 Inside the R&D Shift: Volume 6
Updated: Sep 23
Grasshoppers, Pandan, Singapore Slings & Knowing When to Stop Messing With a Cocktail
This week’s assignments were vodka and gin, and these two cocktails could not have taken more different paths.
One practically built itself.
The other had me questioning everything until the last minute.
That’s R&D.
🦗 VODKA: Reworking the Grasshopper
For vodka, I wanted to play off the classic Grasshopper.
Traditionally, you’re looking at crème de menthe, crème de cacao and cream. Simple, rich and dessert-like.
From there, the cocktail came together surprisingly fast. For the Grasshopper riff, I first tried adding 0.25 oz Fernet alongside the white crème de menthe to bring in some extra herbal depth, but it ended up overpowering the drink more than helping it. So I pulled the Fernet back out, bumped up the white crème de menthe, and leaned further into Midori to get that beautiful light green color I was looking for.
That ended up being the move. The combination of melon, white chocolate, and mint worked way better than I expected and gave the drink this creamy, fresh, almost dessert-like profile without feeling too heavy. After that, there really wasn’t much left to fix.
This was one of those rare R&D moments where I didn’t fall victim to overthinking every tiny adjustment. I tasted it, knew the balance was there, and knew it was done.
MINT CONDITIONED SPECS:
1.25 oz White Chocolate-Infused Tito’s
1.25 oz White Crème de Menthe
1 oz Heavy Cream
0.5 oz Midori
0.25 oz 2:1 Rich Simple Syrup
2 dashes Saline
Shaken hard double strained and served up. Garnished with grated milk chocolate.
The Midori was the move.
Melon, mint and white chocolate ended up being a killer combination. Creamy, decadent, rich and basically dessert in a glass.
Sometimes R&D really is that easy.
And then there was the gin.
🌿 GIN: Rebuilding the Singapore Sling
For gin, I wanted to start with a Singapore Sling riff, but I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to take it somewhere different.
The first move was the gin itself.
I sous vide infused the gin with pandan at 130°F for about 90 minutes.
Pandan is no joke.
The entire room smelled like this crazy mix of vanilla, nuttiness, grassiness and toasted tropical aromatics. More importantly, all of that character actually carried into the gin.
That gave me the foundation.
🍒 The Cherry Heering Problem
I started closer to the traditional Singapore
Sling structure, but the Cherry Heering just wasn’t working for me.
It started leaning too medicinal.
So I pulled it.
Instead, I swapped in lychee liqueur, which immediately pushed the cocktail into a lighter, more floral direction that made way more sense with the pandan.
I also added 0.25 oz of Dry Curacao. The little hit of sharper citrus helped cut through some of the lychees's floral character up front, keeping it from taking over the cocktail and giving the whole build a little more structure.
I kept Bénédictine in the build because I still wanted that herbal backbone from the original cocktail.
That was one component I really didn’t want to lose.
🍍 Acid-Adjusting the Pineapple
This was also a reminder of how much acid balance can completely change a drink.
The first night of R&D, I didn’t have enough malic acid to properly adjust the pineapple juice.
The result?
Way too tart.
I came back the second night, properly adjusted it with citric and malic acid, and suddenly the pineapple tasted much closer to lime-meets-pineapple instead of aggressively sour pineapple juice.
That one adjustment changed the entire cocktail.
🌶️ Building More Layers
Instead of Angostura, I went with Creole bitters.
That brought in notes of:
Cherry
Anise
Clove
Cinnamon
Baking spice
Then came the grenadine.
Not bottled neon-red syrup.
I made a rich 2:1 house grenadine with real pomegranate.
No Red 40. No fake candy flavor.
Just concentrated pomegranate flavor, sweetness and body.
Add a touch of saline, pebble ice, cherries, lychee and an orchid, and now the cocktail had completely transformed from where it started.
🧪 The Part Nobody Sees
Here’s the part of cocktail R&D that guests usually don’t see.
It was 11:05 PM before I really started building the cocktail.
Before that, I had been:
Sous vide infusing pandan
Acid-adjusting pineapple juice
Making house grenadine
Making more syrup
Prepping garnishes
Gathering ingredients
Getting everything organized enough to actually start tasting
By that point, I was excited, probably doing a little more tasting than usual, and I fell into one of my favorite bad habits.
Overthinking the cocktail.
🤯 Quarter-Ounce Decisions
I tried tamarind.
I adjusted the grenadine.
I moved the lychee up.
Then down.
I tried yuzu.
The yuzu started taking over.
Back to the original direction.
Most of these weren’t massive changes either.
We’re talking 0.25 oz here, 0.5 oz there.
And that’s exactly why R&D matters.
A quarter ounce can completely change which ingredient speaks first.
It can change the finish.
It can change the perception of sweetness.
It can take something from layered to muddy.
I even tried 0.50 oz of an Amaro di Angostura float instead of the bitters, but that was too much spice and ate up the cocktail.
Those tiny adjustments are sometimes the difference between a cocktail that’s interesting and one that actually feels finished.
💡 Knowing When the Cocktail Is Done
Eventually, I tasted it and had that moment:
Stop touching it.
That might honestly be one of the hardest parts of R&D. I may have already had the cocktail where it needed to be the night before, but I’m my own worst critic. I’ll keep pulling things apart, making tiny adjustments, and looking for another 5%.
At some point, though, you have to recognize when the cocktail is already telling you it’s finished.
This one finally was.
EAST MEETS WEST SPECS:
1.25 oz pandan leaf-infused Tanqueray Gin
0.5 oz Giffard Lychee Liqueur
0.25 oz Dry Curaçao
0.25 oz Bénédictine
0.5 oz rich house-made grenadine
1.5 oz acid-adjusted pineapple juice
1 dash saline
1 dash Creole bitters
Shaken hard, dirty dump, then top with pebble ice. Garnish with orchid, lychee and luxardo cherry skewer.
🥃 Meanwhile, From Last Week’s R&D…
During R&D, I also had to clarify a cocktail from the previous menu inspired by Mama Juana
from the Dominican Republic.
The riff brought together:
Multiple aged rums
Passion fruit liqueur
Amaro
Lime
Honey
Spanish red wine
Then the entire cocktail was clarified.
It ended up being one of the drinks guests were really gravitating toward Friday night.
Another reminder that sometimes the combinations that sound the strangest on paper become the drinks people remember.
🔥 Saints & Spirits Takeaway
R&D isn’t always about discovering some completely new ingredient.
Sometimes it’s changing half an ounce of one component.
Sometimes it’s fixing your acid balance.
Sometimes it’s removing the ingredient you were convinced belonged in the drink.
And sometimes the most important decision is simply knowing when to stop touching it.
That’s the shift.
That’s the process.
And that’s how another weekend menu gets built.
Saints & Spirits
Cocktails Worth Confessing.
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