The Clear Favorite
Moonshine has enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the Michter’s distilleries in Kentucky in both downtown Louisville and nearby Shively. During a visit, our Director of Operations Joe Nguyen tried a drink called the Clear Favorite at The Bar at Fort Nelson inside the Michter’s distillery in Louisville’s Historic Main Street District. Joe was so inspired that he immediately extended a hand in collaboration in order for Kinfolk to serve the same drink as a part of their family tree of cocktails. Michter’s sent Joe the formula on February 23, 2022. The creative work then began to meaningfully reshape and redefine the original formula with characteristics that explore the world citizenship that is a hallmark of Kinfolk’s mission.
The Clear Favorite is a show-stopping representation of a drink-making technique that has been active since at least the late 17th century. William Sacheverell’s 1688 travelogue of time spent on the Scottish island of Iona is the first printed mention of a clarified milk punch — as served, popularized, and perhaps invented by the extraordinary personage of Aphra Behn. Behn was a culturally significant playwright, poet, and prose author — in addition to her work as a spy for the court of King Charles II. She was one of the first women to make a living solely from writing, and inspired scores of future generations of women authors who still visit her grave in Westminster Abbey. It was another woman who committed the first formula on record for a clarified milk punch: Mary Rockett, who included a brandy-based recipe in a 1711 manuscript that was rediscovered in 1914 and has galvanized drink-makers around the world to experiment with making this style of punch.
Milk clarification accomplishes a transformation of a beverage’s characteristics by relying on the curdling of a mixture that contains whole milk, at least one acidic ingredient, and/or at least one astringent ingredient. Our method relies on constructing a large batch of the cocktail, pouring it over whole milk and coconut cream, and allowing the solution to curdle overnight so that a layer of curds is floating on top of the partially clarified drink below. On the following day we strain the entire mixture through a mesh sieve lined with paper coffee filters so that the curds can be separated from the whey-enriched cocktail. After that first filtration, we then pass the drink through the captured curds so that the proteins in the curds will continue binding to compounds that give color, turbidity, astringency, flavor, and aroma to the drink. What we serve to our guests after an overnight resting period is not only transparent (we test the readiness of the drink by reading small text through it after it has been filtered), but also rounder-feeling, streamlined in its aroma-flavor complexity, and softly refreshing.
Curiously, it bears locally important mention that in 1841 a corn whiskey distillery started operating in the town of Bastrop, Texas, which is about 30 miles to our southeast. In an 1882 newspaper remembrance of working at the distillery, its clerk Cayton Erhard recalled the distillery’s owner Archibald Fraser teaching him how to make their arguably “rough” whiskey more palatable by applying milk clarification to it. As it turns out, there is a historical precedent for making punches like this in our immediate vicinity!
The changes that we made to The Bar at Fort Nelson’s formula are both proportional and narrative. Because of the original drink’s utilization of both Michter’s US*1 Small Batch Unblended American Whiskey and the Siete Misterios “Doba-Yej” Artesanal Joven Mezcal, we desired to express the human significance of one of the staple crops that is a common link between the foodways and drinkways of both the United States of America and Mexico: maize. The mezcal in our new Clear Favorite is Vago “Elote,” the invention of Aquilino García López, a sadly recently deceased mezcalero whose sons Temo and Mateo carry on their father’s legacy. Vago “Elote” is made by adding toasted kernels of corn grown on the family farm into the still between the first and second distillations of an Espadín agave spirit, infusing the mezcal with the same corn that is used to make tortillas on their comal.
The other spirit in our Clear Favorite that cements the agricultural connection between the U.S.A. and Mexico is a unique and sacred spirit of the Tzotzil Maya people in the state of Chiapas. It is called pox (pronounced “posh”), which means “medicine” or “healing” — and Siglo Cero Pox is made by brothers Ángel and Javier Pérez as the seventh generation of distillers of this regionally important liquid. The brothers glorify their community’s Mayan deities by incorporating four varieties of corn, wheat bran, and an unrefined sugar called panela into a single ferment that is distilled into this ceremonial and occasional drink. The project to establish agency for Siglo Cero Pox has resulted in positive benefits for their town of San Juan Chamula, such as access to telephone lines and internet, and the building of schools — earning the company’s recognition by the Latin American Quality Institute as a socially responsible small business.
We sincerely hope that you enjoy the Clear Favorite as a heartfelt expression of our friendships, our neighbors, and our kin. We also hope that you enjoy your visit to Moonshine and Kinfolk as an opportunity for us to take care of you and to become friends, neighbors, and kin with you. Our commitments to creation, curation, and collaboration all underscore the human significance of sharing a meal, a drink, and a memorable occasion together.