“Time to mix drinks and change lives” - Jill Stingray, VA-11 Hall-A

Inspiration

My passion for cocktail mixology started as a means to save myself from the cheap beer of your local neighborhood fraternity party in college. I, being a frat boy myself, desired tastier beverages than the cheap cereal lagers that had been furnished for the events. So I procured a number of bottles and a little black bartending book from my mother, who was a bartender in the past. Let’s say that this happened around 2017.

A couple of years later, in 2019, the early onset of the COVID-19 pandemic whisked me back to my parent’s house where I took all of my bottles and other belongings. There a friend of mine at the time invited me to participate in her COVID hobby, livestreaming on Twitch and I’d join her every once in a while, just a disembodied voice on her stream. Amongst the general chatter of the game and talking about life, I’d be experimenting with at-home mixology sharing my newfound recipes at the time with this friend and others.

On December 9th, 2020, I clicked the “Start Streaming” button for the first time and shortly thereafter discovered another passion of mine long since hinted at considering my disposition for theater. My desire to perform, my need to be creative, and my passion for gaming and cocktail mixology found a perfect balance. In honor of the last four years of my amazing hobby and newfound career direction, I created this cocktail which I’m submitting for Mindful Drinking Fest’s inaugural No Fun non-alcoholic cocktail competition! The premise was to create “a non-alcoholic cocktail for an activity that brings you joy”. To say that livestreaming has brought me joy is a severe understatement. It’s brought me purpose, and that’s worth at least a drink to me!

The main platforms where my cocktail streams call home are Twitch and YouTube. Twitch has been with me since the beginning, and only last year did I begin to call YouTube like a second streaming home. To represent the platforms that facilitate my passion, this drink stacks both platforms' signature colors, red for YouTube and purple for Twitch. The red layer combines two astounding non-alcoholic spirits namely the Pathfinder Hemp and Root and Fluère Bitter. The Pathfinder is both a novel spirit stand-in and also a reference to my first TTRPG while Fluère Bitter is a nod to my favorite cocktail the Negroni and its signature red spirit Campari. Both spirits are topped with a home-infused butterfly pea flower purple soda, to represent Twitch's color, and also that feeling of effervescent joy when doing the things you love.

Workshopping

YouTube Red

The cocktail competition featured a selection of potential ingredients to choose from to create this inspired cocktail. I opted for a bottle of Fluère Bitter (a non-alcoholic bitter spirit) in reference to my love for bitter flavors. Looking back on it, the first beer that I liked was an IPA due to this quality. My second bottle of choice was the Pathfinder Hemp & Root, another non-alcoholic bitter spirit that shares its name with a tabletop RPG ruleset, namely Pathfinder. Among my other geeky tendencies, I also play Dungeons & Dragons, and Pathfinder pre-dated both my mixology and streaming hobbies while I was still a high school student.

Workshopping this recipe, I knew I wanted to strike a balance between these two spirits, so I mixed around a bit to see which ratio would bring out the best of both of them while retaining that red color

• 1 Part Fluère : 1 Part Pathfinder

  • nice appreciable sweetness, bitterness of the pathfinder, and herbaceous notes very appreciable

• 2 Parts Fluère : 1 Part Pathfinder

  • pathfinder notes with a potent sweetness, after taste is more sweet orange than herby

• 1 Part Fluère : 2 Parts Pathfinder

  • pathfinder too powerful

Simply enough, mixing equal parts of both spirits preserved that vibrant red color of the Fluère while allowing both spirits’ flavors to shine. If you’re more inclined to sweeter drinks, I’d recommend the 2:1 ratio. That bottle of Fluère is very Aperol-like to me with potent orange flavors and a mild bitterness.

Twitch Bleed Purple

Twitch is the platform that started it all for me, and I continue streaming there! Twitch’s brand color is purple, and it is very important to them. As such, this drink had to have a bit of purple in it too. It seemed to me that the obvious answer to the purple problem would be to add some blue color to the mix, and it was the perfect opportunity for some butterfly pea flower to make an appearance. Long story short, this flower will turn liquids bluish-purple when left in them to steep. Since this was going to be a non-alcoholic beverage with bitter flavors at the forefront, I felt like using some soda water would work. Not only would it help with layering, but it would also dilute some of those stronger flavors in the red layer.

I did a bit of experimentation here to determine how much butterfly pea flower (BPF) to put in a whipped cream maker to make quick purple soda. I pretty much just varied the amount in grams (from 0.5 g to 4.5g) in 6 oz (177 ml) of water for 60 seconds, charging with a CO₂ canister. Simple, right? Long story short, the more BPF in the container, the deeper the color. As the amount of BPF increases the relative flavor of the carbonation softens out a bit as well. My guess is that more of the bubbles just stay behind in the pressurized flower. I don’t know whether BPF has a flavor associated with it. I didn’t notice anything in particular as I increased the concentration aside from the color change and the relative lessening of the fuzziness.

With the quick soda made, it was simple to assemble the non-alcoholic cocktail. Put layer one into a glass, add some ice, and pour the soda overtop of that ice. The ice will slow the fall of the soda enough that it won’t completely mix with the layer below.

Flavor Analysis

A fizzy drink with notes of sweet orange and a light, rooted bitterness.