The Mouth rages against new drinking trend which sees uncooked rice added to cocktails

The new trend in cocktails is to mix them with an ingredient which is supposed to take their edge off or make them creamier, but it completely misses the mark, writes The Mouth.

The other night we came home from work, tossed our briefcase on the sofa, patted the spaniel on the head, and threw some rice in our Negroni.

Not in an absent minded Joe Biden sort of way, but rather in the service of science.

You see, apparently the new trend in cocktails is to mix them with uncooked rice to take their edge off, make them creamier, or perhaps more accurately, give craft bartenders a whole new avenue of wankiness to pursue.

Now perhaps it was our fault for digging out some sushi rice from the back of the pantry with a vintage approximate to when the children thought making salmon rolls great fun, but on the basis of this experiment we think this is the dumbest trend we’ve seen since the butterboard (remember those?).

We followed the directions in the bartender’s trade mag where we’d first heard about this and added “a tablespoon of grains to the mixing glass” in order to “(help) the spirit adhere to and amplify the drink’s other ingredients.”

The perfect ingredients for a Negroni: Campari, vermouth, gin and... rice?

Well, that was the theory.

Perhaps we used the wrong rice but the only noticeable difference was a certain dustiness to the drink.

We also wound up with an expired pantry moth between our teeth.

Yet despite this, the rice gimmick is catching on.

As the trade journal we first heard about this in reported, “At Kingfisher in Durham, North Carolina, the Toasted Rice Daiquiri gets its starchiness in two ways: Bartender Zig Payton sautés Carolina Gold rice before steeping it into simple syrup, then heats it sous vide with rum.”

Lord, give us strength.

Because with all due respect to Zig Payton and the many other bartenders who are playing with this stuff, y’all have too much time on your hands.

While sushi and cocktails are a perfect pairing, what happens when you add the sushi rice to the cocktail?

And more to the point trying to calm down the flavours of a cocktail that is supposed to taste a certain way is entirely contrary to the point of the drink.

They’re called “adult beverages” for a reason and the Negroni, to finish where we began, is a bitter drink.

By all means go and play with this sort of thing if that’s what you want to do, but there is a certain point at which all this craftiness obliterates the point of a cocktail (inebriation, or at least relaxation).

It’s enough to want to make this column head down to the Resch House on George Street for a classic Dinner Ale and a pie.