EXPERIMENTING with new cocktail-making methods is what life’s all about at Edinburgh cocktail institution Panda & Sons.
And the popular bar’s latest cocktail menu – Transcend – is a testament to the team’s creativity, with a selection of cocktails all created using sub-zero techniques that were either invented or evolved by the Panda crew.
The cocktails on the Transcend list have been created using four techniques: switching, sous pression, freeze drying and cryo concentration.
Switching involves freezing a spirit so that the water content can be removed and replaced – or ‘switched’ with another liquid, while sous pression involves batching ingredients in an ultra-low freezer, the pressure from which forces the ingredients to fuse together.
Freeze drying uses a process of freezing, condensation and a vacuum to extract 99% of the moisture from produce, resulting in a dried product that has retained all of its fresh flavour in a highly concentrated form.
Cryo concentration allows the team to ripen fruit by freezing water and then extracting it from the juice, ensuring a consistent level of ripeness.
Transcend is the result of five years of research, development and experimentation from the Panda & Sons team, under owner Iain McPherson. McPherson and bar manager Nicky Craig worked on the techniques in the Brain Melting Society space they set up in the basement of sister bar Nauticus.
“The new menu is for those that want to ‘geek out’ on the new techniques or simply want to drink great cocktails and don’t care how they’re made,” said McPherson.
“Chefs use heat to bring out the best qualities in their ingredients, bringing them together to create amazing fusions of flavours and textures. I want to do the same for cocktails but using cold rather than heat.”
