Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: Warm Thoughts

Happy Friday! I hope you’re enjoying the Winter Olympics as much as I am. I can’t get enough of them. It definitely helps I can have it on in the background all day, and then catch up later at night with what I’ve missed. Despite my affinity for the (in this case winter) Olympics, I will admit my annual longing to be somewhere warm has fully set it in. It doesn’t help that there is still over a foot of snow on the ground from the big storm we had two weeks ago. Mainly because after that went through, it got fuck ass cold.

With that in mind, I definitely wanted something to warm me up, or at least put my mind somewhere else. Also armed with another batch of chili crisp, I decided to try fat washing again, but this time I decided to try fat washing tequila and make a spicy margarita. I ended up using reposado instead of blanco because that’s what I had on hand. We’ll see how this experiment goes.

For ratios, I did 2 oz tequila and a teaspoon of chili oil and let that infuse for a number of hours. Scientific, I know.

Other than that it was an ounce of lime juice and triple sec to round out the drink.

It looks like a normal margarita, and it smells like a normal margarita, so upon first glance, it must be a duck a normal margarita. Though I can start to pick up some chili pepper spice smells.

Initially it also tastes like a normal margarita, but with a little chili oil flavor mixed in there, but that flavor quickly fades when confronted with mainly the lime juice and the triple sec. However, the spice does come through. You start to get a tingle on the palate from the chili oils. It plays very nicely with the regular margarita flavors at work. Also when you finish, the zing doesn’t stick around, it dissipates fairly quickly. Which I like. What I’m not so much a fan of is a slightly more noticeable oil coating I get. Im wondering if the properties of tequila take to the fat washing process different than gin does.

This was an interesting twist on a spicy margarita. I like it, but there may be room for improvement still. I’m wondering if blanco tequila would be better than the reposado. I think it’s definitelyt worth attempting to perfect for sure.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)