Finally, the planet has begun another lap around the Sun & it is great to see that the festive mood has engulfed the world, after a long time. Celebrations might have been slightly muted in the current environment, but there’s still room for careful revelry.
Every New Year, liquor connoisseurs in Hong Kong eagerly look for the best alcohol cocktails that are unconventional and 2021 is no different. Liquidz, an online liquor store in Hong Kong, curates all the liquor you need to innovate with cocktails to amaze your buddies!
Here, we provide you with 4 special cocktail recipes that have often been part of the splendid Hong Kong cocktail scene. We leave it up to your creativity to innovate with them further with all the ‘spirited’ shaking and stirring!
Blueberry Gin Fizz
You can whip-up this gin cocktail with some homemade blueberry syrup over a conversation with your dear ones. If you wish, you can make a simple sugar syrup and add into it whatever is in season, to impart to the syrup a distinctive color and aroma. You may want to make many syrups to for your guests to mix and try!
- Ingredients for the cocktail (per glass):
- Blueberries
- 2 ice cubes
- 30 cc London Dry Gin
- 2/3 cup of sparkling water
- 1 tbsp of sugar syrup (you can add any berry in season)
- Fresh lime chunks & mint leaves
- Crushed ice
- Soda
- Method
- Put a couple of fresh blueberries in the glass & fill it up with crushed ice.
- Add blueberries, mint leaves, lime & sugar syrup in a shaker and muddle them.
- Now add the gin, fill the shaker with ice & shake until the mixture is well chilled.
- Pour the mixture in the glass through the strainer. If you wish, add some soda. The Cocktail is ready to enjoy!
The Last King
Try something new in the New Year and your loved ones at your home. Enhance the smoothness of your whisky cocktail experience with a citrus (e.g. pineapple) in The Last King.
- Ingredients
- 50ml The Glenlivet Founder’s Reserve
- 25ml spice-roasted pineapple syrup (method described below)
- 20ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
- Method: The Pineapple Syrup
- In a pestle and mortar, crush together 5 cardamom pods, 1 star anise, 2 husks of mace (or ¼ of grated nutmeg), a small pinch of cumin, 2 cloves & 3 quills of cinnamon.
- Next, mix 200g of brown sugar to the ground spices & sprinkle onto thick, skinned, slices of pineapple. Gently roast the slices in an oven at 120°C for 15 minutes.
- Finally, places the slices, 200ml of pineapple juice & 200ml of caster sugar in a blender. Strain the syrup to filter any pineapple.
- Method: The Cocktail
- Add all the ingredients mentioned above in the shaker along with cubed ice.
- Strain over some hand-cracked ice in a Nachtmann Square whisky glass.
- Garnish with a wedge of fresh pineapple and serve.
Sea Breeze
A good vodka cocktail mustn’t be absent from a special occasion. The easy to craft Sea Breeze can be conjured on short notice. It needs only 4 ingredients … and your homies!
- Ingredients
- 50ml Grey Goose Original French Vodka
- 100ml cranberry juice
- 50ml grapefruit juice
- Thin slice of lime
- Method
- Take a tall Nachtmann glass and put it in a freezer to chill it for a few minutes.
- In a shaker, pour the vodka, cranberry juice & grapefruit juice and stir gently till the outside of the shaker feels cold enough.
- Take out the glass from freezer, half-fill it with ice & pour the contents of the shaker into it.
- Garnish with the slice of lime and serve.
Frozen Strawberry Margarita
This is one of the most popular margaritas & delicious cocktails entailing only a few ingredients. It allows great flexibility to use in-season berries as garnishing, not to mention the fresh strawberries which impart to it its unique characteristics.
- Ingredients
- 1.5 oz tequila (Blanco or Silver)
- ½ cup strawberries (fresh or frozen; washed & with stems cut)
- 1 oz lime juice
- 1 oz triple sec
- 1 cup ice
- Method
- Chill a margarita glass well in advance.
- Blend the strawberries (if frozen, no need to thaw them) & 1 cup ice. You can decide its consistency as per need.
- Add the rest of the ingredients – tequila, lemon juice & triple sec – and blend until smooth.
- Pour the blender’s content into the chilled margarita glass.
- Garnish with a slit strawberry and serve.
You can customize this cocktail with pineapple, mango, peach, banana & raspberry as all of them complement the strawberry well.
So that was our two cents to make your New Year celebrations more sublime! Now, it is up to you how innovative you are in your experimentation with cocktails for the New Year. The trick is to keep an eye on & sampling new offerings while keeping in mind that an excellent cocktail is a delectable outcome of brewing wizardry!
Wondering about buying alcohol online in Hong Kong? Our carefully curated liquor collection awaits your pickings at Liquidz.