Gryffindor House Cocktail

One of the first things that come to mind when I thought of Gryffindor are the red and gold scarves. I wanted to try and recreate this look in a cocktail while still tasting good. There are lots of options for red and yellow/gold fruit juices so I decided to take the Gryffindor cocktail in the direction of a punch. I also wanted to make the punch have bold flavors to pair with the boldness of a Gryffindor.

I never made a punch cocktail from scratch and to get a starting point, I used the Planter’s Punch (IBA recipe) as a model to build this cocktail. When I looked through some of my other cocktail books, it appears that (The Savoy Cocktail Book and Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails) punches were a type of alcoholic drink with one requirement that it had fruit juice in it and no other specific definitions. It tasted good and I wanted to go with this. However, the color was nowhere near what I would like so I knew I’d have to make some big changes to recipe.

To build this I did some flavor bouncing and pulled out every bottle I had, juiced a bunch of fruits, and made a few kinds of syrups. As I was building individual servings of the cocktails, I’d write down the measured amounts added to the glass on a sheet of paper and build a cocktail that was as close as I could get to equal volume red and yellow stuff. The red stuff was generally strong tasting, sweet, and dense liquids and I couldn’t use much. Pomegranate is tannic and acidic. Campari is very sweet and bitter. Peychauds bitters were aromatic and I knew I couldn’t use much (did not make it to the final cocktail). It seemed like my only option was try and add as much volume to the red side without making it too light. The yellow side was easy to work with at this point since it was where the spirit will end up to lighten the density of any juices in this half.

I’d test things by dipping a spoon and only tasting a few drops at a time. This way, I’d build different version of cocktails and try to find the point when adding certain ingredients made them overwhelming. Once I’d be done with a version of a cocktail, I’d drink it or dump it in a jar and drank the mix later on across a few days after work. In the end, I had an eleven ingredient punch!

In a frustrating surprise to making this cocktail, I didn’t realize that floating the layers would end up being so difficult. Prior to this cocktail I never made a layered cocktail before. It’s a pretty simple idea taking advantage of different density of liquids for this effect. It looked really easy until I realized that many layered cocktails just use one ingredient per layer with a significant difference between layers. I ended up with two layers that were similar in density which makes floating trickier. After putting enough time in getting a cocktail that I was happy with the taste, I didn’t want to abandon the whole thing and start again.

Here’s what happened with floating of using a spoon only. (In this gif, Pom Wonderful wasn't used, so it's not as clear. Other juices can taste good, but Pom tends to be more clear and brilliant in color. My grocery ran out of Pom when I bought the stuff to record this gif.)

It’s hard to see, but there’s some color separation at the very top and bottom and seeing that made me think there was a way to achieve what I had in mind. I tried a slower pour and changing the angle of the spoon to slow the flow of the poured layer. I’d spend the next few days thinking of ways to slow down the motion of the poured liquid. I thought if I would bend a spoon 90 degrees to make a platform for the yellow stuff to be floated on, that platform could slow the yellow stuff as it was poured on the red stuff. I didn’t go this far when I remembered I had some large clear ice in my freezer for built cocktails. So I tempered, cut, and chipped one of those ice cubes into a medallion shape platform.

I measured the red stuff in a glass, put the cut ice in the red layer, and tried the floating technique on top of the ice AND IT WORKED. (Regular ice cubes work too, but that's for muggles.)

RECIPE: 8 drinks 

Red Layer:
2 oz Campari
2 oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur
2 oz grenadine
8 oz pomegranate juice
8 oz water
8 tsp lime juice
8 dashes angostura bitters

Gold Layer:
10 oz fresh pineapple juice
10 oz fresh squeezed orange juice
6 oz dark rum (Rhum Barbancourt 3-Star
2 oz apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter Orchard)

In separate containers, combine all ingredients for each layer. Set aside and this can be done a few hours before serving. 

In each glass, pour 2.9 oz of the combined red layer. Place an ice medallion in each glass and with a spoon, pour 3.5 oz gold layer on top of the ice to float it.