SWAY Basil Soda

Yield

Yield

1000 ml

Prep ingredients

• 75 g Basil (Leaves and Stems)
• 2 g Earl Grey Tea
• 1000 g Water
• 2.5 g Ascorbic Acid
• 5.65 g Citric Acid
• 5.65 g Malic Acid
• 90 g Sugar

Instructions

Freeze the basil (leaves and stems) and earl grey tea. Prepare acid-adjusted water by dissolving ascorbic acid, citric acid, and malic acid in 1 litre of water chilled to 4°C. Crush the frozen basil and add to the acid-adjusted water. Store in the fridge for 24 hours. Strain away the leaves, then filter through a coffee filter. Add granulated sugar at 9% of the strained liquid's weight. Carbonate. ___ Frost Bloom Extraction is just the name we've given to the workflow we've been developing. It's basically a way of making crystal-clear botanical sodas with a really fresh flavour. The idea is pretty simple. We freeze the botanicals first, then extract them in cold acid-adjusted water. After that we filter it, sweeten it, and either use it as a cordial or carbonate it into a finished soda. We developed it because we wanted a fresher basil flavour without using heat, while still making something practical enough to prep and use during service and save money! Different herbs and botanicals will most likely need different adjustments. It's still a working protocol and we're testing it, but after a lot of trials this is the workflow we've had the best results with so far. But we're not really trying to say we've invented a new technique, it's more that we've put together a workflow that consistently gives us the result we were looking for, and we'd love to see what happens when other people start experimenting with it too.