Fee Brothers Has Made Fat Washed Cocktails Effortless

Fat washing has always been a project. You add melted bacon fat or brown butter to a spirit, let the two get acquainted for a few hours, then freeze until you can remove the congealed fat and strain what's left. The payoff is real: A fuller mouthfeel, savory depth, and flavors that regular cocktails never achieve. But the process requires patience (and planning) most home bartenders don't have on a random evening. Conveniently, bitters king Fee Brothers just unveiled three fat wash drops that take the labor out of the equation, allowing you to make incredibly complex drinks instantly.

Their new fat wash drops come in three flavors, Browned Butter, Roasted Duck, and Bacon, and each delivers the same unctuousness, umami, and savory-salty backbone that used to take a full day of prep. Since I picked them up a month ago, I’ve been running them through a number of cocktails, always with fantastic results. My friends ask for thirds, and we’ve been having a blast experimenting with how far we can push any cocktail’s flavor.

Regardless of the specific flavor, these drops add dimensions most cocktails don’t hit. Sweet, sour, bitter, and boozy are the usual attributes in your glass. Savory and salty rarely surface, and umami almost never does. A few dashes from one of these bottles changes that, layering in richness and a rounded, mouth-coating body without the freezer, the cheesecloth, or the wait.

Here are three of my favorite drinks to make with Fee Brothers fat wash drops. One thing before you start concocting: Wash your mixing glass between fat wash varieties. A quick water rinse won't cut it. The residual fat lingers and will haunt your next drink, so give it a real scrub.

Browned Butter Fat Washed Maple Old Fashioned

• 2 oz. bourbon
• 1/4 oz. maple syrup
• 4 dashes Fee Brothers Browned Butter fat wash
• Lemon peel for garnish

Add all ingredients with ice to a mixing glass, stir, strain over one large cube in a rocks glass, and garnish with a lemon peel.

The smell hits before anything else. While I was building this drink, the browned-butter aroma took over my entire kitchen, the way it does when you've got the best pie crust or a tray of brown butter cookies in the oven. For the whiskey, I used a 12 year old Peg Leg Porker, a 93-proof Tennessee straight bourbon filtered with hickory charcoal, for a barbecue note. Before adding the drops, the cocktail has a great aroma on its own from the Peg Leg and the maple syrup, and the drops only amplify it.

The drops give the glass a nice haziness, the same cloudy look you get from a proper fat wash. Express a lemon peel over the top and the nose becomes brown butter, with a hint of barbecued pork, and a bright edge of citrus. The mouthfeel is velvety and silky, coating everything as the butter and barbecue roll over your palate.

If you want that kick of oomph from the whiskey, stay at four drops. If you're after something sweeter and creamier, add a fifth, which starts to overshadow the drink. Either way, this one lands closer to dessert in a glass.

Roasted Duck Fat Boulevardier

• 2 oz. bourbon or rye
• 1 oz. Campari
• 1 oz. sweet vermouth
• 5 dashes of Fee Brothers Roasted Duck fat wash
• Orange peel for garnish

Combine all ingredients over ice in a mixing glass, stir, strain into a coupe, and garnish with orange peel.

This is savory, earthy, and spirit-forward. For the whiskey, I used High West Bourye, bourbon and rye in the same bottle at 46% ABV, the best of both worlds. For sweet vermouth, I like Vermut Cueva Nueva, a Spanish offering featuring 88 botanicals.

The duck fat takes the Boulevardier from a clear, grapefruit-red to a hazy ruby, and that opaqueness reads as elegance in the glass. It's fantastic; 11 out of 10. The fat smooths the sharp edge off the Campari so it folds into the Bourye instead of fighting it, and a light gaminess comes through underneath, acting as a bridge between every other ingredient. Make this when you want savory over sweet and don't want the base spirit to be hidden.

Bacon Vieux Carré

• 3/4 oz. rye
• 3/4 oz. sweet vermouth
• 3/4 oz. cognac
• 2 tsp. Benedictine
• 4 dashes bitters
• 4 dashes Bacon fat wash
• Lemon twist for garnish

Combine all ingredients over ice in a mixing glass, stir, and strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

The longstanding classic, the Vieux Carré, is already a busy drink, but the dashes of bacon fat wash give an umami thread that harmonizes well. I used Red Top Rye, which has a 100% Kentucky rye mashbill that comes in more floral than the herbaceous, minty ryes you might be used to. At 105 proof, it stands up in a cocktail. For the cognac, I went with White X Cognac, a collaboration between rapper Quavo and Sazerac.

Add the fat wash, and the drink goes cloudy enough that half a floating lemon peel vanishes into it, pulling you in. There's just a hint of bacon on the nose, present but never elbowing the rest of the cocktail aside. The fruitiness of the Red Top Rye sits in the background and nudges the whole thing a touch sweeter than it would be with, say, Old Overholt.

The bacon tempers the sweetness with a savory counterweight, and the result is a perfectly layered drink. It opens sweet from the Benedictine and cognac, moves into acidity from the bitters, picks up a little spice from the rye, then finishes savory with bacon. It ticks every box. This is the drink for someone who wants balance, nuance, and a little of every major flavor sensation in one glass.