‘Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble!’ As fun as it is to chant your cocktail ingredients like the witches from Macbeth, there is no need for spells and incantations to create these striking black gin recipes - although they do take some special ingredients (no eye-of-newt though, we promise)! Each one is perfect for a spooky Halloween party and works just as well as a way to impress your gin pals at any other time of the year.
Here are our 3 top tips for making your eerie libations inky black whilst keeping them utterly delicious. They are perfect for whenever you’re in the mood to be a little goth!
Our first and favourite tip, simply for its beautiful strangeness, is to use squid ink:
It’s been turning indulgent Venetian risottos the colour of the midnight sky for centuries, but squid ink also has a place on your cocktail cart. Unlike activated charcoal (see below), squid ink is not flavourless or odourless. It adds the faintest flavour of the ocean to your drink, so consider it one of your core ingredients rather than a purely aesthetic addition. It’s delicious, for example, in a Red Snapper or in this Squid Ink Martini recipe — but use it sparingly!
Ingredients
60ml gin
1 tbsp dry vermouth
1/8 tsp squid ink (available online)
Fig (for a fruitier finish), a lemon twist (for a citrus edge) or olive (for something savoury), to garnish
Method
Fill a mixing jug with ice and add your liquid ingredients. Stir to chill and dilute, then strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish and serve.
Our second tip is to use activated charcoal:
Flavourless and odourless, activated charcoal — which comes in a convenient powder form — is the trendiest way to turn your cocktails black.
You can source activated charcoal easily online, and once it arrives, using it couldn’t be simpler. Just add half of a teaspoon to your cocktail shaker with your liquid ingredients and shake and strain as usual.
If you’re making a punch or G&T then simply add the activated charcoal half a teaspoon at a time, stirring constantly, until you’ve reached the desired depth of colour.
A word of warning: activated charcoal is hugely absorbent, and that property doesn’t disappear when you use it in a drink. Anyone on any kind of medication should avoid drinks containing activated charcoal for at least four hours after consuming medicine orally.
Our third tip is to use food colouring:
If squid ink and activated charcoal give you the heebie-jeebies, go back to basics by using food colouring to turn your gin the colour of shadow.
This method is by far the most accessible, but it’s also, arguably, the least effective. To turn your gin black in the bottle, just add 10 drops of blue food colouring, 10 drops of red food colouring and eight drops of green food colouring to a 75cl bottle of gin.
You can use your black gin as normal — and it makes for a ghostly G&T!
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