Clarification (AKA Milk-Washing) is an old method that can massively enhance the quality of your cocktails. The acidity of your cocktail will curdle the milk, and this will take out the bitter and astringent tastes that you get from some of the molecules that naturally occur in your drink, such as polyphenols. The whole process also adds another depth of flavor to the drink. Don't worry, you filter the slightly gross-looking curds out, and the whey that is left behind in the now beautifully clear drink will give it an amazing mouthfeel.

This method is becoming super popular in expensive cocktail bars again, but I'm going to show you how to do it at home so that you can make incredible cocktails without the hefty prices.

Disclaimer (AKA the boring bits): Always drink responsibly. This Instructable is suitable only for people of legal drinking age in their country. This drink will not be suitable for those with a milk allergy, vegans (in case the milk didn't make that clear (pun intended)), and the drink will also have a small (equivalent to about 25ml of milk) amount of lactose in it, so may not be suitable for those with lactose intolerance.

Supplies

Enough to make 4 servings of your favorite cocktail (see below for two I did)
Whole milk
A coffee pour-over or funnel
Coffee filters
A storage bottle
Mixing bowls

Step 1: Prep Your Cocktail

Prep your favorite cocktail (see my recipe for two delicious ones below). I tend to make it in batches of around 4, because the filtration process takes a fair bit of time and I'm not making it for many people. If you wanted to make a big clarified punch, or for a dinner party, you can just scale the volume of liquid up! I will explain how this affects the milk in step 2. Put all your cocktail ingredients in a jug and make sure it's stirred, but don't add any ice as you don't want to dilute it yet.

2 recipes I particularly like for this process:

The Jungle Bird

This rum and campari cocktail hits all the right notes. You get bitterness from the campari, sweetness from the pineapple and the molasses syrup, sourness from the lime, and that funk we know and love from a good pot-still rum. Per cocktail (so you will need to multiply this by the number of cocktails you want to make):

45ml good quality pot-still rum
45ml pineapple juice
22ml campari
15ml lime juice
15ml dark molasses syrup (dissolve dark muscovado sugar in water at a 1:1 ratio by weight)

The Penicillin

This spicy ginger cocktail is perfect on a cold wintery day. Per cocktail:

60ml good blended scotch (I like Monkey Shoulder)
22.5ml lemon juice
11ml ginger syrup (dissolve granulated sugar in fresh ginger juice at a 1:1 ratio by weight)
11ml honey syrup (dissolve honey in water (it helps for all of these if the water is hot) at a 3:1 ratio by volume)
A good peaty Islay scotch (you aren't going to add this now, but once you have your finished product, then you want to float a bar spoon of it on top of the drink)

Step 2: Milk Time

Add cold whole milk to your mixing bowl. You want a 4:1 ratio of cocktail to milk. So lets say we did the penicillin to serve four cocktails. We'd have 240ml of scotch, 90ml lemon juice, 45ml (for simplicity's sake I've added a ml) each of honey syrup and ginger syrup. That gives us 420ml total of cocktail liquid. Thus, we want 105ml of milk.

Slowly but surely, pour your cocktail mixture into the milk (never the other way around, or it will curdle too agressively as you have a tiny amount of milk in a large amount of cocktail). Stir as you go, you'll see curdles start to form pretty quickly. Keep going until all of your cocktail is in the milk, then cover and leave to sit for at least an hour.

Step 3: Filtration

This step can take some time. I like to use a pour-over, but not everyone has one, so I've made this to show you it can be done with a funnel. Get your funnel into whatever you intend to bottle your cocktail in and let it run through a coffee filter. I recommend not pouring too much in to the filter at any one time, as everything your filter paper absorbs will be wasted product.

Top it up every time it gets low and if it's not completely clear after the first round of filtering then let it go through one more time. It should come out looking like mine!