I'm FAIRly Sure That's How You Spell Kumquat

37.5ml Fair Quinoa Vodka

12.5ml Fair Kumquat Liqueur

25ml Tangerine juice

20ml Aquafaba

15ml Lemon and Lime Oleo-Saccharum

3 dashes Orange bitters

Grab a cocktail shaker and put all of the ingredients in

Don't put any ice in the shaker

Close it up and rattle the absolute bones off it

Open the shaker, add ice to the mixture, close it and rattle it again

Strain into a coupe glass with a hawthorne and fine strainer

Garnish with dehydrated orange wheel (or don't, I'm not the boss of you)

Here's one of my entries into cocktail competitions. I came third... Got a pretty sick apron out of it and a trip to Manchester. So I'd call that a success.

The aim of the cocktail competition was to create a sustainable cocktail; in keeping with Fair Drinks brand ethos of "Think Human Drink Fair"

First step... Google "sustainability"

After I was pretty sure it meant what I thought it meant, I went about making my cocktail.

I had been very fortunate to try a few of the liqueurs from Fair Drinks and when I found out that we had to use either Kumquat or Cafe, I remembered how much I hate Espresso Martinis, so I went with the Kumquat.

(Side note, the only reason I knew what a kumquat was is because, at one of my birthday parties as a child, one of my friends was convinced it was a baby seal. Kristian, if you're reading this, you were an idiot)

I knew that I wanted to make some sort of Sour, but I really wanted the kumquat flavour to come through; this was going to take at least a modicum of effort at this point, but I persevered.

That's the Spirit!

With regards to the base spirit, I had a choice between vodka or gin. We only had the vodka on the bar, so after zero consideration, I decided I was making a vodka sour.

Seriously though, the Fair Gin is really delicious but for this cocktail, the juniper didn't work.

As I mentioned earlier, it had to be sustainable and that was easily the hardest part. I'm about as sustainable as a platonic relationship with your ex, so I had to look into it. I also wanted it to be vegan; this was for 2 reasons: 1) My manager, Caz, had various dietary requirements and I needed her input 2) I really wanted to win

Chickpea water... yumm?

To make it vegan, I chose to swap out the usual egg white with aquafaba. What is aquafaba? You probably didn't ask, but I'm going to tell you anyway. Well! Hold onto your pants, amigo.

It's chickpea water...

The problem with it is that it smells like cooked chicken wrapped in wet cardboard. It's fusty. It has a very fusty aroma. But we threw it away before and I used it in my cocktail so one point to me.

L-l-l-l-l-lemon Bomb! (And other citrus fruits)

To counteract the faint smell of musk emanating from the cocktail every time I made it, I looked into a couple of options; from syrups to citrus oil. The fact that it had to be sustainable was actually a saving grace in the end.

As anyone who works in bars will know, when you're prepping fruit for garnish, you wind up throwing a lot of it out. Tops and tails? Gone. That lime sliver because you misjudged the angle of your slice? Gone. That orange which is clearly taking the pith (I am not sorry)? Gone.

Instead of throwing all that out, what you can do is chuck it in a tub with a load of sugar and leave it alone for a while. Hygroscopic, booiiii!!

Basically, sugar draws moisture from wherever it can. So if you cover a load of lemon and lime peels in sugar, it will draw out any moisture from it; including the delicious citrus oils. So what you're left with is a thick, syrupy gloop which tastes like Summer and smells like Spring. If Spring involves a lemon grove exploding.

The citrus oils masked the smell of the aquafabe like a dream. You barely noticed the aroma of decaying paper.

Set the Juice Loose

I knew I was going to use some sort of orange or orange-like juice but the whole sustainability thing was bothering me. I don't live in a place that grows copious amounts of citrus fruit. I've nary seen a lime tree sprouting on the streets of Edinburgh. So whatever I chose would have been shipped in from miles away (damn my carbon footprint).

My saving grace came in the form of a wonky veg box from Lidl. If you haven't heard of these, Lidl takes all the fruit and veg which people wouldn't buy because they're idiots and puts them in boxes for £1.50. Perfectly good food which, again, idiots have deemed ugly.

I had bought a couple of these boxes recently and I was led to believe that people were really, really picky about tangerines. Every box had a tonne of them.

So I juiced them and filtered the juice to get rid of all the bits.

Don't do that, by the way; especially not with a coffee filter.

Unless you have some sort of industrial filterer or don't have any plans for about 14 hours, just leave it be and filter it after you've made the cocktail. It is painfully slow. Like 1 finger typing slow.

So that's that. My cocktail. Enjoy... I guess?