Tyler Zielinski has his sights set on Speak in Code’s subterranean sequel, Double Down – he hears all about what owner Nathan Larkin thinks is becoming the new bar's big-hit drink.
High-concept cocktails, high-volume service. It’s an audacious approach, even by London standards. But if there’s one city in the UK that’s good for it, it’s Manchester. And if there’s one operator to make it happen, it’s the pedigreed team from Speak in Code.
At Double Down, the team’s latest venture, they’ve designed a space where Mancunians can let their hair down, and drink well while they do it. With local DJs spinning on the weekends, well-cared-for Guinness on tap, and considered interiors, it’s a recipe for a damn good party – something the city famously excels at.
Instead of going to the bar and finding shots of sambuca and subpar Pornstar Martinis though, guests are treated with cocktails like the quaffable Tequila | Strawberry, a Highball made with blanco tequila, nasturtium distillate and a complex, house-made strawberry wine, dispensed from the bar’s sophisticated tap system. “It aims to satisfy both angles of our audience: the ‘don't think, just drink’ crowd, as well as those who are here to nerd out with us and delve into our technique-driven drinks,” says co-owner Nathan Larkin.
Crowd pleaser
The concept for this crowd-pleaser was inspired by Speak in Code’s Strawberry Margarita, a cocktail that Larkin and team always thought would “smash” in a Highball format. Since Double Down is three-times the capacity of Speak in Code, lactofermenting strawberries – an ingredient featured in its signature Margarita – wasn’t the most sustainable way to inject some funky red fruit notes into the Tequila | Strawberry. Instead, the team created a strawberry wine base with a pétillant naturel, colloquially known as pét nat, sourced from Manchester-based The Good Spirits Co.
For the strawberry flavour, Double Down creates a macerated strawberry syrup by adding sugar to diced strawberries, vacuum-packing them, and leaving them overnight for extraction through osmosis. Once the maceration has finished, the strawberries and subsequent syrup are flash heated in a pan to release the fruit’s pectin, yielding a jammier strawberry syrup. It’s at this point that the pét nat is added into the pan, along with half a campden tablet, which is used to suppress any active yeasts in the natural wine. The mix is briefly blended, stirred and filtered, yielding their strawberry wine.
While the Speak in Code Strawberry Margarita uses hoja santa for its herbaceous peppery note and bitterness, Double Down swaps that popular plant for micro nasturtium leaf. “We tried an infusion and it was great, however we got a much cleaner aromatic profile when creating a nasturtium distillate,” says Larkin. The distillate’s green, peppery notes complement both the strawberry wine and Tapatio tequila which is used as the base spirit.
After adding a dash of both mezcal and Select Aperitivo for depth of flavour, the components are mixed together with a touch of water for dilution, then kegged in 15-litre batches and force carbonated through the bar’s tap cocktail system (it currently has five lines for quick-service Highballs).
“Carbonating this drink is an intricate process of two one-hour charges in a keg, then connecting to a CO2 line in a kegerator at 2°, before finally moving it to a dispense line and pulling through a chiller to maintain the temperature at 2°,” explains Larkin.
Served over block ice that’s made and cut in house with its BF tech ice block maker and handy dandy bandsaw, the Tequila | Strawberry goes the whole hog.
They’re technical details that may not interest Barry from Bolton, whose night out at Double Down was purely for a laugh. But rest assured he and the lads will have this order on repeat.