THSOn Blog

Cocktail Egg White Replacement

Thore Sommer -

While I enjoy a (whiskey) sour with an egg white, you then need to find a use for the yolks, cleanup gets harder and of course need some fresh eggs on hand.

There are ready to buy egg white replacements, such as, Fee Brothers Foam, but it is easy to make a good replacement at home. You just go to your shelf of special ingredients and grab some methyl cellulose, xanthan gum and gum arabic... Wait you don't have those just laying around at home?

Base Recipe

  • 500g water
  • 3,5g xanthan gum
  • 7,5g methyl cellulose
  • 2,5 gum arabic

Mix dry ingredients together and slowly use a stick blender to blend it into the water. To use it add 5-20ml to a cocktail shake, strain, add most to the glass and use on the rest a milk frother to increase the foam.

This produces a patch that probably a lifetime in a home setting. Note that different types of methyl cellulose can have vastly different viscosity levels, so play around with the ratios to get to your desired results.

Shutout to Hai from the Nou 7 bar in Hamburg, for putting this again on my radar and the starting recipe! Going through my notes I had trying this on my todo list since 2020 (no idea how it initially ended up on there though), but never got around playing with it. I've seen it now also in multiple bars that used something like this as their replacement for egg whites in cocktails.

Next thing to try is to get a Ramos Gin Fizz working with, but after initial experimentation it will require some more work to get a more stable foam.

Sourcing those ingredients sometimes can look a bit daunting, luckily there are at least two stores that generally have reasonable prices:

If you need other ideas to use up your new ingredients: