Smoked Cola Might Be The Ingredient Your Drinks Are Missing

Move over, rum and coke, there are smokier concoctions being slid across bars, and these drinks are made with an ingredient known as smoked cola. If you're a fan of the textural depth that smoke can bring to food and drink recipes, adding smoked cola to your next cocktail can help turn up the dial on both flavor and body. This cola isn't made for kids.

With sparkling water, cola flavor, cinnamon, lime, roasted barley malt extract, citric acid, and caffeine, the smoky ingredient brings an extra zing to drinks, and when served alongside whisky or rum, even the most traditional, classic concoctions sing a bit louder with the modern twist. Instead of the more widely known carbonated beverage, this mixer delivers notes of oak and spice and warms palates with flavors of vanilla and citrus. With a deep brown hue, smoked cola can darken lighter beverages and offers aromas of smoky caramel to cocktails.

At Scarfes Bar, bartenders create "Rum N Roll" cocktails by mixing rum, smoked cola, tonka, and French vermouth for a modern interpretation of a drink that could have been ordered long before smoked cola entered the market. When experimenting with making your own smoky cocktails at home, pair earthy and peated whiskies with the smoked cola ingredient, then garnish with an orange peel for a refreshing drink that will have you settling easily into your chair. As with adding any new ingredient to your beverages, start slowly, taste, and adjust according to your preferences.

Once you have smoked cola stocked in your kitchen, you can further experiment with adding the mixer not only to drink recipes but also try splashing the smoky mixer into pancakes and waffles batter, sneaking it into your next batch of brownies, or flavoring basic vanilla cakes with the smoky, sophisticated upgrade. You'll wish you'd have discovered the flavorful mixer sooner.