celeriac

2 oz Gin (Aviation)
3/4 oz Pineapple Juice
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz 2:1 Simple Syrup
4 dash Celery Bitters (recipe)
1 Egg White

Shake once without ice and once with. Strain into a cocktail or coupe glass. Optional to mist more bitters across the top.

Friday after dinner, an intriguing egg white cocktail with a savory touch caught my eye in Left Coast Libations. Portland's Kelley Swenson's Celeriac seemed somewhat tropical except for the addition of celery bitters which threw me for a bit of a loop. I was also willing to give it a go since we rather enjoyed his Toto/Broken Flower a year or two ago. While in this drink he uses Bitter Truth's Celery Bitters, I used my own bitters recipe which is a lot more robustly celery; Scrappy's would probably work but Fee's might be a bit too bouillon-y. In a pinch, muddling a scant barspoon of celery seeds and letting it soak in the gin for a few minutes would probably be sufficient (just remember to fine strain).
The Celeriac we made possessed a glorious froth from the egg white and pineapple juice, and the aroma was definitely all about the celery. The sweet pineapple and lemon combination that started the sip was chased by gin and celery on the swallow. For a gin, we chose Aviation from Oregon to get us more in tune with the other coast, and its lavender donated a pleasant floral note to the herbal complexity on the swallow. Overall, the Celeriac was really smooth from the egg white, and the flavor transitions from sip to swallow were rather mild and flowing. Toward the end of the drink, we realized just how well celery and pineapple pair up! The celery definitely elevated the drink above Clisby's State Street Cocktail or perhaps Trader Vic's Hawaii Cocktail (link has recipe for both).