The ‘sour’ – a great cocktail to have on your menu, an eye-catching cocktail that creates a buzz in your venue, but also one that is a huge pain: egg whites or chickpea brine that all need to be carefully handled and stored, a time consuming process that can see the sour flicked into the too hard basket.
That’s the position that Danny Kane and Rebecca Grey found themselves in when working together at their Luton Lane Wine Bar in Hawthorne. Danny is a hospitality veteran with over 25 years in the industry, and Rebecca came into the bar with fresh eyes, having worked her career in architecture.
Grey told The Shout: “We were making cocktails in the bar and I said to Danny ‘this is crazy, cracking egg whites, straining chickpeas, can’t we buy this on it’s own?’ And that’s where the idea came from because you couldn’t by it on its own and store it in your cupboard.”
The idea eventually manifested itself into the reality that is Aquafab – a natural, vegan, all Australian egg white alternative that can be stored in your cupboard, and will last in your fridge for over week after it has been opened.
But, as is so often the case with a great product idea, getting it from the brain and into people’s hands can prove to be a tricky process, as Kane explained to The Shout.
“My first default was buying kilos of raw chickpeas, cooking them out and seeing what would happen to them in different temperatures and different salts and solutions and seeing how long they’d last ambient and in the fridge.
“And also, of course, the key was to see how they performed cocktail-wise. But then we took a turn where we discovered that we could source something, where we didn’t have to do that process.
“And we were literally, we’re talking about, should we buy a chickpea farm? After we found a source, then – and this is kind of our IP – we connected with Tetra-Pak because our goal was to produce a product that everyone would know had good shelf life and it was a packaging they could trust.
“Having worked in the industry, I’ve seen products come out and the packaging doesn’t work. It’s not safe, or you can’t pack it worldwide and we wanted this to be global. Tetra-Pak have been great, and they helped us along the way with consultants and the like.”
In terms of the product, the pair were very clear on what they wanted, which was a neutral flavour that would give texture and mouthfeel, that would look good and that would let the spirits and the flavours of the cocktail come through.
Kane added: “Another goal for us was no preservatives, being natural, and the product is 100 per cent Victorian. It’s produced in Ballarat on a production site that is only four years old – so their equipment is spot on.
“We ended up with a product that’s 12 months shelf stable in ambient temperature. Then it’s about seven to 10 days once you open it.”
Aquafab has now had to two production runs with accelerated testing after the first run and through that consultancy, the second run, which happen in January, has an 18-month shelf life, making it perfect for exporting.
It is also easy to use, in that if you want to replace one egg you use 30ml of Aquafab, and with the neutral flavours mixologists are able to create sours and foam drinks where the spirits of the drink shine. And, while you wouldn’t want this in your bar, the foam will stay unchanged in the glass for 45 minutes.
The product is now in over 200 venues, and Kane and Grey said they have found that when people use it, they want more and they are coming up with more creative ways to use. Danny told The Shout that prior to testing Aquafab one group he spoke to had a blanket rule ‘no raw eggs’ now one of the venues within that group has six sours on its menu.
“And it’s not just whisky or amaretto sours, one that we’ve found is really popular is a Midori Sour, we’re bringing about the Midori revolution. But they are green and white and they just look great.”
One thing the pair are really excited about is seeing what drink experts will come up with when using Aquafab, and also how the product can help venues with margin. It’s no longer about just putting rack-pour whisky in the sour, “people are now saying, I can put a premium whisky in this and charge more, because the flavour will come through”, Kane said.
He added: “Mixologists are like chefs, and we just say to them, ‘we’re giving you this ingredient, it works like this – go and see what you can do with it, play with it, work wonders with it. Because now you can, you have a product where you can easily try a recipe and use five, 10 or 30ml of this and you can experiment with flavours and styles, there’s much less wastage.”
Grey added: “Just have fun with it.”
Aquafab is available now through Paramount, ALM and ILG.