A Batched, Fruited Manhattan—in the Microwave?

Rapidly infuse fruit, herbs, and spices into party-ready batched Manhattans with this incredibly easy kitchen trick.

Probably the two most common cocktail-related questions I get from emailers, readers who come up to talk to me at parties, people who recognize me on the street because of my dogs¹, and so forth are:

• What are the best cocktail bars in DC? 

• What’s the best way to handle a large-ish group cocktail party at home? Even with a limited menu, efficiently making single-serve drinks from scratch for everyone is quite difficult. 

Both of these questions could be the sole subject of long newsletters — and the party question would take me multiple entries, and possibly a book, to fully answer. 

But for this week I want to provide partial answers to both questions, because despite the seeming non-overlapping nature of these questions — how to manage drinking with a group at home vs how to drink well at an area bar — there is one way in which they overlap. 

That overlap comes in the form of a specific bar and a specific technique. 

The bar is Silver Lyan, the US outpost of Ryan “Mr. Lyan” Chetiyawardana’s international cocktail empire. It’s located downtown in the basement of the Riggs Hotel, in what was once an underground bank vault. It’s one of the coolest, swankiest cocktail bars in DC — and also one of the best. 

And if you go to Silver Lyan, you will (at least according to the most recent menu I can see online) find one of Lyan’s signature, technique-driven, high-science drinks — the Project Manhattan. 

The Project Manhattan is a delicate, complex riff on the stirred and boozy cocktail standard. When you order it at Silver Lyan it arrives as a single-serve drink,² so it might not seem like the answer to your cocktail party problem. 

This is a drink you should drink at the bar; it’s an absolutely superb twist on the fruited Manhattan, with a bit of apple brandy mixed into the base — I keep telling you it goes with everything! — and a little pouch of sweet stuff as garnish that I have no idea how to replicate at home. It might be my favorite cocktail garnish in the city.

The Project Manhattan is the sort of drink that makes the case for cocktail bars, in the sense that you’re probably not going to make this exact cocktail this exact way at your home.

However, you might borrow and adapt the drink’s core technique.

If you look at the menu entry, it doesn’t just list ingredients. It also says the drink is “nuked.”³

That’s because the drink is made in large batches — and then heated in a microwave. I promise am not making this up. 

Silver Lyan’s Project Manhattan requires a pricey ingredient or two and is somewhat annoying and expensive to replicate at home. 

But you can easily adapt the batched-infused-microwaved-Manhattan method for simpler, less expensive homemade cocktails.

Lyan’s technique simulates a kind of rapid-infusion/rapid-aging that integrates, softens, and matures the ingredients without a long wait in a barrel. It’s particularly great for nudging fruit and spice flavors into simple stirred cocktails. 

This means you can make large batches of quite unusual, quite flavorful, surprisingly sophisticated drinks without too much work. So if you’re throwing a party, you’ll have tasty batched drinks pre-mixed and ready to go once your guests arrive.

You just have to make them a few hours advance, let them sit and chill for a bit, then pour and briefly stir/dilute/chill when you want to serve the drink.

As a bonus,  you can explain to your friends and dinner companions that the delicious, subtle cocktails they’re drinking have been microwaved, which always raises an eyebrow or two. A good drink is a good drink. But a good drink with a good story to tell about it? That’s the ideal. 

Doctor (Your) Manhattan

Lyan’s Project Manhattan is made with a combination of Westward whisky, apple brandy, two types of vermouth (Cocchi di Torino + Martini Rosso), two types of bitters (Angostura Aromatic + Peychaud’s), and blackcurrant liqueur. 

For home bar purposes, the most intimidating aspects of the recipe are the blackcurrant liqueur, which you probably don’t have on your bar cart unless you’re a fruit liqueur completist, and the Westward whisky, which runs about $75 a bottle.

If you have an unlimited budget for this sort of thing, then sure, fine, go right ahead. But that’s quite pricey for a cocktail ingredient. And after a fair amount of testing, I am convinced that you can get great results with less expensive bottles. 

To adapt and modify this recipe, the first thing I want to do is break down the ingredients into a straightforward ratio: