Coconut is a elementary ingredient within the tropical cocktail canon, the place coconut cream gives wealthy texture to classics just like the Piña Colada and Painkiller. However beachy drinks aren’t the one ones that profit from a salty-sweet hit of tropical taste. Right here’s how bartenders are incorporating coconut into cocktails, from Espresso Martinis to Margaritas, year-round.

“Coconut water is an effective way to make the dilution in a cocktail extra attention-grabbing with out altering the feel of the drink,” says Chicago-based bartender Vince Vibrant. The ingredient is essential to classics just like the beloved Caribbean drink Scotch and Coconut, and its delicate tang gives a very good complement to mineral-forward elements in, say, a spritz. For coffee- or tea-based drinks—just like the chilly brew-infused Mezpresso Martini and the matcha-spiked Tea Ceremony—brewing with coconut water gives added depth. Combining coconut water with equal-parts sugar, in the meantime, makes a simple syrup that Vibrant makes use of in his low-proof Rob Roy riff, the Home No. 3.

To get coconut taste with out including extra quantity to a drink, bartenders at The Rockwell Place in Brooklyn developed a way they name “coconut blasting.” To do it, they bottle coconut oil-washed Everclear in a dasher and add drops of it to the whole lot from Daiquiris to Negronis, lending them “only a whisper” of tropical notes.

For a extra intense coconut taste, think about fat-washing the bottom spirit or the whole cocktail. In his Negroni Riposato, Federico Pasian makes use of an ingenious technique for his batched Negroni: He provides just a few ounces of coconut oil to a bottle, caps it, then rolls it on its aspect over a tray stuffed with ice in order that the fats solidifies. As soon as set, he pours the batched drink into the bottle and permits it to sit down and infuse. Pasian’s is constructed with a bourbon base, porcini bitters and hazelnut liqueur, however we’ve discovered that the method can also be suited to a less complicated Negroni recipe, diluted with coconut water for a contact of salinity to steadiness out the inherent sweetness of the drink.

Whether or not it takes the place of a rocks glass, as in Morgan Schick’s Wilson cocktail, or turns into an integral a part of the drink-making course of, as on this coconut-aged Negroni, serving cocktails in coconuts not solely imparts taste, but additionally makes for a formidable presentation.

In the event you can’t discover contemporary coconut, or if you wish to fast-track its taste, think about a flavored spirit—there are really good ones now. For instance, Bimini Gin, which itself is fat-washed, shines in spirit-forward drinks just like the Yolanda. Planteray’s coconut rum, in the meantime, is made with sun-dried coconut flesh and simply upgrades decadent drinks like an Espresso Martini. Former Punch govt editor Chloe Frechette describes the rum as “richly flavored with no hint of artificiality.” Whereas coconut rums of the previous could have been too cloying, this one, she says, is “even ok to scrub away the reminiscences of dangerous coconut rum.”