This cocktail is in honor of the International Day of Peace which is September 21st each year. As I reflected on this for the last few weeks I settled upon the notion that peace is a mind set. Not just a tolerance of each other but a belief that the world can be made more vibrant by combining beautifully diverse things together in new ways to yield something unexpected and complex...offering a totally new perspective and a richer and deeper life experience.

I chose to make a cocktail with a product with a product called B'lure. It is the extract of the Butterfly Pea Flower plant which is the most stunning color of blue I have ever seen in nature. The fun part is that the color of the extract is dependent on the level of pH. The color is blue at pH 8 to pH 4 (if in neutral substances like water, clear spirits or milk). It will change to royal purple at pH 3 and to bright pink at pH 2 so the more acidic it becomes.

2 oz Gin (I used Botanist)
½ oz Rosemary simple syrup (recipe below)
4 drops Black Cloud prairie rose bitters
½ oz clarified lime juice (details below)
¼ oz Clear Creek Pear brandy
2 dropperfulls of B'lure butterfly pea flower extract

Mix everything except clarified lime juice over ice for 20 seconds and pour into glass. Serve with lime juice separately and allow the drinker to try the cocktail first without the juice and then add in the juice themselves to change the color

Rosemary Simple Syrup

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 six inch rosemary sprig

Bring the ingredients to a boil. Take off heat and allow to steep and cool for 20 minutes. Story unused portion in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Clarified Lime Juice

Clarifying juice is an easy to way to make stunning cocktails because it removes all the solids and leaves only the flavor essence of the juice behind. You achieve the results by heating the juice and adding a coagulant called agar agar (buy on amazon) to the juice and then chilling it. The agar agar binds to the solids and the juice is strained off. There are dozens of recipes on the internet. If you want to get close without the fuss run it through a fine mesh strainer with a coffee filter in it. It will take a few hours but it's going to get pretty close to the same results.

For more details about the drinkstagram event that inspired this cocktail search Instagram with the hashtag #peacepours. it is the brain child of a UK mixologist who goes by @theamateurmixologist