Hosnian Highball

Submitted by Xylo Pethtel for the competition Challenge COMeversary: Bartending Duty.

One of the Hosnian system’s many claims to fame, and a key part of its high culture, or working culture, depending on which planet you asked, the Hosnian Highball came in 7 variants, each serving a similar basis on different platforms with different flairs.

On Hosnian Prime, one of the most well off and well constructed worlds in the galaxy, the Hosnian Highball was considered a lesser relic by the elites and politicians in their towering spires and spikes that dotted a still well kept planet city floor. Thusly even though Prime Hosnian Highball appears the most refined and is most particularly prepared of all the 7 variants, it’s home is the city floor restaurants and bars of the massive Prime middle class, styling the drink to include popular fruits of the planet shifting by year.

The common 30 ABY Prime Highball Recipe relied on new Listehol Rum from the freed outer rim planet, a more basic rum that was more easily complimented by the multitude of fruity flavors that gave the Prime Highball its shape and taste. This Rum also provided a rather potent alcoholic content, especially when combined with the classic late 20s Oo’ta Blue, a milder drink that backed up more the coloring and flavor than punch, the two combining often with the infused Blasberry to create a pleasant green like syrup that settled to the bottom of the glasses and served as a sweet starter. Nominally, Prime Highballs of the past had included copious amounts of Corellian Bluefruit and a deeper, more rich blue color, but with the secession of the planet in 29 ABY, and the subsequent Tarrifs, bluefruit supplies in the Hosnian system dwindled with farms on Raysho proving insufficient. Thusly the new year Prime Highball includes a single Tablespoon of the blue fruit juice and particulates, so that the tradition and expected flavor can maintain its presence in a more middling way, a step back that became a symbol of the secession amongst the middle class of the planet, strengthening its ties to the work environment, and to the New Republic.

Often served in tilted glasses meant to resemble the Starscrapers of Hosnian Prime’s planet city from the perspective of those that lived below, Prime Highball also got its bubbliness from an unconventional and cleverly adaptive way, a true sign of not just the defiance, but the artistic creativity Hosnian Prime’s middle class was known for. It had been hundreds of years since extremely restrictive Carbon laws had been passed on the planet to prevent the total collapse of its atmosphere and water resources, a fate that had befallen its sister Hosnian before it. Under these laws not even carbonated beverages or foods were allowed for consumption while work was underway to scrub the skies following Prime’s rapid rise to prominence. To keep the bubbles and frothing taste of their drinks, Prime Highballs are served most often with a small spire electrolyzer, churning the small amount of freshwater inserted into the drink, sometimes at higher doses to offset the new rum’s potency, into oxygen, bubbling to the surface and enabling controlled displays and textures, a practice the Higher ups of Hosnian society found a convenient get away from the laws they get refuse to revoke even now that their purpose had been served, those below clinking their Gelgellan glasses to another round of fruity flavor…