Your own bartender: what you need to know to make cocktails at home

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you are preparing cocktails at home, it is important to consider some nuances. The life hacker asked a professional bar manager how to choose the right combination of ingredients, determine proportions and where to get ideas for creating drinks.

Preparation and tools

If you approach the issue of mixing cocktails at home in more detail, then for a start, I would advise you to look through the literature on the bar business. For example, a beginner just needs to read The Bartender Bible and IMBIBE by David Wondrich. First, it will help you better understand what you mix your drink from and what should come out in the end. Secondly, it is very interesting.

Ninety-five percent of what is and what will be has already been invented. And the unique cocktails that fall into the remaining 5% are a small miracle and, as a rule, an accident. But for those who do nothing, even accidents do not happen.

Instruments play an important role in the preparation of cocktails. They are an extension of the hands of the bartender.

Everything you need for a good result: a comfortable and reliable shaker, mixing glass, bar spoon, strainer, fine strainer and, of course, good ice (large square ice from an ice maker).

When choosing equipment, the “expensive - high quality” rule does not always work.

Shaker

When choosing a shaker, try squeezing the exposed part with your hand. If the metal bends a lot, the shaker will soon start to leak. The glasses should fit snugly into each other and easily open when hit correctly.

Mixing bowl

The mixing bowl should be made of strong, thick glass. You can choose an iron one, but it is not very convenient and aesthetic.

The whole grace of making a drink in a glass glass lies in the fact that you see the drink, you see that nothing superfluous has got there.

Bar spoon

When choosing a spoon, it is enough to make sure that everything is in order with its center of gravity and that it fits comfortably in your hand. The rest is a matter of taste.

Strainer

The strainer (English strainer - "filter", "sieve") - a tool that sifts out large particles of ice or pieces of fruit when the bartender pours a cocktail from a shaker into a glass.

There are two types of strainers:

• Julep strainer (without spring at the edges). It was invented before the invention of straws, to drink from glasses that are filled with crushed ice.
• Standard strainer with spring.

They are all good. Which one to choose is a matter of taste.

Fine Strainer

In fact, this is an ordinary strainer, even from a hardware store can work. However, the smaller the holes, the better.

Mixing technique

Drinks without the acidic part (this is usually lemon or lime juice) - Negroni or Americano, Arno or Bijou - are easy to mix in a glass. It is enough to pour the ingredients into a glass, add ice and stir. Then simply drain from the ice into a chilled glass or drink with ice - it's a matter of taste.

But, whatever one may say, you cannot mix a good drink without a shaker and ice. There are two main mixing techniques - shake and wash. Everything else - blend (beat in a blender), build (pour on ice), layer (put in layers) - echoes of either a club or a beach party.

Shayk

The bartender pours the cheaper ingredients first. If you make a mistake, the mistake will cost less.

When the ingredients are in the shaker, ice can be added. The shaker should be full of ice - this way the drink will be less diluted with water.

The more ice there is in the glass, the slower it will melt and the less water there will be.

After intensively whipping the drink for 3-6 seconds, it must be filtered from the used ice into a chilled glass using a strainer. Maybe the shaker had fruits, mint, basil and so on. There should be a nice clean drink in the glass.

Steer

Same story: ingredients, ice, stirring, filter.

ELEPHANT

If you're making yourself a simple mix, there is a funny ELEPHANT club rule: glass, ice, base, filler.

The strong part (base) is poured first on the ice to smooth out the roughness and alcoholism. Since inexpensive alcohol is used in mix drinks, it is usually fragrant, sharp, and alcoholic. Two or three ingredients do not mix properly, so the alcohol needs to be smoothed and cooled.

Proportions and structure

The word "cocktail" (English cocktail - "cock's tail"), if we dig deep, is just a small category of mixed drinks.

A cocktail is a strong part, a sweet part, a bitter part, and water or soda.

Each drink has its own specific structure or category. There are no more than 15-17 of these structures in the world.

• Daisy: hard part, liqueur sweet part, sour part. An example of a cocktail with this structure is Margarita.
• Fizz: strong part, sour part, sweet part, protein and soda. An example of a cocktail with this structure is Gin Fizz.
• Collins … The only difference from fizz is the lack of protein. An example of a cocktail with this structure is John Collins.
• Sauer(usually a drink with egg white): the strong part, the sour part and the sweet part. An example of a cocktail with this structure is the Whiskey Sour.
• Martini: a strong piece decorated with a few drops of vermouth.

Any professional bartender can simply substitute the ingredients. It's like substituting words into sentences, adding beautiful phrases. The rest is a matter of technique and tactics. Tactics here means choosing how high-quality spirits you make and to whom.

Combinations

When mixing cocktails at home, look out for some great proven combinations:

• wine, mint and cranberry;
• vodka and basil;
• whiskey and passion fruit;
• amaro (herbal liqueur) and cherries;
• tequila, tomato and celery;
• tequila and orange.

Use not only purchased, but also homemade syrups for cocktails. This is a whole field for experimentation.

For example, 800 grams of sugar, 1 liter of water, and 20 grams of cinnamon sticks can be used to make homemade cinnamon syrup. It is ideal for a Red Neck cocktail (40 ml of House bourbon, 20 ml of cinnamon syrup, 20 ml of sour, 100 ml of dry apple cider, 10 g of bacon for garnish).

And if 500 g of barberry candies are poured into 500 ml of water and boiled to a liquid state, you get a barberry syrup that tastes bright to taste. We advise you to try "Candy Tree" with it (50 ml of vodka, 30 ml of homemade barberry syrup, 30 ml of lemon juice, 15 ml of blackcurrant liqueur, 5 ml of pomegranate syrup).

Of the most unusual combinations, I can name our extravagant but sophisticated drink Crusher No. 14. For him, we mixed banana sambuca, passionfruit puree, cream, lemon juice in a shaker and got a new hit.

To repeat this cocktail at home, you will need:

• 50 ml banana sambuca;
• 20 ml passion fruit puree;
• 20 ml cream;
• 20 ml lemon juice;
• 10 ml sugar syrup;
• whipped cream;
• cherry for decoration.

Experiments and cocktail names

Making delicious drinks requires good proven recipes. You can take classic cocktail recipes as a basis and add something of your own.

It is very important to experiment and try even a notoriously unsuccessful product. So sometimes very unusual combinations come to mind, which in the end can pleasantly surprise.

There is no exact rule for coming up with a name. It's easier to make a mental map - everything will fall into place.

For example, we want to celebrate the birthday of Gena the crocodile in Anapa and present him with a cocktail. We are looking for associations with a crocodile, with Anapa, with the sea, with a blue helicopter and ice cream. We collect identical associations from each circle and form a drink. We define the matching ingredients and sculpt the name.

Most often, the names attract the ears to the ingredients. It's even funny. For example, a spicy drink with ginger "Ostrovsky" or a cocktail with wine "Innocent".

Everything else is just a play of images and words.

For example, I want the drink to be called Low Kick. A cool and trendy name today that comes mostly from Muay Thai. Low-kick is, as a rule, an imperceptible blow that, hitting the target twice or three times, knocks the opponent down. How to tie it to a drink? It's simple. The drink should be slow acting but strong. And then the play of tastes and combinations does its job.