THE DRINKS IN THIS BOOK ARE MADE WITH STANDARD COCKTAIL TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS, MANY OF WHICH ARE LIKELY ALREADY IN YOUR HOME BAR OR KITCHEN. IF NOT, THEY CAN ALL BE PICKED UP FAIRLY AFFORDABLY. HERE, I COVER COCKTAIL TOOLS AND BASIC TECHNIQUES THAT WILL COME IN HANDY FOR THE DRINKS AHEAD. THEY’RE NOT ALL ESSENTIAL, BUT HAVING THE RIGHT TOOLS ON HAND MAKES ANY JOB EASIER, AND A WELL-MADE PIECE OF KIT MAKES DOING A JOB MORE ENJOYABLE.
Precision is important when making cocktails. Spirits are strong ingredients and using just a tad too much or too little of them can throw off the balance of a drink. Exact measures ensure quality and consistency.
Professional bartenders tend to use two-ended metal jiggers of different sizes, each measuring a different volume. These are great for a high-speed bar environment, but for home use I usually reach for something simpler. The kitchen equipment brand Oxo makes mini angled measuring cups that are nearly perfect for making cocktails, with measurements marked from ¼ ounce to 2 ounces (60 ml); these are what I find most convenient for casual drink-making at home. In a bar or other professional setting, I prefer the ProJig from Über Bar Tools, which divides the traditional jigger into multiple compartments.
The most versatile tool for mixing drinks is a Boston shaker, a combination of pint glass and metal tin (cup). Shaken drinks are built in the glass, the metal tin is secured firmly over the top of it, and then all is shaken. Three-piece cobbler shakers (pictured on this page) are also popular. Stirred drinks can be built directly into the glass and stirred with a long-handled spoon.
My preference is to use separate tools for shaken and stirred drinks, choosing ones ideally suited to each task. This maximizes efficiency behind the bar; for casual home use, it’s more of a stylistic choice. I use a large metal tin and small “cheater” tin for shaken cocktails, which is lighter than glass—an important consideration if you make your living serving drinks. For stirred cocktails, there are plenty of attractive glass and crystal options on the market, but many vessels could work. At home, I have been using the bottom half of a glass French-press coffee maker, because I am writing full-time and cannot afford nicer things.
A long-handled spoon is useful for stirring drinks and occasionally for measuring ingredients that can tolerate some imprecision. I find that spoons with a tight spiral or no spiral at all are most comfortable to use and are easiest to twirl between one’s fingers. This is one item that I believe is worth spending some money on, as being able to deftly stir a cocktail looks cool and feels great. Standard kitchen spoons do not lend themselves to the rapid, smooth stirring ideal for chilling and diluting a cocktail.
You will likely encounter two types of cocktail strainers: Hawthorne and julep. Hawthorne strainers are the kind with a metal coil wrapped around them. Julep strainers are made of concave, perforated metal. Traditionally, Hawthornes are used for shaken drinks, juleps for stirred. Are both necessary? Not really. A Hawthorne handles both duties just fine.
One item that definitely should not be overlooked is a small finemesh strainer, also known as a tea strainer. This is used in addition to a Hawthorne strainer to catch shards of ice and bits of herbs or other ingredients and keep them out of the finished drink. Without it, shaken cocktails will come out with a crunchy surface.
A few drinks or syrups require straining larger quantities of liquid, for which a large strainer comes in handy.
You could make cocktails with store-bought citrus juice from a bottle. You could also buy a Bud Light Beer-ita cocktail in a can. I can’t recommend either course of action. Squeeze fresh juice for cocktails to achieve the best results. A small handheld citrus squeezer is good for lemons and limes, and a larger handheld squeezer or manual reamer is good for grapefruits and oranges.
Similarly, freshly grated spices are much more aromatic than ground spices from a jar. A Micro-plane is useful for freshly grating spices, especially nutmeg and cinnamon, which are often called for to garnish the surface of cocktails and punches.
Some of the drinks in this book call for homemade syrups or other ingredients, so having a few empty bottles and jars in which to store them is helpful.
Though there are no blended drinks in this book, a blender is needed for making a couple of the homemade cocktail ingredients. A handheld immersion blender is convenient for these and is a useful culinary tool.
In recent years, bartenders have become obsessed with fancy ice. This is, on the whole, a good thing, as a lot of the ice out there is small, wet, and airy, and will melt rapidly into drinks and water them down. Some bars go to extraordinary lengths to get the hardest, clearest ice they can find, up to buying sculpture-quality blocks and breaking them down with chainsaws.
This is a bit much for the home bartender. It is nice to have good ice on hand, though—ice that is regularly shaped, hard throughout, and relatively free of the air that many icemakers introduce. Silicone molds for small, large, and very large cubes are available, and I recommend them. There are also a few molds on the market for making spheres, if you want to get fancy. A small bowl or pan is also useful for freezing blocks of ice for punches.
A muddler is a long, blunt tool used for crushing ingredients in the bottom of a glass or shaker (or for evicting unruly patrons). It’s usually made of metal or wood. My favorite is the handmade PUG! wooden muddler, available online. It fits my hand better than any other I have tried.
The hot drinks in the book will need to be prepared on the stove. A small pot is good for individualsize drinks, and a larger pot can be used for drinks made in larger batches. These will also be useful for the homemade syrups called for in some recipes.
A thermometer isn’t in the usual bartender’s toolbox, but it comes in handy for the chapter on hot drinks. One could make these drinks by feel, but a candy or deepfry thermometer is more reliable.
Many of the drinks in this book can be served in typical barware: a tall collins or highball glass, a cocktail or martini glass, and a rocks glass. A few call for shot glasses. Beer glasses, such as a pint glass, German beer stein, and a chalice or flute, are also used in some recipes. Hot drinks should be served in ceramic or tempered-glass mugs.
A liquid measuring cup (usually glass, with a spout for pouring) is necessary for measuring ingredients when making punches or homemade ingredients.
Jiggers only provide accurate measures when they’re used correctly. For a traditional metal jigger, this means making sure it is held level and filling it completely until a meniscus forms at the top. For nontraditional jiggers, make sure they are held level and that liquids meet measurement lines precisely.
When preparing the ingredients for a cocktail, pour them in the order given. If building them in a mixing glass or shaker, pour the liquids in before adding ice, so that the ice doesn’t melt while the ingredients are being added.
Stirring chills ingredients without aerating them. Generally, drinks that do not use juices, eggs, or cream can be stirred instead of shaken. Use a long spoon to smoothly turn ice through the liquid until the drink is thoroughly chilled. This takes longer than shaking and depends significantly on the ice being used, but a good target is 30 to 45 seconds. Let taste be your guide.
A “dry shake” is when the ingredients are shaken without ice. This is done to aerate them and make them frothy. Bartenders use this technique most often with egg whites.
Combine all the ingredients with ice and firmly seal the shaker. With one hand on each end of the shaker, shake until the ingredients are thoroughly chilled. This is a fast process, generally the work of 5 to 10 seconds. Shake rapidly and hard! As one of my mentors put it, “You’re waking the cocktail up, not putting it to sleep.”
Straining separates the cocktail from the ice used to chill it, so that it can be poured over fresh ice or served without it. Generally speaking, it’s best to strain a cocktail into a chilled glass to keep the drink cold.
A julep strainer or Hawthorne strainer can be used for stirred drinks. For shaken drinks, it’s best to use a Hawthorne and a fine-mesh strainer together, “double straining” the cocktail by placing the second strainer between the shaker and the glass. This removes any ice shards or fragments of other ingredients that pass through the Hawthorne.
The drinks in Chapter 2 are served hot. Heating beer accentuates its bitterness, so it’s important to heat it gradually and evenly. Place beer and any other ingredients called for in a pot over low to medium heat and clip a thermometer to the pot. Heat the beer to the temperature indicated by the recipe—I find that 140°F (60°C) is a good target temperature for serving hot beer drinks. Serve it much cooler and the drink will become tepid; much hotter and the drink will be too bitter. Pour hot drinks into warmed mugs to maintain the target drink temperature.
Some garnishes just look pretty or provide a tasty snack for the drinker. Others, such as spices, herbs, or citrus, provide aromatics too. Use the right techniques to get the most out of aromatic garnishes: Grate spices freshly and lightly smack leafy herbs to release their aromas. Many of the following recipes call for twists of citrus as garnish, and you should make the most of the flavorful oils that they can add to a cocktail. Take a thin swath of peel and twist or pinch it over the glass, peel side down, to “express” the citrus oil onto the surface of the drink.
Some recipes require making syrups and jams, which can be stored and used long after that first cocktail, but you need to make sure your storage containers are clean. To sterilize a bottle or mason jar, wash it thoroughly in hot soapy water and rinse. Put it right side up in a pot along with the lid and the ends of the tongs. Completely cover them with water then boil over high heat for 15 minutes. Use the tongs to remove the jar. Pour out the water, and while the jar is still hot, fill it with warm ingredients. (Adding hot ingredients to a cool jar may cause the jar to crack.) Use the tongs to remove the lid, then seal the jar.
Several of the drinks in this book are mixed with raw eggs. Although the risk of illness is remote, it is possible to transmit salmonella via uncooked eggs. Keeping eggs refrigerated and taking care to handle them cleanly will minimize this risk. Those with compromised immune systems may wish to avoid these drinks.
