BARWARE

“It’s my industrial-strength hair-dryer, and I can’t live without it!” says Princess Vespa in Spaceballs. Cocktail enthusiasts and experts alike cling to specific tools that fit their style of bartending. What works and makes sense for one person might seem like complete insanity to another. With a little experimentation, you can identify your own industrial-strength hair-dryers.

BARSPOONS

These long-handled spoons used for stirring sometimes feature a twisted shaft. The barspoon also serves as a measurement—except there’s no uniform size for a barspoon. Using the same barspoon for all barspoon measurements will ensure consistency. A

BLENDER

For preparing frozen drinks, the blender should have a strong motor capable of crushing ice easily. For blending liquid ingredients, a stick or immersion blender is fine, but use a countertop model for ice. B

GRATER

Use a handheld grater just as you would for preparing food. C

JIGGER

A jigger is absolutely integral to measuring consistent, quality drinks. A one- and two-ounce jigger and a ½- and ¾-ounce jigger will cover all bases. Taller, Japanese-style jiggers feature interior markings for smaller measures. D

JUICER

Whether you use an electric juicer or a handheld model, fresh juice is absolutely essential for good cocktails. E

MIXING GLASS

From a pint glass to Japanese cut crystal, mixing glasses come in all shapes and sizes, but glass is key to control dilution. A metal shaker can work in a pinch, but makes it harder to chill the drink without overdiluting it. F

MUDDLER

This large stick will release the flavor of herbs and fruit or beat someone up—depending on your agenda. Wooden muddlers can be high maintenance, and textured ones can prove too aggressive on delicate ingredients. Look for one that’s smooth and heavy. G

SHAKERS

We prefer the weighted shaker, in which an 18-ounce metal shaker fits into a 28-ounce shaker. This workhorse style is most common behind the bar.

Other styles include the Parisian shaker, the cobbler, and the Boston shaker. In the Parisian, two stainless steel tins join with a clean seam that may or may not be secure. Use a two-hand shake to be sure. After the Parisian came the cobbler, which features a cap that goes over the strainer portion of the tin, which fits into the larger bottom tin. The cobbler is elegant and does the job well, but the top can prove difficult to remove, and the built-in strainer doesn’t let you adjust the strain. The Boston shaker consists of a pint glass and a large shaking tin. Glass is the downside to the Boston shaker. It can’t chill a drink as well as metal, and it instantly becomes a deadly weapon with the slightest slip.H

SPEED POURERS

These control the flow of liquid from the bottle, allowing you to measure accurately without spilling. Make sure the speed pourer fits into the bottle well to prevent wasting alcohol. I

STRAINERS

Flat-topped, perforated, and with a metal spiral around the perimeter, the Hawthorne strainer fits snugly into the large tin of an 18–28, Boston, or Parisian shaker. Push the Hawthorne strainer forward to adjust the straining level. Julep strainers, consisting of a shallow perforated bowl attached to a handle, are used to strain stirred drinks. They should fit snugly into your preferred mixing glass. The cone strainer is basically a small sieve that ensures that no ice chips or bits of muddled fruit or herbs escape the Hawthorne strainer and affect the texture of a drink. J, K, L

Y-SHAPED VEGETABLE PEELER

This kitchen tool is handy behind the bar for making twists. M

GLASSWARE

Besides using the right barware to make cocktails, it’s equally important to use the appropriate serving vessels for them. Every container has its specific reason and purpose.

BEER GLASS

This pint glass (16 ounces) is either conical in shape or nonik (“no-Nick”), which bulges slightly toward the top.

COLLINS GLASS

Named after the Tom Collins cocktail, this tall, cylindrical glass holds 10 to 14 ounces. The highball glass is a shorter, wider variation.

COUPE

Reportedly modeled after Marie Antoinette’s left breast, this timeless classic holds 5 to 6 ounces. Used for Champagne in the past, it has become the gold standard for serving craft cocktails. Chill them in advance.

FIZZ GLASS

This lovechild of a coupe and cocktail (martini) glass holds 6 to 8 ounces.

FLUTE

Concave, trumpet-shaped, or cylindrical but always narrow, to avoid surface-area loss of carbonation, a flute is always on a stem to prevent the drinker’s hand from warming the drink. It holds 4 to 7 ounces.

MUG

A mug is a ceramic cup that holds 6 to 8 ounces and, like a teacup, features a handle for holding hot drinks. Glass variations usually are larger and narrower (to avoid heat loss) than punch glasses.

PUNCH BOWL

These large serving vessels, often though not exclusively glass or crystal, hold at least 64 ounces and come with matching ladles.

PUNCH GLASS

A small glass or crystal mug that holds 4 to 6 ounces.

ROCKS GLASS

A square or cylindrical glass that holds 8 ounces and has a thick base. A double rocks glass is the same shape but holds twice the volume.

SWIZZLE GLASS

A footed pilsner glass that holds 10 to 16 ounces.

TIKI BOWL

These stylized, sculptural, often ceramic vessels hold 16 to 20 ounces and come in various Pacific incarnations meant to represent Polynesian gods or spirits.

WINE GLASS

Generically a glass bowl that holds 4 to 8 ounces atop a glass stem and foot. Numerous variations allow for different volumes and surface areas and for cupping aromas or vapors.

INGREDIENTS

BITTERS

Once upon a time bitters were medicine, a blend of herbs and botanicals steeped in alcohol that served as a cure-all. We now use many of those same bitters to round out our cocktails. When a brand of bitters is specified, that specific bitter is integral to the drink. However, experimentation is an important part of the learning experience.

CARBONATION

For the recipes in the book, we’ve indicated using a dry sparkling wine. We prefer Gruet Brut. Add any carbonated or sparkling ingredients after you’ve poured the drink into the glass. Don’t shake or mix afterward.

CITRUS

We can’t emphasize the importance of fresh citrus juice enough. Desperation might have you reaching for the prepackaged or bottled stuff or, worse, something in a plastic squeeze bottle, but nothing ever beats the real thing. Think of citrus like dairy. You want it as close to the original as commercially possible. Anything else is a bad idea.

CREAM

Organic heavy cream is best for making cocktails.

EGGS

Eggs used in cocktails should be small, brown organic eggs. Note: Consuming raw or undercooked eggs may increase your risk of food-borne illness. For extra safety, bathe eggs quickly in water (90 to 120°F), then dry them immediately.

GARNISHES

Cherries for garnish should be brandied or candied, such as the Luxardo brand. No neon maraschino monsters, please!

Always rasp cinnamon, nutmeg, and other grated garnishes fresh to optimize their aromatics.

When muddling mint, use only the leaves—no stems—and reserve the best sprig tops for garnish. Tap the mint against the back of your hand to release the oils before garnishing.

Salt for rimming should be kosher rough salt. The texture is more conducive than table or other kinds of salt to cocktail preparation and drinking.

For twists, use a Y-shaped peeler on citrus fruit. Avoid the pith, which adds unwanted bitterness. Pinch the twist, skin side down, over the drink, rub it around the rim of the glass, then float it, skin side up, in the drink.

ICE

Water holds our bodies together as well as our drinks. Achieving proper dilution makes for a properly chilled and balanced drink. Good, solid ice helps you achieve that. When shaking a mixture over ice, use crushed ice. If you don’t have crushed ice or a refrigerator that will dispense it, put a handful of ice cubes in a clean plastic bag, and crush them with a wooden mallet or meat tenderizer before putting them into the cocktail shaker.

If serving a drink on the rocks, always build the full drink first and add the ice last, immediately before serving.

PUREES

You can make your own at home if you prefer, but for the home bartender it’s a lot of additional work with ingredients that might be hard to find. The goal is to use a puree that doesn’t include added sugar. The brand we prefer is Perfect Puree, which you can find at any good specialty food store or online.

RUM

When colonists set sail from Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they discovered that the cash crop in the New World was sugar. (See below.) After gold and silver mines, the fortunes of the Western Hemisphere came from sugar fields. Processing sugarcane into sugar resulted in molasses. From molasses came a fiery, distilled spirit with an equally fiery name—“kill-devil” or rumbullion—which sailed up and down the Eastern Seaboard, fueling much of the New World’s development. Rum once dominated these new dominions. But people still looked down on its rough edges. It was, after all, the by-product of a by-product.

Today rum is a complex, nuanced spirit, and its three main styles still hark back to centuries and colonies past. The English style is big and burly, found in Jamaica, Barbados, the Virgin Islands, and Trinidad and Tobago. The French style of Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe uses mostly sugarcane to produce earthy, grassy, herbal agricole rums. The Spanish style, made in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic, has a certain delicateness to it. Cachaça is a sugarcane-based spirit made predominantly in Brazil.

Whatever the style, rum is an extremely diverse category. When recipes in this book call for specific brands, rather than just a style, it’s because the other ingredients work specifically with that brand. If you can’t find that brand, you may have to refine your approach and make a few extra drinks—but that’s all part of the fun.

SUGAR

Sugar is the paterfamilias of rum. Most of us already have white sugar on hand at home, so that one’s easy.

Demerara, on the northern coast of South America, was a Dutch colony until 1815 and part of British Guiana until 1966. The sugar that bears its name originally came from cane fields there, but now it’s a style rather than a designation of origin. To make demerara sugar, producers press sugarcane and steam the juice of the first pressing to form thick cane syrup. That’s allowed to dehydrate, leaving behind large, golden-brown crystals of sugar. Because it’s not refined, demerara sugar has a rich, creamy, molasses-like flavor.

Cane syrup is made from juice extracted from raw sugarcane stalks and boiled down until thick. It’s much easier to buy than to make.

SYRUPS

Syrups are to cocktails what salt is to cooking. See the following section for more details.

VERMOUTH

Vermouth begins to appear in the mid-eighteenth century in Turin, Italy, the home of this wine fortified with neutral grape brandy. Traditionally there are two main styles: dry and sweet. Dry is often called French-style in old cocktail manuals, and sweet vermouth is often referred to as Italian. From sweet vermouth in the Manhattan to dry vermouth in the martini, the fortified wine plays a crucial role in many of America’s oldest and most well-known cocktails.

In addition to those two styles, here are a few variations. Bianco vermouth is similar to dry vermouth but sweeter and with prominent vanilla notes. (A wonderful brand is Dolin Bianco, produced in Chambray, France.) Amber vermouth tastes similar to sweet vermouth but is lighter in color and sweetness. Noilly Prat Amber is a staple in this style, with strong notes of vanilla and cinnamon. Made of both rosé and white wine, rosé vermouth, a combination of the sweet and bianco styles, is citrus and vanilla forward.

SYRUPS & INFUSIONS

Syrups aren’t just cloying sweeteners. They can improve a cocktail in many ways—adding unique flavors, providing body, and taming stubborn ingredients—that liquors and other modifiers can’t. Infusions offer another method for expanding the creativity of a drink. Alcohol loves to be infused, soaking up and combining flavors with minimal effort, through simple maceration.

SIMPLE SYRUP

2 cups white sugar

2 cups water

Stir in a pan on low heat until they combine. Refrigerated, the mixture will last for three weeks.

AGAVE SYRUP

1 cup agave nectar

1 cup water

Build in pan, and stir over low heat until combined. It will keep in the refrigerator for two to three weeks.

BANANA RUM

1 750 ml bottle demerara 151 rum

3 very ripe bananas

In a large bowl, mash the bananas, and add the rum. Chill for 48 hours in the refrigerator, and then fine strain. This rum will keep indefinitely in your liquor cabinet.

CHILI SYRUP

10 medium red chilis

2 cups white sugar

2 cups water

Cut peppers lengthwise, and put in a pan with the sugar and water. Cook for 10 minutes over medium heat. Blend the peppers, and fine strain the mixture. It will keep in the refrigerator for two weeks.

CINNAMON SYRUP

10 cinnamon sticks

2 cups water

2 cups white sugar

Place all ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil, and turn off the heat. Cover, and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours. Strain out the cinnamon, and refrigerate. The syrup will keep for two weeks.

DEMERARA SYRUP

2 cups demerara sugar

2 cups water

Heat in a sauce pan on medium heat until sugar and water fully combine. The mixture will keep for three weeks in the refrigerator.

GINGER SYRUP

1 cup ginger juice

1 cup demerara sugar or brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

Build in a saucepan, and cook on low heat until the sugar dissolves. Cool, and refrigerate. The mixture will keep for two weeks.

GREEN TEA CACHAÇA

1750 ml bottle cachaça

¾ cup green tea leaves

Stir together in large pitcher, let sit for 30 minutes, and strain leaves. It keeps indefinitely.

GRENADINE

2 cups pomegranate juice

1 cup white sugar

⅛ teaspoon rose water

peel of 1 large orange

Cook all ingredients over medium heat for 10 minutes. Strain out peel. The mixture will keep in the refrigerator for two or three weeks.

HONEY SYRUP

1½ cups honey

1½ cups water

Heat in a pan on low until combined. The syrup keeps in the refrigerator for three weeks.

HOT HONEY SYRUP

1½ cups honey

10 ounces water

2 ounces white rum

5 jalapeños

Combine honey and water and bring to a boil. Add the rum and jalapeños. Blend well, and fine strain. The mixture will keep for two weeks.

MINT SYRUP

2 cups white sugar

2 cups water

15 mint leaves

Heat sugar and water on low in a small pan until they combine.

Add the mint leaves, and let them steep for 30 minutes. Strain out the leaves, and the mixture will last in the refrigerator for three weeks.

ORGEAT

This is an essential almond-based syrup for many tiki drinks, though one of the first cocktails to use it wasn’t a tiki drink but the Japanese Cocktail created by bartending forefather Jerry Thomas in honor of the first Japanese diplomatic mission to America in 1860. Pronounced “OR-zhah” in French or “OR-zhat” or “OR-zhee-uht” in English.

1 pound whole raw almonds

4 cups water

2 cups white sugar

1 cup demerara or light brown sugar

1 ounce cognac

¾ teaspoon orange flower water

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a food processor, chop the almonds medium to fine. Spread them on a baking sheet and cook for 12 to 15 minutes, until golden. In a deep pan, combine the water, the toasted almonds, and both sugars. Cook on medium heat until the mixture comes to a boil. Blend with an immersion blender or traditional blender into a thick paste. Fine strain by pressing through cheesecloth or a fine wire-mesh strainer. Add the cognac and orange flower water; stir well. Seal in a bottle or container, and the mixture will keep in the refrigerator for two weeks.

PASSION FRUIT SYRUP

2 cups passion fruit puree

2 cups white sugar

Build in a saucepan and cook on low heat, stirring until sugar fully combines. Remove from heat and let cool. Refrigerate. The syrup will last for two weeks.

RAISIN RUM

2 cups raisins

1 750 ml bottle Mount Gay rum

Place rum and raisins in a large container. Cover and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours. Strain, and save raisins for garnish or baking.

RHUBARB SYRUP

2 cups raw rhubarb, diced

2 cups white sugar

2 cups water

Build in pan, bring to a simmer over medium heat, and cook until rhubarb is soft, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. Press through fine strainer. The syrup will keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

VANILLA SYRUP

2 vanilla pods

2 cups water

2 cups white sugar

Cut the vanilla pods lengthwise, and scrape out the seeds. Put the seeds, pods, water, and sugar in a small pan, and heat until the sugar combines. Let sit 24 hours at room temperature. Strain out the pods, and chill the liquid in the refrigerator. The mixture keeps for two weeks.

TECHNIQUES

Sometimes it really is the motion of the ocean. Here’s how to do the job right.

BLEND

When using a countertop blender and cubed or crushed ice, pulse generously to break the ice without breaking the machine.

If using a stick blender, always keep the blades and their protective cover below the surface level of the liquid. Otherwise you’ll be wearing your cocktail rather than drinking it.

CHILL

Put glassware in a freezer or fill it with an ice-water bath before mixing or shaking a drink. For hot drinks, do the opposite: Chafe the glassware first with hot water.

MIX

When building mixed drinks to be shaken or stirred, start with smaller volume and least expensive ingredients first: dashes of bitters, fruits or herbs to be muddled, juices, syrups, modifiers, and finally the base spirit. Recipe conventions list alcohols first, then non-alcohols, and both in descending order, but that’s for planning rather than making. Now you know.

MUDDLE

The key is to press rather than smash. You want to coax the juices or oils from fruit or herbs rather than crushing them from them. The harder you push, the more likely you’ll release bitterness from the plant structure rather than the botanical essence.

RIM

For cocktails requiring a sugar or salt rim, wipe a lemon or lime wedge around the edge of the glass. Then hold the glass upside down and roll the outside only in salt or sugar. Don’t get any inside the glass or you’ll radically alter the flavor profile of the drink.

SHAKE

Shaken drinks typically contain citrus, cream, eggs, fruit, or herbs. Depending on the size of the ice cubes, shaking time may vary, but shake like you mean it, hard and fast. Don’t go crazy, though: no more than 8 to 12 seconds. Shaking for longer than that is showing off and risks bruising the drink. Your goal is to chill, dilute, and aerate the cocktail, not to agitate it to death.

Always make sure the tin is closed tightly. Cobbler shakers (page 3) have a built-in strainer, but we prefer weighted shaking tins.

When building drinks, prepare them in the smaller tin, reserving the larger one for eggs or cream. When making cocktails with eggs or cream, add them right before mixing to avoid curdling, and dry shake (no ice) for 5 to 7 seconds to emulsify. Then shake with ice for 10 to 15 seconds to chill and dilute.

Strain shaken drinks from the large half of the metal tin using a Hawthorne strainer.

Another method is the whip shake, by which you shake a drink with only one ice cube or a few pellets of crushed ice to incorporate the ingredients before straining.

STIR

Stirred cocktails consist primarily of spirits and modifiers. Prepare them in a mixing glass with plenty of ice to dilute and chill them. Cracking the ice will allow you to fit more in the glass to chill properly.

Pour stirred drinks from the mixing glass through a julep strainer into the serving vessel.

STRAIN

How you strain and which strainer you use depend on what kind of drink you’re making.