Pocket Posh Cocktails

introduction

Knowing how to make a good cocktail is almost mandatory in polite society today. The good news is that it’s very easy to learn how to make a drink, and once you understand a few simple precepts, it’s not hard to learn how to look like a professional while you do it, either. The instructions in this book are short and to the point, but when you are done reading, you will find that you’ve been provided all the information needed to impress your friends lined up in front of the bar.

Professional bartenders all know that having confidence, and, at the very least, looking as though you know what you’re doing, is extremely important when you’re standing on the service side of the bar. If you’ve never held a shaker before, practice the methodology detailed in this book when you’re on your own. Use water instead of the real ingredients, and just get a feel for what it’s like to stir, shake, and strain cocktails and mixed drinks. This is a vast generalization, but drinks served over ice are usually referred to as mixed drinks, whereas drinks served straight-up in V-shaped glasses are known as cocktails.

Then, when you do have friends around for cocktails, or a dinner party, and you make drinks for them, you’re going to get a pleasant surprise as they watch you mix their cocktails and then take their first sips: The look of admiration in their eyes will be so rewarding, you’re going to be very happy that you learned the craft of the bartender. I envy you that first experience.

the fundamentals of mixology

Although there are thousands of cocktail and mixed-drink recipes, there are far fewer standard templates on which the majority of these drinks are based. Once you become familiar with the templates, you will understand why you are adding this to that when you mix a drink, and the recipes will make sense to you.

Take, for instance, a simple Daiquiri. It’s a mixture of rum, lime juice, and sugar or simple syrup. Rum is the base spirit, lime juice makes the drink sour, and sugar balances out the sourness. It’s a very simple template. Now, if you remove the sugar from the Daiquiri, add a little pineapple juice and a few drops of grenadine, thereby balancing the sourness of the lime juice with different sweeteners, you’ve just made yourself an El Presidente cocktail. Use Bacardi rum, lime juice, and extra grenadine, and voilà, you have a Bacardi Cocktail. It’s a simple case of switching out certain ingredients and making sure that you replace them with new ingredients that bear the same flavor profile. If you use gin as a base spirit, lemon juice as a souring agent, and add two liqueurs, maraschino and crème de violette, as the sweeteners, you’ll end up with an Aviation cocktail.

Examine the Dry Gin Martini and you will see that it’s a marriage of gin, dry vermouth, and (classically) some orange bitters, too. A Manhattan calls for bourbon or straight rye, sweet vermouth, and usually some angostura bitters. In both cases the vermouth makes the straight spirit more palatable and easier to drink and the bitters add a little extra in terms of complexity. And what’s in a Rob Roy? Scotch is the base, then it gets sweet or dry vermouth or both (there are three versions), and a few dashes of Peychaud’s bitters. The Rob Roy is based on the same template as the Martini and the Manhattan: base spirit, vermouth, and bitters.

Some drinks, such as, say, the Black Russian, have just two ingredients, a straight spirit (vodka) for a base and a liqueur (Kahlúa) as a sweetening agent. Add milk or cream to the drink and you have a White Russian. Use Baileys Irish Cream instead of milk or cream, and you just made yourself a Mudslide.

Now let’s look at a group of drinks that all call for vodka and cranberry juice. The first one, the Cape Codder, calls for just those two