It just seems that preparing cocktails is simple, fast, and you can do it without problems almost anywhere with the available products. If we talk about the simplest “folk” mixtures, this is so. But something more complex and diverse will require preliminary preparation. The ingredients like ice, shaker and much more – not everyone has at hand. And the ingredients for cocktails also need to be selected in advance.
The mixing process itself is simple and requires sleight of hand and accuracy. The bartender’s talent consists in keeping in mind hundreds of recipes and their proportions, because rarely when a professional mixes cocktails according to book recipes, it doesn’t taste unique, because everyone has their own taste and aesthetic preferences.
For everyday life situations, it is not necessary to achieve a high level of bar skill in order to learn how to mix alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks for yourself, family and friends. But if you want to feel like a bartender at least at home and have the opportunity to surprise guests with something interesting, in addition to acquiring a recipe book, you will have to prepare in advance by purchasing some accessories, drinks and products.
Essential Equipment For Cocktails
All items that are needed for making cocktail drinks are called bar equipment. Some of it is already in your kitchen. Other accessories will have to be purchased, since the choice is large now, and everything is sold even in ready-made sets.
From the main thing that you may need:
- Shaker – a large glass with a lid, in which it is customary to mix the ingredients
- Blender
- Juicer
- Molds for ice
- Tongs or scoop for ice
- Kitchen filter
This is the minimum that you can’t do without. Everything else (strainer, meddler, geyser, etc.) is already specialized tools for professionals and they are not so much needed at home.
Well, and most importantly – you definitely cannot do without an extensive list of ingredients for cocktails. Only an enterprise (a cafe, bar, restaurant) can afford to buy everything at once, having received a universal set. Therefore, it is important to determine exactly what cocktails you will offer to the guests before the party begins, and already to prepare them, purchase the required set of ingredients.
But in any case, it doesn’t hurt to simply know what they are in principle, and what underlies the preparation of most mixed drinks. Here are more advanced list of tools you need to have, to make as many different cocktails as you like.
- Champagne glass – a tall and thin glass flute on the leg.
- Dash is a measure of volume. It does not have an exact reference to liters (data from different sources are in the range from 0.5 to 1 ml), this is, conditionally, one “bulk” of bitter or another drink when pouring through a dispenser on a bottle.
- Cocktail glass – a glass on a leg with a bowl in the shape of an inverted cone. It differs from a martini glass in a smaller volume of the bowl, which may have a gentler bottom.
- Madler is a bartender’s tool used to knead ingredients to release their aromas. You can replace it with a pestle or in a pinch, with a regular spoon.
- A mixing glass is a bartender’s tool, a capacious glass, sometimes with risks, on which the volume is indicated, and a nose for pouring a cocktail into glasses. Can be replaced with any roomy beer glass.
- A strainer is a bartender’s tool for filtering a cocktail to remove ice and solid ingredients. In most cases, you can replace the usual strainer.
- Old fashion is a low and wide glass that usually serves whiskey and many classic cocktails.
- An ounce is a unit of measure for mass as well as volume of liquids. Initially, all the proportions in the article are given in ounces, a fluid ounce in the USA is equal to 30 ml., So do not be surprised at volumes like 22.5 ml.: This is only 3/4 ounce.
- Highball is a glass that extends upward, narrower and taller than traditional glasses.
- A shaker is a bartender’s tool with a lockable lid that shakes cocktails for better mixing and cooling. If you are not a professional bartender, you can replace the shaker with any metal vessel with a lid or use a mixing glass instead (see above).
Essential Ingredients For Cocktails
First of all, you need alcohol itself. And this is not only traditional vodka, but also much more, including:
- Strong alcohol in all its diversity;
- Low alcohol drinks, among which the most common red and white wines, champagne and vermouth;
- Liqueurs of all kinds, of which the most common are orange “Curacao”, cherry “Maraschino”, chocolate “Godiva”, anise “Sambuca”, coffee “Kalua”, as well as some others;
- Balms, among which the most popular are the orange “Orange Bitters” and the bitter “Angostura”;
- Alcoholic syrups, in particular pomegranate grenadine and cordial with lime).
The second no less important category of ingredients for cocktails is non-alcoholic components, such as:
- Soda – pure, tonics, Cola, Fanta and Sprite, as well as much more
- Juices, and it is always better to add freshly squeezed, just yourself
- Sugar, both in sand and lump (for some recipes, cane is required)
- Sugar and non-alcoholic fruit syrups
- Coffee, milk and other similar “home” drinks
- Berries and fruits
- Cloves, cinnamon and other spices
- Ice
And perhaps the most important ingredient for most types of cocktails is ice. Moreover, the requirements for it are quite stringent, since it must be clean, uniform and as neutral as possible in taste. Therefore, freezing fresh or distilled water will get you the best quality of ice. Weakly mineralized waters are also allowed, but exclusively without gas.
This is just the basic classification of cocktail ingredients. In fact, drinks can be mixed from a variety of, sometimes much unexpected combinations of components. True, this requires either considerable experience or innate talent.
Different Types Of Cocktails
The classification of cocktails is extensive and diverse, it will be much easier to understand it and the required ingredients, dividing drinks into a number of categories according to key features.
Volume and Strength
- Shot drinks – drinks of different, most often large strength, served in small glasses, up to 60 ml. They are homogeneous, puff or ignited. You need to drink them in one gulp. The most striking examples are the famous “B-52” and “Kamikaze.”
- Short Drinks – mixes of medium and high strength served in glasses up to 160 ml in size. Their design can be very diverse. The most popular cocktails of this group are Caipirinha and Old Fashion.
- Long Drinks – cocktails served in large, up to 300 ml glasses, mostly not very strong, with a strength of up to 17 degrees. They are designed more so that they will be slowly savored, so they are mainly characterized by a complex recipe. Although there are extremely simple options, the most popular of which is the same Mojito.
A separate category is cocktails, which are usually served hot. The fortress is different, but not exceeding 35%. Grog, mulled wine, and Irish coffee are all in this category.
Cocktail Taste
- Daisy – mostly strong cocktails that are drunk in one gulp. Alcohol with syrup, juice or other additives.
- Julep – mixed on the basis of high degree alcohol, peppermint and water. Examples are Mojito and Whiskey Julep.
- Cardinal – strong alcohol and liquor are mixed in equal proportions. The most famous example is Red Russian.
- Collins – mixes strong and only unsweetened alcohol with soda, sugar and lemon juice. A popular example is Colonel Collins.
- Cobbler – an original mix of wine with sugar, freshly squeezed, but without pulp, citrus juice, sweet berries and fruits. There are hundreds of varieties of such cocktails.
- Flip – another original type of cocktail, which includes such an ingredient as an egg. For example, Glasgow and Lisbon drinks.
- Sauer – original cocktails with a sour taste, achieved through the use of ingredients such as lemon or lime juice. Examples are Margarita, Daiquiri or Kamikaze.
These are easy-to-cook mixes that you can cook at home. The main thing is to stock up on all the necessary ingredients in advance.
Read our cocktails A-Z if you would like a brief introduction to all the different cocktails of the world for all sorts of occasions.
Essential Alcohol For Cocktails
As you already know, there are many types of cocktails in the world. Almost every bad has their own unique cocktails and they even make famous cocktails taste different. The reason why cocktails are so different is the way they are mixed and the ingredients that are used to make them. Even though the ingredients are different, base line for cocktails usually stay the same – alcoholic drinks.
Even though every cocktail has its own taste, usually alcoholic drinks used to make them are the same. Here are 10 most popular alcoholic drinks that are used in cocktails. These are drinks that are used most commonly to make cocktails, therefore if you want to make wide variety of cocktails with a same alcoholic drink, you can definitely get one of the drinks listed below and you will get a good result.
| Beverage | Number of Famous Cocktails |
| Vodka | 2979 |
| White Rum | 1754 |
| Orange Juice | 1655 |
| Gin | 1430 |
| Grenadine Syrup | 1241 |
| Lemon juice | 1078 |
| Pineapple juice | 1072 |
| Liquor Baileys | 1005 |
| Tequila | 961 |
| Liquor Triple sec | 889 |
Syrup: Essential Ingredient For Cocktails
So, syrup is a concentrate, the main component of which is sugar. As the rest of the ingredients, a variety of components can be used: juices, extracts, flavoring additives. If we talk about good syrup, they will be natural. However, if the manufacturer decided to save on quality, – synthetic. The latter are easy enough to determine by too intense color, which is extremely difficult to achieve using natural ingredients.
For example, to get one liter of reference maple syrup, you need as much as thirty-five liters of sugar maple juice! Why? Because, firstly, it must be boiled properly, and secondly, when boiled, the juice itself pales.
That is, it turns out that a good syrup, by definition, can not be cheap. But thanks to sugar, known as an excellent preservative, syrups have a long shelf life, and since they are added to cocktails in very small doses, one bottle lasts a very, very long time.
But there are several more characteristics that you need to pay attention to when choosing a syrup:
- Thickness (viscosity). Thick viscous syrups can be used in the preparation of layered alcoholic cocktails, liquid – not.
- The amount of sugar and taste saturation. Affect the amount of syrup to be used to achieve the desired taste.
- Color intensity. The shade of the future cocktail depends on this parameter.
- Interaction with milk. Some syrups cause milk to clot.
- If everything is clear and understandable with the last points, then on the first, let’s dwell in more detail.
How To Determine Density Of Syrup
Three degrees of syrup viscosity are standard, which we will consider as an example of the ratio of water to sugar:
- The first test. Or 50% to 50%. Such a syrup cannot even be brought to a boil, it is enough to heat the water a little and just dissolve the sugar in it.
- The second test. Or 75% water and 25% sugar. Such a solution will have to be boiled for some time. The consistency is determined as follows: Rub a drop of slightly cooled syrup between the thumb and forefinger and part them. Has a thin thread appeared? You have achieved the right concentration.
- The third test. Or 85% water and 15% sugar. This syrup is boiled for a little longer, and a sign that it is ready is the appearance of a thick “thread”.
Sometimes it happens that a good syrup is easier to cook on your own than to find on sale, or you need it urgently. In this case, you will come to the rescue.
Basic Cocktail Syrup Recipes
Depending on the required density of the syrups, you need to cook longer or less, but the general instructions will be as follows:
Sugar
To prepare it, you need to take 600 grams of sugar and 400 grams of water. Depending on the required density, you can simply dissolve sugar in heated water or boil the syrup for up to 10 minutes. Just do not forget to remove the foam.
Mint
Pour 50 grams of dried peppermint leaves 0.5 liters of boiling water and leave to insist under the lid for an hour. After filtering, add 650 grams of sugar and simmer for 10 minutes.
Vanilla
It is based on sugar: when it cools down a little, dissolve 20 milliliters of vanilla extract in it.
Citric
Perhaps the longest cooking time. For it, we need 1 liter of sugar syrup, in which we bring to the boil the zest of 300 grams of lemons, and leave to infuse for two days. After this, the solution will need to be filtered and diluted with juice of the same 300 grams of lemons.
Orange
Prepared according to the recipe of citric, but in the end you can dissolve 10 grams of citric acid in the finished syrup.
Raspberry
As a basis, take 1 liter of sugar syrup. From 1 kilogram of fresh raspberries, squeeze the juice, filter it and mix with syrup, put on fire and after boiling, cook for 5 minutes over low heat.
Strawberry
Prepare, like raspberry, but after the finished syrup has cooled a little, you need to add 20 milliliters of lemon juice to it.
Cherry
Follow the recipe for raspberry syrup.
Mountain Ash
This is a syrup with pulp. It is prepared as follows: boiled rowan berries (500 grams) boiled for 7 minutes are wiped through a sieve, a solution of 650 grams of sugar and 480 millilitres of water are added to them, put on fire, brought to a boil and removed from heat.
Walnut
We make sugar syrup, but based on coffee, not water. We need it 650 millilitres. Fry 350 grams of walnuts, chop, add to hot coffee syrup, stir and infuse for about an hour.
Clove
It will take 10 grams of cloves, which must be poured with 100 millilitres of hot water and boiled for 7 minutes. The resulting infusion is filtered and mixed with 400 millilitres of sugar syrup. Done!
We have talked about essential ingredients for common cocktails worldwide. There are several tools you need to obtain for kitchen equipment, but from given ingredients you can choose some and even experiment with your own cocktails. Nevertheless there are many cocktail recipes you can choose from and make one with your own preferences and taste.
