Blitzed Smashed and Drunk: Simple Steps to Make Cocktails

There is nothing better than a well-made drink. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a perfectly steeped green tea, a glass of fresh homemade iced tea or a perfectly constructed cocktail, a well-made drink always tastes better. At the bar, it is very easy to get a well-made drink; at home, that may not be the case. The art of making cocktails is something everyone can master. As a cocktail drinker, I’ve been called everything from a snob to a pain in the ass to meticulous and particular with my taste. Hell, even my local bar has a “Frieds” Button on their Bar Computer for whenever I order something that’s not in their system and they don’t want to screw around with figuring out upcharges and the like. Much of that simply comes from believing that a drinker who knows what he likes and how it’s supposed to taste is better suited to order what he likes. What better way to know how you like your drink made than to know what you like than make it yourself to your taste.

Of course, we can thank an attorney writing down the basics of how to make a cocktail. While works like The Savoy Cocktail Book are famous for their collection of recipes, it was David Embury, a tax lawyer and partner at Curtis, Mallet–Prevost, Colt & Mosle, who first outlined the basic principles to making a quality drink in his 1948 book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. His outline, which included such key points that a cocktail should be made from a good quality high proof liquor, that it should whet the appetite as opposed to dull it, be dry yet smooth and well iced, still serve as certain maxims for proper drink making. His ideas best outline the classic before dinner drink to a tee. While Embury had no problem with sweeter drinks, he was more focused on the classic before dinner cocktail above all else.

Embury, when he wrote the The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, broke things down very simply. He believed that the ratio of 1:2:8 was how to perfectly make a cocktail. This ratio was 1 part sweet to 2 parts sour to 8 parts base liquor. It tended to favor the sour spectrum of drinks more than anything else. He also broke things down into 3 key categories – the Base, the Modifying Agent and Special Flavorings. The Base is exactly what it sounds like. For Embury, this was generally considered a single spirit that made up the majority of the cocktail. The Modifying Agent was used to soften the alcohol and provide flavor to enhance that of the base. Modifiers according to Embury included vermouth, spirits like Amer Picon that were bitter in nature, fruit juices and ingredients like eggs, cream and sugar. His final classification, Special Flavors, encapsulated many liqueurs like Grand Marnier, Chartreuse and Marschino, the use of flavored syrups like Grenadine and Oregat, bitters and cordials that were to be used sparingly as a replacement for the sweet component of a drink.

As with many things from late ‘40s and the ‘50s, tastes change and evolve. So have the rules of making cocktails. Even though Embury acts as a great guidepost to understand how balance needs to be achieved, his ratio has been thrown out the window in favor of one that generally seeks better balance. Most bartenders will subscribe to the ration of 2:1:1. This is roughly 2 Ounces of a liquor to 1 ounce of sour to 1 ounce of sweet. It has come to be the standard for cocktails because it is much more flexible and allows for greater room in creating and bringing flavors together. Most bars will have some rough variation on this. This is considered the golden standard because it gives enough room for play and tweaking. If you look at most recipes that are available online, they will fall into some variant of this as well. More spirit forward drinks that are all liquor may be a 1:1:1 ratio, while some drinks may favor multiple ingredients in smaller amounts. At the end of the day, the most important thing out of a good cocktail is how well the drinker likes it; with enough room to play with things, it becomes easy to find what you like and enjoy most.

Most recipes will conform to some sort of balance based around this ratio. In a nutshell, these recipes will generally say to add together and then serve and might not dictate whether to shake or stir. Or, they are old recipes and don’t conform to the proper way to make a drink. In the home bar, this really comes down to whether or not we shake or we stir. Now that we’re ready to make our drink, we mix them all together in a shaker and then… do we shake or do we stir. This is one of the most important signs of making a quality drink. Its importance can’t be overstated; over the weekend, I was at a bar and I nearly flipped out at the bartender for screwing up a drink because she shook instead of stirred. I ordered a Negroni, which is a very spirit forward cocktail, comprised of just spirits. The bartender poured everything into her Boston Shaker, shook, strained then served. Instead of getting a cocktail that was beautiful looking, I was served a drink that was hazy and demanded that she make a new one because it was bartending 101 that she screwed up. Despite being told by my bartender that I was wrong and had no idea what I was talking about, she made me a replacement and I was much happier with a far more balanced drink.

The reason I was happy with my cocktail having been stirred as opposed to shaken, is purely technical. While I could say that it has to do with texture and clarity and all sorts of fancy cooking terms or that it chills the drink better, it’s purely technical and all science. This has to do with relative densities of liquids. When using ingredients with similar relative densities, it becomes easier to incorporate the ingredients together. When using ingredients without similar relative densities, shaking is necessary to bring them together. It’s just like dealing with oil and vinegar. Left alone, the two separate into two distinct layers; when shaken, they mix together and stay that way for a bit of time. Making a liquor forward cocktail like a Sazerac, a Martini, an Aviation or a Manhattan uses ingredients with similar densities and require less effort to mix. Stirring works just fine and does nothing to disturb the cocktail and doesn’t disrupt the velveteen texture of those types of cocktails. When making cocktails with citrus, cream, egg whites and other, non-carbonated, non-spirit ingredients, shaking is required. Many of these ingredients have a relative density that is higher than the alcohol. In order to bring the flavors together, shaking does two things. First, it violently mixes the ingredients together so they don’t start to immediately separate out. Second, it changes the texture of the drink by aerating it and making it effervescent which adds to the flavor profile. In a nutshell, stir your pure liquor drinks and shake your citrus cocktails. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and taste the difference yourself.

Finally, we come to the most important part of any cocktail. A balanced drink is essential. For all I can talk about shaking and stirring or ratios, a drink that isn’t balanced is going to ruin the drink. Some drinks are meant to be sweet and others are made to be tart and some are built on the sole premise of making you hung over, but they are all made to not overcompensate in flavor. Truth is, balance is just a fancy word for taste, and as anyone will tell you, taste is key. This is where you get to taste your drink, and if you like it, enjoy it. If not, make a note of what you don't like and go back to the drawing board. The easiest way to get that taste you want ties back to the first step in the process and that 2:1:1 ratio. Tweak it to get the desired flavor you want and try from there. Cocktails are full of fantastic flavor and taste, but it ultimately is up to the imbiber to enjoy. If the taste isn’t right, you’re not going to enjoy it.