The Simple Guide To Great Cocktails

Overview

Cocktails themselves are not hard to make, but getting rid of the mindset that makes them seem complicated can be very challenging. So read and reread those bullets a few times until you're comfortable; they're more important than any cocktail recipe you will ever read.

There’s a big difference between making classic cocktails on demand (traditional mixology) and mixing a great drink. Think of it like training for the Olympics versus staying fit and healthy for the sake of personal wellness.

If you are interested in traditional mixology where you will learn exactly what to do when you hear people call out for a Sidecar or a Rusty Nail, this article is not really aimed at you (although it will be generally useful and probably interesting). Instead, I would strongly recommend picking up copies of what I personally consider the two greatest cocktail books in print: The Savoy Cocktail Book, and The Old Waldorf~Astoria Bar Book. And hey, the very best of luck on your journey!

On the other hand, if you don’t care so much about the names of old drinks or memorizing ingredients that you may not have in the moment, if you want a more flexible, more modern approach to using ingredients on hand, what’s fresh, what’s seasonal and thinking less about precise measurements and more about simple gourmet flavor combinations, then you’re in the rightest (and most exciting) place imaginable. Let’s get to it.

Very first thing I would ask you to do as we start off is to forget everything you think you need to know about making cocktails. Traditional mixology is full of rules and techniques and details to remember, and that may have shaped your notion of what it means to be good at mixing drinks. We won’t need any of that stuff where we’re going. Just move it all to the side and clear your mind. Focus on this instead:

• Cocktails are systems of liquid flavor, nothing more and nothing less.
• Any system can be improved: inefficiencies can be made efficient and complexities made simple.
• When the general relationships within the system are understood, things which appear complicated become easy.
• When things become easy, you become comfortable, and then the only limitation is your own creativity.

Cocktails themselves are not hard to make, but getting rid of the mindset that makes them seem complicated can be very challenging. So read and reread those bullets a few times until you're comfortable; they're more important than any cocktail recipe you will ever read.

It’s amazing how many unhelpful built-in assumptions there are about the “right way” to make a good cocktail. Performance anxiety much? Do you feel that same way when it comes to the food you cook? Probably not. Sure, there are certain specific dishes that you might choose to recreate as faithfully to the original recipe as possible. But I am guessing that’s only a few times per year and probably doesn’t include what you yourself would consider your best dishes. But you still consider yourself a good cook who enjoys cooking, right? So why are cocktails so different? They shouldn’t be, and that’s really the point we are making. The cocktails you make right at home can be both very simple AND every bit as delicious as the most amazing cocktail you’ve ever had out at a bar or restaurant. And you can look oh-so-cool making them too!

That’s because there is a secret. There is a gourmet cheat code for great drinks that the bar industry has known about and used for years, for decades even. It’s an all-natural way to combine flavors quickly and to dramatically reduce the number of ingredients in a cocktail while maintaining all the gourmet flavor of those ingredients. You think the average cocktail needs to include 7 or 8 different ingredients like they do when made using traditional mixology? That's a hard no.

The secret is infusion. Infusion is the use of one ingredient to flavor another, usually liquid, ingredient. Two best examples of infusion are coffee and tea. You combine those ingredients with water and then strain them off, enjoying the flavor they leave behind. Well, this is exactly the same thing except we are infusing spirits instead of water. We are loading flavor into the one ingredient we know if always going to be in a cocktail: the spirit*. And then we are using that flavor-loaded spirit to mix our drinks with fewer individual ingredients than ever before.

*see our note below on infused mocktails

Why is infusion such a powerful tool when it comes to making cocktails? Two reasons:

1. Infusion allows you to "combine ingredients" in a simple, natural way
2. Combining ingredients means keeping all that gourmet flavor with fewer things to measure and pour, and that means simpler, easier drinks

This point is best illustrated using a visual comparison of two ways of making a cocktail: with infusion and without.

Without infusion (traditional). This is where every flavor in your drink is a liquid you need to measure:

With infusion (improved). This is where you infuse complex flavor into the spirit (or alternative) and dramatically simplify the steps needed to mix a drink: