Five golden rules of cocktail-making

As cocktail fever grips the globe and maverick mixologists continue to push the boundaries of bartending, sometimes it’s easy to forget the basics. Here are the five golden rules for cocktail making.

Here are five golden rules for improving your cocktail-making

With London Cocktail Week continuing in full swing, both UK consumers and members of the drinks industry are looking with a keener eye at what it takes to make great drinks.

While a host of seminars and tutored tastings have been dedicated to cocktail enlightenment and subverting the norm, other drinks professionals opted to spend their time educating both bartender bar-dweller on the often-forgotten basic rules of cocktail-making.

This was the case for one team of brand educators at Bacardi Brown-Forman. Tucked away in an underground hub in the heart of bustling Seven Dials, Alfonso Comas, product trainer and mixology manager for Bacardi Brown-Forman, brought the industry back to basics with his top five essential rules for cocktail-making.

He said: “As the world of bartending evolves and various trends take hold, it becomes easy to lose hold of some of some of the fundamental rules which make our trade work.”

“When people ask the question, what makes a great bartender, the answer is simple – it is the way someone tends bar, how they manage that space to ensure their customers have a fantastic experience.”

And so, from stirring and shaking, to ice and dilution – here are Bacardi Brown-Forman’s five golden rules of cocktail making.

It not about you, it’s about them

According to the Bacardi Brown-Forman training team, the categorical rule in hospitality – “the customer always comes first” – has become somewhat lost over recent years.

As cocktail theatre continues to put bartenders centre stage and mixologists gain in infamy, it’s easy to see why some might lose sight of the people putting money in the till.

“As a bartender, people do not come to your bar to see you, they come to be entertained and celebrate with their friends,” said Comas. “Giving the customer a great experience is at the centre of our industry and it is why we love what we do.”

Be informed

Following on from the first golden rule of customer service is the need for bartenders to be informed about what products are behind their bar in order to educate consumers and enable them to make informed decisions about what they drink.

In particular, the Bacardi Brown-Forman team advise bartenders to: understand what is behind your back bar and what brands are available, know all of your ingredients such as types of citrus and sugar, understand your customers and be intuitive.

“Bartending knowledge is absolutely crucial,” said Comas. “There are 186 types of orange and numerous types of sweetening agents – all affect the final outcome and quality of the drinks you serve.”

Understand different techniques

Although some bartenders might demonstrate to the contrary, for the Bacardi Brown-Forman team, mixology magic simply doesn’t actually exist – it’s all about technique.

Knowing when to add a dash of egg white, shake or stir your mix, and how to do it, is crucial knowledge for all cocktail-makers.

Comas said: “Adding egg white to a drink will give a more uniform taste and smooth out notes on the nose. Shaking obviously makes a drink colder as well as pushes air into a drink allowing flavours to be released, while stirring closely manages dilution.”

Ice and dilution

Although some bartenders are turning away from the use of ice in their drinks, many see it as an imperative ingredient for flavour dilution and, of course, temperature.

“This heavy focus on ice demonstrates how professional our trade has become. We see bartenders spending a lot of money on shipping in the purist ice from countries such as Iceland to use in their cocktails.”

The creative use of ice was also cited as an upcoming cocktail trend in a recent report by the marketing insight team of UK drinks distributor Cellar Trends.

Be a talent with your tools

In a rapidly advancing technological world, gadgets have become an essential part of most discerning bartender’s arsenal – from the simple to the complex.

“Different types of drinks require different types of tools and shakers. This really affects the character of a drink and using the wrong gadget could completely change dilution levels.”