Following on from my radio stuff recently, I’ve compiled a guide for anyone who fancies staying in over the festive season, with a few tips for how to make some nice cocktails.

Wherever cocktails are involved, preparation is usually required. Don’t think of them as drinks, but little starters. You wouldn’t throw a dish together at the last minute, so don’t expect to be able to do it with your drinks. That said, making cocktails is usually pretty easy if you have the necessary equipment and ingredients for your drinks.

Decide on what drinks you’re going to make and prepare around it. Pick your drink(s) out of a book or from my cocktail section and stick to it. Lots of really good cocktails require only clean glasses, a spoon and some ice, don’t get freaked out by all the other flashy equipment. The same goes for ingredients, buy what you know you’re going to need, not what you think you might need, that way you’ll save money and have all the kit.

When you’re buying spirits, it goes without saying that the premium stuff is better and it will show in your cocktail. The production methods between supermarket ‘value’ brands and the good stuff differ vastly across pretty much all spirit categories, quality not quantity is more likely to impress.

You will probably need citrus juice, which means buying citrus fruit, not plastic bottles which look like citrus fruit! Don’t skimp on apple juice or orange (if required) either, your drink will only be as good as your weakest (in terms of quality) ingredient.

Stick to the recipe. Insipid punch bowls and incomprehensibly sweet concoctions are born out of foolhardy experimentation, don’t give into it! The best cocktail recipes are usually the simplest, so when your mate Joe wants to throw in his strange Haitian liqueur, tell him no… and give him a slap from me. Also stick to the ratios, if you’re making double the recipe, make sure you increase all of the ingredients or the drink will be unbalanced.

Don’t panic. If you are capable of making beans on toast, you are more than capable of making a cocktail, some require only a couple of ingredients and less chance of burnt toast! Give it a practice before your guests arrive if you’ve never done it before. Also think about serving some nibbles with the drinks, mince pies with whisky cocktails, salty things with longer more refreshing drinks.

No idea why I put that picture in.

More tips…

• Limes usually juice around 25ml of lime juice.
• Lemons are usually around 35-50ml of lemon juice.
• Shaking makes the drink very cold and causes only a little dilution, shake for about 4 seconds.
• Sugar syrup is 2 parts sugar, 1 part water warmed on a pan until transparent. Keeps for a month.
• Buying ice? Get double.
• Not got a shaker? Use a thermos flask.
• Need chilled glasses? Put them on the windowsill.
• When mixing, add the cheapest ingredients first, if you mess up it wont matter so much.
• Roll your fruit before juicing, it breaks the fibres and the juice is more readily released. Try to juice fresh each time.
• Drinks with ice in the glass should always be full with ice, it actually makes the drink dilute more slowly.
• Never use the ice you have shaken with to fill the glass. It’s dirty and will dilute a lot faster.

Here are a few good Christmas cocktails:

Smirnoff Black Collins
Black Label Whisky Mac
Tanqueray Fizz

Any questions, leave ‘em in the comments, Good luck!

359 post views