Bar Stock
Cocktail essentials
"Many of the stock items you will need may be already in your kitchen cupboards or drinks cabinet. The job of making drinks is much easier – and more pleasurable – when everything is to hand. Consequently, whether the drinks are for an intimate ‘diner a deux’, entertaining a few friends, a family get- together at Christmas or Thanksgiving, a summer barbecue or garden party or a more formal celebration, the most important thing is preparation. Lay everything out neatly and keep your utensils and glasses clean. Squeeze enough juice in advance, cut lemons, limes, oranges and other fruit for garnishes and twists and make sure that mixers and fruit juices are well chilled. Ask one or two friends to come around early – that way you can gossip and cut lemon slices at the same time."
Bar Stock
The drinks in this book are for the most part based on a single base spirit (such as gin, vodka or rum) to which is added a second spirit, liqueur (either Cointreau or Galliano), bitters, juices or minerals. This way, you can choose your favourite spirit and create drinks around it. The exotically named, beautifully bottled and sometime obscure liqueurs and spirits have been avoided. I leave these for you to discover and enjoy for yourself!
Ice
You’ll need ice – broken, crushed and cubes and probably lots of it. Never use the same ice twice. Clean, clear ice cubes are hard to make, especially if you live in a hard water area. Even bottled waters can make cloudy cubes. If your cubes are cloudy, you could use purified drinking water, available at your chemist, although it is more expensive than bottled. Alternatively, check out the ice on sale at your off license or liquor store. The cubes should be clear. If they’re cloudy, you might as well save your money and make your own from tap water.
Keep ice cubes in an ice bucket and use tongs to pick them up. If they get stuck together, a quick squirt of soda water will separate them.
To make broken ice, place some cubes into a plastic bag and hit them with a rolling pin! The aim is to make each piece about one third the original ice – cube size.
To make crushed ice, you could either carry on hitting the bag or else put the broken ice into a blender. Unless you have a heavy duty blender, or one that the maker says will crush ice, don’t put whole cubes in it. Your blades will never forgive you! There are several ice crushers available on the market, both electric and manual. Remember, too, that broken and crushed ice will melt quickly, so make it just before you need it and use well – chilled glasses.
Base Spirits
Choose the brand you enjoy most, Quality spirits may be a little more expensive, but a cocktail is no better than its poorest ingredient! The main base spirits are gin, vodka, rum (whit and dark, see the section on rum, page index), tequila, brandy and whiskey.
For the sake of simplicity, when referring to whisky in this book, we have adopted the accepted British spelling of the word unless specifically referring to Irish or American whiskey, such as bourbon, rye, corn or Kentucky, Avoid using high quality Scotch malt unless a recipe demands it. A good blend will be perfect.
Liqueurs
These are sweetish drinks made from a base spirit which is infused, macerated or redistilled with roots, barks, flowers, fruits or seeds. (In the United States, liqueurs are called cordials. In other English speaking countries, however, a cordial is a non-alcoholic, concentrated fruit juice.) Some of the drinks in this book require Galliano, triple sec, such as Cointreau, and Campari.
Galliano is a sweetish, gold coloured liqueur from Lombardy in Italy and has a spicy, herbal taste tinged with vanilla. It comes in a very tall bottle and was named after Major Guiseppe Galliano, an Italian war hero from the Abyssinian Wars of 1895. The recipe, containing more than 80 herbs, roots, flowers and berries from Alpine regions, is a closely guarded secret and the method of production has remained unchanged since it was first made by the distiller Arturo Vaccari.
Triple sec
One of the most refined forms of Curacao, triple sec a colourless liqueur made from the peel of small, green oranges native to the island of Curacao in the Caribbean. Triple sec means ‘triple dry’, but the liqueur is not as dry as it sounds, and is a major ingredient in many of the most famous cocktails and mixed drinks. The world’s best known brand of triple sec is Cointreau, first made in 1849 at Angers, France, by brothers Edouard and Adolphe Cointreau. Curacao can also come in different colours – blue, green, yellow and red – and is used mainly to produce many of the more vividly coloured modern cocktails and mixed drinks.
Campari really comes somewhere in between a bitters and a liqueur. It is a patent Italian aperitif (from the Latin aperire, ‘to open’, and thus an alcoholic drink taken before a meal to stimulate and sharpen the appetite). It is red and very dry, with a pronounced quinine taste, and can either be drunk ‘on the rocks’ with soda or used as the ingredient in a cocktail. Campari is the basis of two of the most famous cocktails, the Americano and the Negroni.
Wines, aromatized wines and fortified wines
Vermouths are properly aromatized wines. The best known French vermouth is Noilly prat, Made in Marseilles. It is very dry and is made with two white wines and 40 hers which are steeped for 18 months. Turin, Italy, is the biggest vermouth producing city and is the home of both Martini and Cinzano which produce excellent dry, extra dry and sweet vermouths, which can be either red or white.
Despite its red (Italian: rosso) colour, sweet vermouth is also made with white wine, albeit with sweeter grapes to which sweeteners, quinine and caramel are added.
Sherry and port
These two wonderful fortified wines are so often ignored or simply offered either ‘straight’ as an aperitif (in the case of sherry) or as a digestif (in the case of port). There are a number of delicious cocktails and mixed drinks which use these as their base and which offer an opportunity to be a little different. A good sherry choice for cocktails would be a fino, while for port, select a tawny. For more on these two wines,
Wines
Entire books have been written on the relative merits of individual wines. It really comes down to a simple matter of taste. The choice of wine or champagne is entirely up to you.
Beer
No matter what you have lovingly created, there will always be one person at the party who will want a beer – and nothing else. Take as much trouble with beer as you would with any spirit. Each has its won unique colour and flavor. Check out ‘real ales’ and those available from micro – brew – eries. Beer and ale are also the basis of some interesting cocktails and punches. Stout is a very dark – almost black – ale and is used in a black velvet. Bitter amber ale is used in the punch called brown Betty.
Angostura bitters
In the recipes in this book you will frequently see in the ingredients ‘1 or 2 dashes bitters’. Bitters are an essential ingredient of a large number of cocktails. Oddly enough, bitters are bitter if you taste them straight, but their effect in a cocktail is almost the exact opposite. Bitters essences are alcoholic drinks made from roots, flowers, fruits and peels macerated in neutral spirit. The most famous patent bitters are angostura bitters
Originally made in the town of Angostura, (now Cuidad Bolivar), Venezuela, it is now produced in Trinidad. Angostura has over 40 ingredients, including gentian root and the bark from the cusparia tree. In this book, when you see bitters specified, use angostura bitters.
Grenadine
Grenadine is a sweet syrup flavoured with pomegranate juice, which gives it its rich, rosy – pink colur. Prolonged exposure to the air once the bottle has been opened will make the syrup ferment and mould, so keep an eye on it. To stop the fermentation, you could add about 10 per cent vodka – but remember, your grenadine should not then be used in mocktails! You could perhaps decant some grenadine into another bottle, and vodka to 10 percent of the volume, label it and keep the remainder as ‘unadulterated’. Keep the grenadine in a cool place, but don’t’ refrigerate it as this can cause the sugar to crystallise, or at least harden, which prevents it from mixing easily with other drinks.
Minerals and juices
If you’ve purchased a good quality spirit. Why spoil it with poor quality minerals and juices? Squeeze your own citrus juices or buy the best you can find and serve chilled. A comprehensive selection includes: soda water, cola, tonic water, ginger ale, lemonade, lemon – lime soda, tomato juice, orange juice, cranberry juice, grape juice, pineapple juice, apple juice, grapefruit juice, lemon juice, lime juice and Rose’s Lime Juice, it is also worth trying some of the more ‘exotic’ juices, such as passion fruit, mango, peach and tangerine.
Fresh fruit
Freshly squeezed citrus fruits will produce the best juice, Citrus fruits other than lemons turn soft and show spots as they age, while lemons turn hard. While the flesh inside might be OK, it may have an peculiar taste. Choose fruits with bright skins and remember to wash them before using the skin for twists. Once squeezed, fruit juices will slowly start to ferment. Refrigeration will slow the process, but my advice is ‘buy ‘ em fresh, squeeze’ em fresh and use ‘em frsh’.
Strain lemon and lime juice before use to ensure no pips get in the drink. Likewise, you might want to strain other citrus juices. Strain through a fine nylon sieve to ensure that clear drinks remain unclouded by the juice. If you don’t have the energy or time to hand squeeze your fruit and don’t have one of those fancy electric juicers, try using a miser/blender. Peel the fruit (reserving the peel), pulp it at high speed and strain. Peaches and mangos can be ‘squeezed’ in a blender and yes, you can even do a pineapple this way, but don’t forget to remove the peel, take out the eyes and core and cut it into slices (reserving some slices for garnish) before juicing. If you want to buy your fresh juices ‘ready squeezed’ from a supermarket, check the sell by date to ensure freshness.
Although there are many famous and delicious cocktails which use cream or milk, none are included in this book. Yoghurt, however, is a wonderful ingredient in mocktails, and you will find a few ‘healthy options’ to try in that section.
The famous pina colada, possibly the most popular cocktail in the world, does use coconut cream as one of its ingredients. This is very simple to make and the instructions are given alongside the recipe.
Some bartenders also use a teaspoon of raw egg white or egg yolk to give a cocktail a ‘silver’ and ‘frothy’ or ‘golden’ finish. Although the egg cannot be tasted, many people don’t like the idea of raw egg in their drink. Furthermore, some people may be advised on medical grounds to avoid raw eggs altogether. In this book, drinks that include egg are omitted.
Condiments
Drinks with tomato juice, such as the bloody Mary can be ‘spiced up’ according to taste with Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, ground black pepper and perhaps a few celery seeds.
You will also need
Salt
Preferably coarsely ground, if you want to make the tequila based Margarita or the vodka based salty dog.
Sugar
in cube form; granulated sugar and castor sugar (sometimes called ‘superfine’ in recipe books). Gomme syrup is simply a sugar syrup and is easy to make. The object is to make the sugar syrup as heavy as possible without crystallization. Gomme syrup is used in place of castor sugar and most bartenders prefer it since there is less risk of there being a sediment at the bottom of the glass and it also saves time.
Spices
these are used particularly in punches and hot drinks. Nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and cloves are probably already in your kitchen cupboard.
Garnishes
green cocktail olives, cocktail onions, springs of fresh mint. Mint is an easy plant to grow in a garden or on a window sill. There are many varieties, including pineapple mint, apple mint and variegated (with yellow and green leaves) varieties. Grow mint in a pot even in the garden that is unless you want your garden full of it as it will spread and overwhelm other plants.
Wedges, slices and twists of orange, lemon slices and lime slices; pineapple and grapefruit slices, maraschino cherries are also useful. Seasonal fruit it always an attractive and delicious garnish for mocktails and party punches: try cool cucumber or apple wedges.
"Many of the stock items you will need may be already in your kitchen cupboards or drinks cabinet. The job of making drinks is much easier – and more pleasurable – when everything is to hand. Consequently, whether the drinks are for an intimate ‘diner a deux’, entertaining a few friends, a family get- together at Christmas or Thanksgiving, a summer barbecue or garden party or a more formal celebration, the most important thing is preparation. Lay everything out neatly and keep your utensils and glasses clean. Squeeze enough juice in advance, cut lemons, limes, oranges and other fruit for garnishes and twists and make sure that mixers and fruit juices are well chilled. Ask one or two friends to come around early – that way you can gossip and cut lemon slices at the same time."
Bar Stock
The drinks in this book are for the most part based on a single base spirit (such as gin, vodka or rum) to which is added a second spirit, liqueur (either Cointreau or Galliano), bitters, juices or minerals. This way, you can choose your favourite spirit and create drinks around it. The exotically named, beautifully bottled and sometime obscure liqueurs and spirits have been avoided. I leave these for you to discover and enjoy for yourself!
Ice
You’ll need ice – broken, crushed and cubes and probably lots of it. Never use the same ice twice. Clean, clear ice cubes are hard to make, especially if you live in a hard water area. Even bottled waters can make cloudy cubes. If your cubes are cloudy, you could use purified drinking water, available at your chemist, although it is more expensive than bottled. Alternatively, check out the ice on sale at your off license or liquor store. The cubes should be clear. If they’re cloudy, you might as well save your money and make your own from tap water.
Keep ice cubes in an ice bucket and use tongs to pick them up. If they get stuck together, a quick squirt of soda water will separate them.
To make broken ice, place some cubes into a plastic bag and hit them with a rolling pin! The aim is to make each piece about one third the original ice – cube size.
To make crushed ice, you could either carry on hitting the bag or else put the broken ice into a blender. Unless you have a heavy duty blender, or one that the maker says will crush ice, don’t put whole cubes in it. Your blades will never forgive you! There are several ice crushers available on the market, both electric and manual. Remember, too, that broken and crushed ice will melt quickly, so make it just before you need it and use well – chilled glasses.
Base Spirits
Choose the brand you enjoy most, Quality spirits may be a little more expensive, but a cocktail is no better than its poorest ingredient! The main base spirits are gin, vodka, rum (whit and dark, see the section on rum, page index), tequila, brandy and whiskey.
For the sake of simplicity, when referring to whisky in this book, we have adopted the accepted British spelling of the word unless specifically referring to Irish or American whiskey, such as bourbon, rye, corn or Kentucky, Avoid using high quality Scotch malt unless a recipe demands it. A good blend will be perfect.
Liqueurs
These are sweetish drinks made from a base spirit which is infused, macerated or redistilled with roots, barks, flowers, fruits or seeds. (In the United States, liqueurs are called cordials. In other English speaking countries, however, a cordial is a non-alcoholic, concentrated fruit juice.) Some of the drinks in this book require Galliano, triple sec, such as Cointreau, and Campari.
Galliano is a sweetish, gold coloured liqueur from Lombardy in Italy and has a spicy, herbal taste tinged with vanilla. It comes in a very tall bottle and was named after Major Guiseppe Galliano, an Italian war hero from the Abyssinian Wars of 1895. The recipe, containing more than 80 herbs, roots, flowers and berries from Alpine regions, is a closely guarded secret and the method of production has remained unchanged since it was first made by the distiller Arturo Vaccari.
Triple sec
One of the most refined forms of Curacao, triple sec a colourless liqueur made from the peel of small, green oranges native to the island of Curacao in the Caribbean. Triple sec means ‘triple dry’, but the liqueur is not as dry as it sounds, and is a major ingredient in many of the most famous cocktails and mixed drinks. The world’s best known brand of triple sec is Cointreau, first made in 1849 at Angers, France, by brothers Edouard and Adolphe Cointreau. Curacao can also come in different colours – blue, green, yellow and red – and is used mainly to produce many of the more vividly coloured modern cocktails and mixed drinks.
Campari really comes somewhere in between a bitters and a liqueur. It is a patent Italian aperitif (from the Latin aperire, ‘to open’, and thus an alcoholic drink taken before a meal to stimulate and sharpen the appetite). It is red and very dry, with a pronounced quinine taste, and can either be drunk ‘on the rocks’ with soda or used as the ingredient in a cocktail. Campari is the basis of two of the most famous cocktails, the Americano and the Negroni.
Wines, aromatized wines and fortified wines
Vermouths are properly aromatized wines. The best known French vermouth is Noilly prat, Made in Marseilles. It is very dry and is made with two white wines and 40 hers which are steeped for 18 months. Turin, Italy, is the biggest vermouth producing city and is the home of both Martini and Cinzano which produce excellent dry, extra dry and sweet vermouths, which can be either red or white.
Despite its red (Italian: rosso) colour, sweet vermouth is also made with white wine, albeit with sweeter grapes to which sweeteners, quinine and caramel are added.
Sherry and port
These two wonderful fortified wines are so often ignored or simply offered either ‘straight’ as an aperitif (in the case of sherry) or as a digestif (in the case of port). There are a number of delicious cocktails and mixed drinks which use these as their base and which offer an opportunity to be a little different. A good sherry choice for cocktails would be a fino, while for port, select a tawny. For more on these two wines,
Wines
Entire books have been written on the relative merits of individual wines. It really comes down to a simple matter of taste. The choice of wine or champagne is entirely up to you.
Beer
No matter what you have lovingly created, there will always be one person at the party who will want a beer – and nothing else. Take as much trouble with beer as you would with any spirit. Each has its won unique colour and flavor. Check out ‘real ales’ and those available from micro – brew – eries. Beer and ale are also the basis of some interesting cocktails and punches. Stout is a very dark – almost black – ale and is used in a black velvet. Bitter amber ale is used in the punch called brown Betty.
Angostura bitters
In the recipes in this book you will frequently see in the ingredients ‘1 or 2 dashes bitters’. Bitters are an essential ingredient of a large number of cocktails. Oddly enough, bitters are bitter if you taste them straight, but their effect in a cocktail is almost the exact opposite. Bitters essences are alcoholic drinks made from roots, flowers, fruits and peels macerated in neutral spirit. The most famous patent bitters are angostura bitters
Originally made in the town of Angostura, (now Cuidad Bolivar), Venezuela, it is now produced in Trinidad. Angostura has over 40 ingredients, including gentian root and the bark from the cusparia tree. In this book, when you see bitters specified, use angostura bitters.
Grenadine
Grenadine is a sweet syrup flavoured with pomegranate juice, which gives it its rich, rosy – pink colur. Prolonged exposure to the air once the bottle has been opened will make the syrup ferment and mould, so keep an eye on it. To stop the fermentation, you could add about 10 per cent vodka – but remember, your grenadine should not then be used in mocktails! You could perhaps decant some grenadine into another bottle, and vodka to 10 percent of the volume, label it and keep the remainder as ‘unadulterated’. Keep the grenadine in a cool place, but don’t’ refrigerate it as this can cause the sugar to crystallise, or at least harden, which prevents it from mixing easily with other drinks.
Minerals and juices
If you’ve purchased a good quality spirit. Why spoil it with poor quality minerals and juices? Squeeze your own citrus juices or buy the best you can find and serve chilled. A comprehensive selection includes: soda water, cola, tonic water, ginger ale, lemonade, lemon – lime soda, tomato juice, orange juice, cranberry juice, grape juice, pineapple juice, apple juice, grapefruit juice, lemon juice, lime juice and Rose’s Lime Juice, it is also worth trying some of the more ‘exotic’ juices, such as passion fruit, mango, peach and tangerine.
Fresh fruit
Freshly squeezed citrus fruits will produce the best juice, Citrus fruits other than lemons turn soft and show spots as they age, while lemons turn hard. While the flesh inside might be OK, it may have an peculiar taste. Choose fruits with bright skins and remember to wash them before using the skin for twists. Once squeezed, fruit juices will slowly start to ferment. Refrigeration will slow the process, but my advice is ‘buy ‘ em fresh, squeeze’ em fresh and use ‘em frsh’.
Strain lemon and lime juice before use to ensure no pips get in the drink. Likewise, you might want to strain other citrus juices. Strain through a fine nylon sieve to ensure that clear drinks remain unclouded by the juice. If you don’t have the energy or time to hand squeeze your fruit and don’t have one of those fancy electric juicers, try using a miser/blender. Peel the fruit (reserving the peel), pulp it at high speed and strain. Peaches and mangos can be ‘squeezed’ in a blender and yes, you can even do a pineapple this way, but don’t forget to remove the peel, take out the eyes and core and cut it into slices (reserving some slices for garnish) before juicing. If you want to buy your fresh juices ‘ready squeezed’ from a supermarket, check the sell by date to ensure freshness.
Although there are many famous and delicious cocktails which use cream or milk, none are included in this book. Yoghurt, however, is a wonderful ingredient in mocktails, and you will find a few ‘healthy options’ to try in that section.
The famous pina colada, possibly the most popular cocktail in the world, does use coconut cream as one of its ingredients. This is very simple to make and the instructions are given alongside the recipe.
Some bartenders also use a teaspoon of raw egg white or egg yolk to give a cocktail a ‘silver’ and ‘frothy’ or ‘golden’ finish. Although the egg cannot be tasted, many people don’t like the idea of raw egg in their drink. Furthermore, some people may be advised on medical grounds to avoid raw eggs altogether. In this book, drinks that include egg are omitted.
Condiments
Drinks with tomato juice, such as the bloody Mary can be ‘spiced up’ according to taste with Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, ground black pepper and perhaps a few celery seeds.
You will also need
Salt
Preferably coarsely ground, if you want to make the tequila based Margarita or the vodka based salty dog.
Sugar
in cube form; granulated sugar and castor sugar (sometimes called ‘superfine’ in recipe books). Gomme syrup is simply a sugar syrup and is easy to make. The object is to make the sugar syrup as heavy as possible without crystallization. Gomme syrup is used in place of castor sugar and most bartenders prefer it since there is less risk of there being a sediment at the bottom of the glass and it also saves time.
Spices
these are used particularly in punches and hot drinks. Nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and cloves are probably already in your kitchen cupboard.
Garnishes
Wedges, slices and twists of orange, lemon slices and lime slices; pineapple and grapefruit slices, maraschino cherries are also useful. Seasonal fruit it always an attractive and delicious garnish for mocktails and party punches: try cool cucumber or apple wedges.
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