Techniques

Cocktail techniques and methods

What each method physically does to a drink, what it is the right choice for, and what it damages. Every technique here is demonstrated by real recipes on this site.

Shaking

69 recipes

A lighter, briefly frothy body and a cloudy appearance that settles as it stands. The aeration blunts alcoholic heat, which is why a shaken drink tastes softer than a stirred one of the same strength.

Stirring

21 recipes

A heavy, silky, completely clear drink. Alcohol reads more sharply than in the same drink shaken, because nothing has softened it.

Muddling

13 recipes

Fresh, green, immediate aroma that no syrup or liqueur reproduces, because it has not been heated or preserved.

Building in the glass

82 recipes

The drink changes as you go: strongest at the first sip, longest and most diluted at the last. That drift is a feature of a long drink and a fault in a short one.

Blending

5 recipes

A thick frozen body that reads as sweeter and less alcoholic than the same recipe served cold and liquid — cold and texture both suppress the perception of alcohol.

Layering

13 recipes

The drink changes with every sip rather than tasting of one thing. Almost no dilution occurs because nothing is stirred.

Swizzling

4 recipes

Fast chilling and continuous dilution, with the crushed ice keeping both going while you drink.

Batching

15 recipes

Identical to a fresh drink if the dilution is right, and noticeably harsh if it is left out — the water is an ingredient, not a side effect.

Also worth knowing

Techniques you will meet elsewhere

These come up in bars and in cocktail writing, and the guides here teach them. They are not among the methods above because barely any recipe on this site is made that way — so this is what each one is, and where to read more.

Rolling

used in 3 recipes

The drink is poured back and forth between two vessels, mixing and lightly aerating it without the violence of a shake.

Throwing

Pouring a drink back and forth between two tins from a height, aerating it without the ice damage a shake would do. It suits low-strength, savoury drinks — a Bamboo, an Adonis, a Bloody Mary — where you want texture and chill but not a shaken drink's cloudiness or dilution.

Pre-dilution

Adding the water a drink would have picked up from ice, before it is served — the discipline that makes a batched cocktail taste like a fresh one. The dilution calculator works out how much, and the fifteen recipes here with make-ahead notes show it in practice.

Infusion

Steeping something — tea, fruit, chilli, spice — in a spirit or syrup until it takes on the flavour. It changes what goes into a drink rather than how the drink is made, which is why it lives with the ingredients.

Fat washing

Mixing a fat such as butter or bacon fat into a spirit, chilling it until the fat sets, and straining it off. What is left carries the flavour and a fuller texture with none of the grease. Like infusion, it produces a modified ingredient rather than a drink.

Clarification

Removing the particles that make a drink cloudy, usually with milk or agar, so it pours clear and tastes noticeably softer. It is a finishing process applied to a made drink rather than a way of making one, and it is the most effort for the least payoff of anything on this page at home.

Carbonation

Force-carbonating a whole pre-mixed batch, so a drink arrives fizzy without a mixer diluting it. It needs a carbonation rig and applies to a batch rather than to any single recipe.