5 easy ways to improve your homemade cocktails
‘Perfection is lots of little things done well.’
I heard this quote from Marco Pierre White, who almost certainly heard it from someone else, but I think it rings true in many aspects of our lives - especially when it comes to the important things like drinking.
Crafting cocktails at home is certainly a rewarding experience and, if done well, can make your dinner parties legendary. At the very least, it makes you a much classier drunk.
Whether you’re a mixologist-in-the-making or a casual cocktail connoisseur, here are five things I have put into practice over the years which dramatically improved the quality of my drinks, both for my own enjoyment and to the benefit of anyone else who happens to be in my house.
Quality of ice
I’ve become a real ice anorak recently. The difference it can make to every aspect of your drink is actually extraordinary, but it’s the kind of thing you only realise when you decide to invest time and thought into freezing water - not something which most people would admit to doing.
You should regard ice as an ingredient. It isn’t there to simply make your drink cold: almost all cocktails require dilution, and balancing this with getting your drink cold enough is a fundamental part of making a good cocktail.
Firstly, get rid of any ice cubes that you’ve had in the back of your freezer for an indeterminate amount of time. Ice holds on to aromas, so unless you want a cocktail that tastes like old pizza, best start fresh.
The clearer the ice is, the better. Cloudy ice looks that way because of trapped air and impurities, resulting in a cube which is more fragile and quicker to melt. I can work with this if it’s a stirred cocktail like a Martini or Manhattan, but for your shaken drinks you’ll want to look at alternatives or you’ll end up with a great big watery mess of a cocktail.
The easy but expensive option is to go out and buy bagged ice. I will happily tell you that Tesco stocks pretty good ice for shaking and stirring. Sainsbury’s ice isn’t great as the cubes are too small.
Yes, I can rank supermarkets by their bagged ice selection. What can you do?
A cheaper method would be to make your own ice block, using any kind of deep mould you have knocking around: bread pans, clean ice cream tubs, serving bowls - essentially, the biggest vessel you are able to fit in your freezer. Fill it up (filtered or distilled water will yield better results) and let it set for a day or two. Once it’s frozen, let it sit at room temperature for 5 minutes before getting creative with a bread knife and a wooden mallet to cut your pieces.
Ice made this way will still contain cloudy parts. It’s up to you whether you work around this section or use it, but the clear stuff is what you’re looking for. Clear ice is solid, slow to melt, and looks bloody good in the glass.
It is possible to go one step further and craft your own block of clear ice by using a cooler box (if you have plenty of freezer space) or by investing in some nifty bits of kit (which can be expensive).
For your shaken drinks, as well as serving neat spirits, a big, clear block is the best. It’s the most efficient way of incorporating air into your shaken drinks without over diluting, and it makes the clean-up process much easier - useful for people like me who like to make a mess when making cocktails.
When serving, use lots of ice. The more ice, the slower it’ll melt.
Fresh juice
One of the most common ingredients you’re going to find in cocktail recipes is lemon or lime juice. It adds a welcome hit of sourness and a refreshing zing to short and long drinks alike, and is an integral part to achieving the perfect balance.
Your cocktails are only ever as good as their weakest ingredient, and those plastic bottles of pre-made fruit juice taste as artificial as they look, as well as containing a bunch of extra gubbins which results in an overtly sour experience which should be reserved only for cleaning sinks.
If you’re only making a couple of drinks, juice your fruit right before you want to use it. I think a mexican elbow is an incredibly worthwhile bit of kit to use here as it’s easy to use and squeezes every drop, as well as retaining any annoying pips. You also won’t get sticky hands.
For entertaining a crowd, you can batch your fruit juice into bottles. However, unlike the artificial bottles, fresh lemon and lime juice doesn’t have a long shelf life at all - once the party’s over, any leftover juices will have to go as they’ll taste like garden waste the day after. Bon appetit!
Make your own syrups
I’ve talked a lot about balance, and another very important part of that is sweetness. You’ll want to be using sugar syrups in your cocktails for efficiency and consistency, and these are so easy to make at home. Don’t go wasting your money on pre-made sugar syrups.
For your classic ‘simple syrup’, combine 2 parts sugar with 1 part hot water from the kettle. Stir to dissolve before cooling and bottling. There’s no need to boil it on the stove, and using a 2:1 ratio means it’ll survive in the cupboard for around 3 weeks before it starts to go a bit weird.
That’ll see you right for most classic cocktails. However, this is where you can really get creative: try infusing your syrups with seasonal ingredients like rhubarb, or ginger, or both.
Honey syrup is my personal favourite, made using a 3:1 ratio. Swapping out simple syrup for your own concoctions is a boundlessly creative task, one to undertake with vigour until you lose the ability to stand.
Basic equipment
If you’re just starting out on the road to cocktail mastery, you can get by with minimal kit which will serve you well for most classic drinks. These are the bits of equipment I reach for most often:
2-piece Boston shaker: you can use this for shaken and stirred drinks
Jiggers: 25ml and 50ml as standard. North American measurements are different, because of course they are
Bar spoon: for serving, poking, prodding, and conducting orchestras
Strainer: because no one wants ice in a Martini
Fine strainer: so you don’t end up with shards of mint between your teeth
Knife: remind me not to mess with you
Mexican elbow: for juice extraction
Peeler: for skinning fruit
Muddler: for pounding ingredients into submission
Bottle opener: when you can’t be bothered to make cocktails
You can buy all of these in cocktail kits online, of which there are a multitude.
Shop around for spirits
The spirits that you stock your bar with are entirely subjective and depend on what you like drinking. I’d argue that every good bar deserves gin, whiskey, rum, vodka and tequila, but I’m not here to tell you what to do.
Find the ingredients for your favourite cocktail and try making it at home, or take a spirit you like and visit somewhere like Difford’s Guide, where you can search their encyclopaedia of cocktails for something that sounds nice.
I’m of the opinion that a home bar shouldn’t break the bank. Once a spirit gets too pricey, it’s heartbreaking when you mess up a recipe. Alternatively, it’s also sad to see it gone so quickly when you’ve tanked half a bottle between two of you.
Instead, shop around the spirits aisle of your local supermarket or take advantage of flash sales online. Certain spirits translate well to lower price points: gin and rum, in particular, are easy to find for under £20; whiskey and tequila, for the most part, turn into something quite questionable at that price bracket.
If all else fails, grab some minis from your local spirits merchant to test the waters first before investing in a family-size bottle.
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Making your own cocktails at home is a creative use of one’s downtime and a rewarding hobby for casual and serious drinkers alike, as long as you pay attention to the details. Switching a few things up makes a big difference to the end result.
Once you’ve mastered the basics, that’s half the work done, and you can continue down the rabbit hole by adding more bottles, bitters and bits of bar kit to further feed your creativity.
Cheers!
