Cocktail skills: methods

07 Sep Cocktail skills: methods

In our cocktail recipes you will come across a lot of terms that probably do not mean much to you. Shake pour, build stir or stir strain, to name a few. These English terms indicate in 2 or sometimes 3 words which method is used to make a cocktail. A bartender therefore knows at a glance in which way a cocktail should be prepared. Below we explain in  

Muddle

With this method, you use a muddler to mash fruit and herbs in your shaker or glass. A Caipirinha is made by mashing the lime and sugar in the glass to a paste. This way, you also get the oils from the peel into your cocktail. With a Gin Basil Smash, the basil and lemon are thoroughly muddled together. If you were to shake the basil alone, you would never get all the flavors out of the herb.  

Build stir

The easiest way to build a cocktail, namely in the glass in which you are going to drink it. Long drinks are made this way. ‘Builden’ is the English term for building, so you build the cocktail in the glass. That means that you pour everything directly into the glass, after which you stir it. Often such a cocktail is also topped off with a soda, think of a Collins, Mojito or Paloma.  

Shake pour

The basic preparation of this cocktail is shaking, after which you pour the entire contents of the shaker into the glass. A good example of this cocktail is the Whiskey Sour of de Amaretto Sour. Because these cocktails contain a lot of foam, it is easier to pour them into the glass at once than to (fine)strain and prepare them with fresh ice cubes.  

Shake strain

With this cocktail, the first preparation is to shake the cocktail. The method of shaking is explained in the recipe. You pour the cocktail into the glass using a strainer. You use this method if, for example, you are shaking a cocktail with a lot of fruit pulp, such as a strawberry daiquiri. If you were to fine-train it, you would be busy for a very long time pushing the fruit pulp through a sieve. It is better to pour everything into the glass, because the fruit particles also contribute a lot to the taste.  

Shake finestrain

This cocktail is also shaken first, but then poured into the glass with 2 strainers. First, you use the hawthorne strainer (with a spiral) and then a finestrainer (a kind of tea strainer). The first one holds back the ice cubes and larger pieces of fruit. The second holds back the finer parts, such as ice flakes and fruit pulp. Your cocktail looks a bit nicer this way and you don’t have small pieces of basil, mint or lime in your cocktail. Very handy if you’re in a bar with your date and don’t have a piece of green mint on your tooth.  

Stir strain

A cocktail that you stir (stirrt) does not necessarily need to be finestrained. After all, there are no fruit or ice particles in a stirred cocktail. The strainer that you use when stirring is a julep strainer. It has a different shape and was used a long time ago the Mint Julep to protect the drinker’s teeth from stuck ice cubes that could suddenly fall down.  

And Top

If you see this addition after a method, it means that you need to add a soft drink. Usually this is a relatively small amount, no more than 20 ml, like in a Mojito.