COCKTAIL MAKING
GUIDE FOR BEGINNERS

“Shaken, not stirred.” We’re sure you’ve heard this Bond line about a martini countless times. But have you ever thought about what that really means?

Shaken cocktails and stirred cocktails might achieve the same aim of combining ingredients and flavours together, but they deliver completely different results when it comes to taste and texture. Stirring a cocktail is all about the temperature and dilution of the drink, giving you greater control over the final result. The goal is to stir the cocktail until the sides of the mixing glass feels cold to the touch – this usually takes around 10-15 seconds.

To master the stirring technique, hold the bar spoon between your thumb and first two fingers, with the long stem running between your middle and ring finger. When stirring, aim to hit imaginary quarter-hour marks on a clock face inside the glass with the spinning spoon. Just make sure to not stir too intensely – you don’t want your drink to become too diluted (or knock the glass off the side). This technique is often used for short, more intense cocktails such as the timeless Old Fashioned, as shaking would over-dilute its iconically intense flavour profile.

While shaking a cocktail takes around 10 seconds too, it has a different effect to stirring. Shaking makes a drink colder in less time, adds more dilution by melting the ice slightly quicker and breaks up enzymes in fruit to release the liquids and sugars into the drink. If you’re making a cocktail with egg white like a classic Whisky Sour, you’ll need to double shake it. A double shake is just shaking once with ice and once without – in any order – so the egg will emulsify and give the drink a velvety and creamy texture.

Simply pop your ingredients into the shaker with ice and then shake hard and fast. Always double check that your shaker of choice is sealed up tight – your guests are unlikely to appreciate having a drink thrown over them mid-shake. To dazzle your guests with a silky smooth cocktail, keep out unwanted extras like pulp and ice by using a strainer when pouring your creation into a glass.

A useful rule of thumb is that drinks made with clear ingredients are best stirred, whereas cloudy ingredients such as milk, cream or lemon juice often feature in shaken cocktail recipes that need a more bubbly, frothy consistency.