bringing drinks to life

It seems like the simplest thing in the world: take a bit of lime juice, add some sugar and rum, shake it up with ice and strain it into a glass… the perfect daiquiri right? Well then why is it that sometimes I am left so disappointed by what should be the simplest of drinks? At other times I see the bartender reaching for flavours that are strong and counter-intuitive, but the finished drink is the embodiment of liquid perfection. It comes down to a matter of balance!

 

 

I was judging a cocktail competition recently and got talking to a young bartender who’s new to the trade, is passionate about cocktails and wants to learn more. He comes from a food background so understands flavour, but as he put it, ‘I just don’t quite know what I have to do to balance one ingredient against the next’. It made me wonder just how many young bartenders are banging out drinks to the spec they’ve been given by their bar manager, but who have never actually been shown how to balance a drink.

 

 

Well that seemed like the perfect reason for me to have a look at what it takes to balance a drink. It’s something that experienced bartenders seem to make look so easy but is the difference between having a great drinking experience or vowing never to return to the bar you’re visiting. It’s definitely one of the most important factors in making a drink and yet it seems it is seldom discussed.

 

We posted a blog about homemade syrups a while back http://www.bittersandtwisted.com/content/ahhhhh-how-sweet and had a few people contact us looking for recipes that any bartender could use to get started. You know the sorts of syrups that are essential to certain drinks but that the commercial ones available leave a bit to be desired. So as we are always keen to please, we contacted a few friends who make their own to get their best recipes.

 

 

We started with a couple of syrups essential to tiki drinks (but also called for in many classic cocktail books). Orgeat and grenadine are two syrups that can transform a drink, but after a syrups tasting I did for Imbibe magazine last year, I was left thinking that the shop bought ones were pretty poor. Paul bases his recipes on a 50/50 sugar syrup (controversial, but having tasted the results who are we to argue?) which he makes in bulk, taking equal parts sugar and water and boiling them gently for about 20 minutes with crème de tartar (1/4 teaspoon will do 6 litres)

 

 

So here are a couple of recipes that Paul Bradley gave us that really hit the mark: