Do this and you will make better Cocktails

You have fancy shakers and strainers, the latest trendy recipe book and a stack of premium spirits lining your home bar. So why do your drinks still taste like crap?

As a professional Cocktail & Spirits Instructor (shortform - Cocktail Nerd), I’ve spent a good part of the past few years training bartenders how to mix drinks properly. If there is one quick and easy peice of advice I can take from these years of instruction and distil back to you, the non-pro at home, the enthusiast who just wants their own drinks to taste good, it’s this:

Measure.

MEASURE.

M - E - A - S - U - R - E.

Everything.

The number one problem I encounter doing technical cocktail tastings is a lack of balance in flavour, and it’s usually because the ingredient proportions have been messed up.

There is a 1/4 barspoon too much sugar and the drink is overly sweet. Or maybe there was 5ml too much gin and now the botanical notes are overpowering the rest of the ingredients in the glass.

It doesn’t matter. If the proportions are wrong and the drink isn’t balanced then it won’t taste good. If you are using decent ingredients and following a good recipe, then the only reason you’ll experience a lack of balance is when you screw up your measurements.

So treat it like baking, where ‘close enough’ isn’t good enough. Take the extra 10 seconds or so to grab and use a proper measure. Follow this very simple advice and I guarantee your drinks will taste better.

It’s your new cocktail making mantra:

I. measure. everything.

About David Turnbull

I'm a New Zealander in Sweden, building web-apps with Ruby on Rails.