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Tips for beginners: Tools and equipment
The cocktail shaker may be the most vital piece of bar equipment you should own, but it’s certainly not the only one. Shakers, strainers, muddlers… bar spoons, channel knives, jiggers. There is a seemingly endless array of tools aimed to help you make better cocktails.
The following is a collection of some of the equipment I [...]
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Tips for beginners: Cocktail shakers
If there is one tool that is absolutely essential for making cocktails, it is the cocktail shaker. Whether you’re shaking up an Aviation, or stirring your Martini or Manhattan in the mixing tin/glass, your cocktail shaker is certain to be the most used piece of your bar equipment.
The practice of using two containers, and moving [...]
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Tips for Beginners: Bitters
If you look at any cocktail book printed in the early twentieth century, you are fairly certain to come across several recipes that require the use of bitters. Made using herbs and citrus fruits, bitters were popularly used in the eighteenth and nineteenth century as medicinal preparations to help cure various ailments.
When tasted alone bitters [...]
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Tips for beginners: Ingredients
Getting started in the world of cocktails can seem like an expensive venture to those with few spirits in their alcohol cabinet. There is a huge variety of alcohol available, from the key base spirits like gin, vodka and whisky, to the more exotic likes of rye and Cachaça, and the huge array of liqueurs. [...]
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Tips for beginners: Ice
When I first began making my own cocktails several years ago, the drinks I was producing were mediocre at best. The act of combining alcohol and serving it in a glass seems inherently easy, but without some basic knowledge and technique the results will often be disappointing. This is the first part in a series [...]
