Category: Training

Easy guide to lime juice – fresh lime, Roses cordial and the Gimlet
Is all Lime Juice the same?
There seems to be some confusion for the newly enthusiastic home bartender as to what exactly is meant by lime juice – do we literally mean only the freshly squeezed juice of a lime or could you use one of the green lime bottles littering the shelves at the supermarket?
Why use lime at all?
When we make cocktails we are aiming to take a selection of different ingredients and mix them together, producing something that (hopefully) tastes better than when we started. To get good flavours we need to make balanced use of some of the 5 primary tastes – sour, sweet, salty, bitter, and umami. I’ll go into a detailed explanation of each of these in an upcoming post but for now we are interested in the main taste associated with lime – sourness.
When drinking freshly squeezed lime juice you notice a strong sour taste on your tongue – this is because limes contain a relatively high level of citric acid which our bodies note as being sour. A sour acidic flavour, when balanced with other tastes (such as sweetness from sugar) adds to the overall depth of the cocktail so if we use it correctly we can give our drinks a crisp, refreshing flavour.
Fresh squeezed Lime
Fresh lime is easily the most important lime for us – the vast majority of cocktails that you’ll come across on this blog referring to lime juice are asking for freshly squeezed lime juice. Buy a bunch of limes from your local grocer, wash them, cut them in half and squeeze with a citrus press or reamer to extract all the juicy, natural goodness. Real, fresh limes will provide the acidic bite that we are looking for and provide a more natural flavour in the final drink.

Depending on where you live these can be pretty costly so try and buy a citrus press to make sure you can get as much juice as possible out of each lime. A tip; use the palm of your hand to push on the lime and roll it around on your bench a few times before juicing and you’ll get more out of it. Expect to get around 15ml juice per half lime/ 30ml per lime.
‘Fresh’ Lime bottles
Often found in the soft drink section of your local convenience store or supermarket, these squeezed lime bottles tend to contain concentrated lime juice that has commonly had preservatives and other bits and pieces added. While these bottles may save a few seconds over the hand-squeezing of a real lime, unfortunately they tend to fail on the taste test, generally lacking the true sour or acidic bite as fresh lime juice and are therefore best left on the shelf.
Roses Lime cordial, other brands of Lime cordials
Lime cordials were originally a mix of concentrated lime juice and sugar although the ingredient list on many modern bottles seems to have grown somewhat with a mix of added preservatives and colourings. Hmm. But anyway…
The original and best known is Rose’s lime cordial, invented by a Mr Lauchlin Rose in 1867 in part as a way to help British sailors in their fight against scurvy, a nasty disease bought on by a diet lacking vitamin C.
Sensible medical types had discovered that limes and other citrus fruits were a good natural source of vitamin C and therefore helped in the fight against scurvy and quickly pushed for laws to ensure that all ships carried a ready supply of citrusy goodness for their sailors. While good in theory, problems arose quickly – citrus fruits were not always easy to source, and even when you could find them they were not particularly appetising when they’d been stored in the hold of a ship for a few weeks. Added to this, drinking straight lime juice is not particularly appealing at the best of times and while it could (and was) made more attractive by adding it to the daily rum or gin rations it was still something to be drunk out of necessity rather than choice. Time for Mr Rose.
Lauchlin Rose had a business supplying provisions for ships and after a bit of experimentation discovered that a mix of concentrated lime juice with sugar allowed him to create a cordial which would provide the necessary vitamin C but in a sweetened, more palatable form than simple lime juice. Added to this the lime and sugar combination was stable when bottled and could be stored for lengthy periods without going off. Created just in time for the Merchant Shipping Act of 1868, which made the carrying of citrus a legal requirement, Rose was on to a winner.
Nothing is perfect however. The sugar that helped so much in creating the cordial is often its downfall when used in cocktails. Remembering from earlier, the main reason we use limes in good cocktails is to add an acidic bite from the citric acid contained in the juice. Unfortunately the sugar that is used to help stabilise the cordial weakens this acidity, ultimately giving a kind of sweet general lime flavour but without the acid that we really want. This results in an unbalanced and (often) unpleasant drink when compared to fresh squeezed lime.
Conclusion
Unless specifically stated, use freshly squeezed lime juice for cocktails – your drinks will taste better. Avoid buying pre-squeezed as squeezing by hand will result in better juice and a better drink.
Lesson – Making a Gimlet
A real classic cocktail now, we are going to start by going against what I’ve just been telling you and using Rose’s cordial rather than fresh lime.
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You will need
- 50ml Gin
- 20ml Roses Lime Cordial
Method
Stir in glass
Nice and easy, this can be made in the glass or stirred in your mixing glass and strained into a cocktail glass. We are going to do the ‘stir in glass’ method today.
Take a rocks glass, old fashioned glass or similar and fill with ice. Measure in your gin and lime cordial and use your bar spoon to stir the ice and liquid until it is well mixed and cold – this should take around 30-40 seconds. Garnish with a lime slice and drink, feeling happy in the knowledge that you are tackling the fight against scurvy head-on.
Finished Gimlet
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Variations to try
After making a traditional Gimlet, make another but replace the Roses lime cordial with freshly pressed lime juice. Prepare in the same manner and taste the difference. You should notice that the new fresh lime Gimlet is very sour from the citric acid in the lime juice. To improve the taste add a small amount of simple syrup and stir – the sugar should help bring the drink back into balance and improve the overall taste.
There you go – more than you’d expect to read about lime juice on any given day. Try making the drinks and let me know in the comments section how they turned out.
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// David
July 6, 2012
Mixing Cocktails 101 – The Methods – Shake and Strain
Shake and Strain
For more info about bar equipment check out the ‘Essential Equipment for your home bar’ blog post
Post contents
- Shake and Strain: Process
  Add your ingredients
  Start shaking
  Separate the shaker and mixing glass
  Time for a taste test
  Ice in your glass?
  Strain and pour
Depending on the ingredients used and the overall effect we are seeking there are a number of mixing methods that we can use to make cocktails. We’ve covered built drinks already and today we’re going to look at the most visible – shaking.
Shaking and cocktails appear to go hand in hand – it often seems like anytime more than two ingredients are involved they have to be tossed into a tin and shaken around by an enthusiastic bartender. Shaking is an aggressive mixing motion and helps us to mix and chill multiple ingredients quickly and efficiently. The aggressive nature of shaking means that getting the correct technique is very important.
Technique
You can start by setting your mixing glass on a table, giving yourself enough room to work.
Add your ingredients
Add your ingredients (whiskey, lemon, syrups etc) into the mixing glass, being careful to measure for the correct amounts.
Fill the mixing glass with ice – we add the ice last to minimise dilution.
Place the shaker tin on top of mixing glass, being careful to have a slight angle to avoid a ‘perfect seal’ (which is a real pain in the wherever to try and get off) and give a nice, hard tap to seal the glass and the shaker.
Ready for some shaking
Start shaking
Hold the shaker, ensuring you have a solid grip of both the mixing glass and the shaker tin (we don’t want to let go by mistake!), and shake hard in nice big movements allowing the ice to travel from one end of the shaker to the other. The further the ice travels the better as it will mix and cool the drink faster – you’ll hear a ‘clack clack’ sound as the ice hits each end of the shaker if you’re doing this correctly.
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Continue shaking hard until you have the right level of cooling and dilution – the exact time depends on the style of drink, but around 10-12 seconds will usually be good. If you’ve shaken hard enough then there should be condensation on the shaker tin.
Separate the shaker and mixing glass
Now its time to separate the shaker. Hold the shaker tin in one hand and use the palm of your other hand to give a hard ‘tap’ on the tin where the mixing glass and shaker meet. This should break the seal and allow you to lift the mixing glass off and away.
Time for a taste test
Now it’s time to taste test the cocktail. Use your finger to cover the end of a straw and dip it into the cocktail so that you can get some liquid to taste. You want to check whether the cocktail tastes balanced (the right levels of sweet/sour/bitter) and make sure the flavours are correct. If you need to make any adjustments then do so now and either stir or give another quick shake.
The cocktail tastes good (of course!) so it’s time to transfer the drink from the shaker to a glass.
Ice in your glass?
Check your recipe to see whether you need to fill your destination glass with ice (if you’re using a Collins or an Old Fashioned, you will probably need to). If you do, fill it right to the top, as more ice = colder drinks.
Strain and pour
You can use your Hawthorne strainer to pour your drink into the glass without any ice or other junk in the shaker following along for the ride. If you are pouring into a cocktail glass, you won’t be using icing the glass, so you can double or fine strain by pouring through a tea strainer placed between the Hawthorne strainer and the glass – this will help collect any small pieces of ice or fruit that and make the cocktail look better.
Finish off by adding your garnish and a straw (if necessary).
All done!
June 24, 2012
Simple recipe to make Grenadine Syrup
Sometimes it’s good to cheat…
Flavoured syrups are a useful component to cocktails as they allow us to add flavour at the same time as adding the sugar that is necessary in many drinks to achieve sweet:sour balance.
Unfortunately mass production and efforts to achieve economies of scale may be good for many of the big-brand syrup producer’s bottom lines but they have had a pretty negative effect on the quality of many of the products that reach the market. Spinning around to the ingredients list on a syrup bottle you’re more likely to find a long list of artificial flavours, colours, preservatives and other E numbers than anything resembling a simple combination of sugar, water and authentic flavouring. Grenadine is no exception.
Originally made from pomegranates, modern store bought Grenadine is usually a bright red, artificial ‘red berry’ flavoured syrup sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and is commonly used to provide a berry flavour without the alcohol of berry shrubs or liqueurs.
If we are going to make Grenadine to use at home then we want the original, proper pomegranate flavour; we could use real pomegranates but instead we are going to cheat and use pomegranate juice – its quick, easy, and still gives us the real fruity flavour we’re after.
The “Cheaters” Grenadine Syrup Recipe
What you need
- Pomegranate juice (we see note below)
- Fine sugar
Method
Very quick and easy; to make the Grenadine all you need to do is mix equal amounts of the Pomegranate juice and fine sugar in a bowl until the mixture is completely dissolved. Once the mixture has dissolved you can transfer the syrup into a bottle and store it in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use it. It really is that easy!
Sugar
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Followed by juice…
then Stir! Stir! Stir!
The finished product – Grenadine
Note:
The key to making sure you make good grenadine this way is to ensure that you are using pure pomegranate juice – you want to make sure that the juice is 100% pomegranate juice so make sure you get a decent product like POM Wonderful. It’s worth paying a little more for a much better flavour.
June 18, 2012
Mixing Cocktails 101 – The Methods – Build
The Built Cocktail
When it comes to making quick and easy cocktails, there is nothing faster than a built drink.
As the name suggests, building a cocktail is a process of adding one ingredient after the other and stacking them straight into the glass, no shaking or straining necessary.
When do we build cocktails?
We use the built drink mixing method to make cocktails that do not need the extra cooling, mixing or dilution that the other more aggressive mix methods give us – it works best with ingredients that will mix together easily.
Built drinks are often long drinks (served in highball or Collins glasses) and will normally have few ingredients.
The easiest order to make a built drink at home is:
Non alcoholic ingredients -> Spirits & Liqueurs -> Ice -> Mixer -> Garnish/Straw
How to Build
Non-Alcoholic Ingredients
Start by adding the non-alcoholic ingredients (lemon or lime juice, syrups etc) to the glass first. Alcohol is pricey [well it is here in Sweden anyway…] so this way if you make a mistake with the measures of syrups or juices you’re not going to have to throw any precious booze away.
Alcohol
Once the non alcoholic ingredients are in the glass it’s time to add the spirits and liqueurs. Remember to use a measure to ensure the correct amount of booze goes into your cocktail as we want these drinks to taste good and that’s only going to happen if our proportions are correct.
Ice
Non-alcohol and alcohol are now in the glass so it’s time to add ice. Remember that for most drinks (especially those in Highball or Collins glasses) we want to add as much ice as possible as this will slow down the dilution and also stop us from adding to much mixer.
Mixer
With the glass stacked with ice we can now add the mixers/lengthening ingredients (soda, coke, fruit juices etc). If you are making a long drink then pour the mixer until about ½ cm from the top of the glass – if the glass is too full then you’re more likely to spill.
Finish
Use your bar spoon to carefully give the drink a stir, add your garnishes and straws as necessary and you’re ready to serve.

Build cocktail example:
Cuba Libre (click link for full cocktail recipe)
Start with non-alcoholic ingredients
Carefully measure the alcohol
Pour the alcohol into the glass
Add ice, mixer, garnish and you’re done
Non alcoholic ingredients -> Spirits & Liqueurs -> Ice -> Mixer -> Garnish/Straw.
Lime juice -> Cuban style Rum -> Ice -> Coca Cola -> Lime wedge and straw
Next Steps
The next mixing lesson in the series is is shake and strain. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
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//David
June 8, 2012
Mixing Cocktails 101 – The Methods – Overview
Shaken or Stirred?
When we mix cocktails we are usually trying to do two things – take different ingredients and combine them to make new tastes and flavours; and use ice to cool the ingredients and the final drink.
Some ingredients will mix together easily while others are more of an ‘oil and water’ situation where simply pouring them in the same glass will not be enough; depending on how much mixing is required we use the mixing method that will give us the best result, anywhere from simply pouring all the ingredients into the glass (building method, used with easily mixed ingredients) through to a long hard shake (shake and strain method) which uses your energy and the ice to smash and mix harder ingredients together.
The four main mixing methods we use are :
- Building
- Stirring
- Shaking
- Blending
Each of these methods can be used to make cocktails and which one you decide to use will depend on how much mixing and cooling is required – building is the most gentle method and they become progressively more intense as we work our way down to blending.
There are a few more mix methods that we use for slightly more specific functions:
- Layering
- Dry Shaking
- Rolling
Don’t worry about these for now as they are used for slightly different reasons (we’ll cover them later).
So when do we stir? When do we shake?
In general, the more simple the ingredients in a cocktail the less mixing it will need. For example – a Martini is made of only two clear ingredients, gin and dry vermouth [I realise that some old recipes call for orange bitters and such but I’m keeping this simple for now]. Gin is the base spirit and contains around 40% abv, vermouth is also alcoholic so simply stirring the two ingredients in an ice filled mixing glass will allow them to mix nicely and chill down.
When we start adding juices, syrups, liqueurs and such then we need to get a little more aggressive and this is when we’ll want to shake the drink.
Example – In a Classic Daiquiri we are mixing rum, fresh lime juice and sugar together – we could stir these ingredients but it would take a long time for them to mix and cool to a satisfactory level. Instead we can add them into a shaker, fill the shaker with ice and shake hard – the ice will help to agitate the ingredients inside the shaker, helping them to mix together while also cooling them down. For a frozen daiquiri we would need to be even more aggressive, so instead of shaking we would move to blending.
Clear ingredients – easier to mix – build or stir
Juices, syrups, liqueurs, milk and similar ingredients – harder to mix – shake or blend
Of course a lot of this really comes down to personal preference – I’ve certainly served my fair share of shaken Vodka Martinis during my time on the bar so feel free to experiment and see what you like most.
So it’s all about mixing and cooling, right?
Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that. There are more elements making up the taste of a cocktail than just the initial raw ingredients; the final product is also going to be a result of the cocktails dilution, texture and appearance, all of which can also be manipulated through the mixing method chosen.
Dilution
Dilution is the amount of water that is in your cocktail as a result of ice melting. Many people seem to think that water is the enemy of cocktails but it is actually an important ingredient in itself as it can help soften the flavour of the alcohol and allow background flavours to be more apparent. Think of the Mojito; if you didn’t have the crushed ice melting and diluting the cocktail the rum flavour would be much stronger and it would be harder to appreciate the mint, sugar and lime flavours that make the cocktail special.
How much dilution you get is directly related to how much ice melts (which is also directly related to how cold the cocktail becomes as you cannot chill the cocktail with melting). The speed at which ice melts is related to the surface area of the ice [check out ‘Cocktail Science – Does crushed ice dilute more? a great blog with a full ‘sciency’ explanation of all this] so the smaller the ice cube = the faster it melts = the more it will dilute your cocktail.
Crushed ice will dilute more than large ice cubes so keep this in mind when you are making your cocktails – this is why we use large ice cubes when we stir or shake. More ice = a colder drink = slower melting, which is why we always try to fill our glasses with ice when we are making drinks; we are trying to minimise unnecessary dilution.
Also, when we shake hard the ice in the shaker will chip into small pieces that will dilute the cocktail more – if you straining into a cocktail glass after a hard shake then you can use a tea strainer (fine strainer) to catch these little ice shards and at the same time make the cocktail look a little nicer.
Appearance
If you shake clear ingredients then you often end up with a cloudy looking drink so you can also keep this in mind when deciding which mix method to use. A stirred Martini will look clear and refreshing when placed next to its cloudy, shaken counterpart.
Cloudy ingredients usually need more aggressive mixing and this can actually improve the appearance of the cocktail with some ingredients – things like pineapple juice, coffee, eggs or crème can create foams and layers when shaken that can really add to the overall appearance of the drink.
Texture/Mouth Feel
Finally, the mixing method you select can also play a part in the texture or mouth feel – how the drink actually feels in your mouth; light, heavy, creamy, oily etc.
Just like whisking an egg, heavier ingredients, juices, crèmes and similar will often fluff up and become soft and foamy in texture when they have been shaken. In fact many cocktails will actually use egg whites shaken hard for exactly this reason [we’ll cover this more in depth in a later post].
Example – A French Martini (Chambord liqueur, vodka and pineapple juice) that is stirred will feel a bit dull and watery, but if it is shaken hard then the pineapple juice will expand and foam giving the cocktail a much more appealing texture when you taste it.
Next up
That’s a general overview of why we use different mixing methods, now it’s time to learn about the actual mechanics behind each of the methods (how to stir, how do you actually use a shaker to shake etc). We’ll start with a look at how we build cocktails.
Any questions then feel free to either leave a comment below or contact me,
// David
June 3, 2012