Say what you mean

Every term, in plain English.

The words that turn up in our recipes and rarely get explained anywhere. If a method ever loses you halfway through a drink, it's in here.

Terms defined

Sections

With a full guide

Method Kit Ice Ingredients Serving

Method

What the recipe is telling you to do with your hands.

blend: Into the blender with crushed ice. Used where the texture is the point rather than an accident — frozen Daiquiris, a proper Piña Colada.
build: Made straight in the glass you drink from, no shaker involved. Usually because something fizzy is going in and you would only knock the bubbles out.
dilution: The water that melts into the drink while you shake or stir it. Not a compromise — a cocktail made with no dilution is harsh and closed up. It is an ingredient you add with time rather than a jigger.
double strain: Straining through the shaker strainer and a fine mesh sieve at the same time, so ice shards, fruit pulp and mint fragments stay behind. The difference between a drink that looks made and one that looks poured.
dry shake: Shaking without ice first, to whip up egg white or aquafaba into foam, then shaking again with ice to chill it. Skip the dry shake and you get a thin drink with a sad grey collar.
express: Squeezing a strip of citrus peel skin-side down over the drink so the oils spray across the surface. It is a flavour step, not decoration — most of what you smell in a finished cocktail comes from this.
float: Pouring a spirit gently over the back of a bar spoon so it sits on top rather than mixing in. You get the aroma first and the drink changes as you work down through it.
muddle: Pressing fruit, sugar or herbs in the bottom of the glass to release juice and oils. Press, do not pulverise — mint especially turns bitter and grassy if you take your temper out on it.
rinse: Swirling a splash of something powerful — absinthe, usually — around the empty glass and tipping out the excess. All the perfume, none of the volume. A spray bottle does it more precisely than a pour.
shake: Anything with citrus, juice, egg or cream gets shaken. It chills, dilutes and aerates all at once, which is why a shaken drink arrives cloudy and lively rather than clear and still. Ten to twelve seconds, and mean it.
stir: All-spirit drinks are stirred, not shaken — a Martini, a Manhattan, an Old Fashioned. Stirring chills and dilutes without aerating, so the drink stays clear and heavy on the tongue. About 30 seconds.
swizzle: Spinning a bar spoon (or a swizzle stick) upright in a glass of crushed ice, working top to bottom. Mixes and chills in one go and frosts the outside of the glass, which is half the appeal.
throw: Pouring the drink in a long stream from one tin to another, over and over. Aerates like a shake but far more gently, so you get texture without the froth. Showy, and genuinely useful for vermouth-heavy drinks.

Kit

The tools worth owning, and what each one is actually for.

bar spoon: The long twisted spoon, about 5ml in the bowl. The twist lets it turn between your fingers while the bowl stays put, which is the whole trick to stirring properly. A chopstick will do in a pinch.
fine strainer: A small mesh sieve held under the shaker to catch what the hawthorne misses. A tea strainer from the kitchen does the job perfectly.
hawthorne strainer: The flat strainer with a spring round the edge that sits over a shaking tin. The spring is what holds back the ice; push the gate closed for a tighter hold.
jigger: The double-ended measure. Get one marked in small increments rather than two crude cones — most of these recipes turn on 7.5ml and 22.5ml, and eyeballing those is how a balanced drink stops being one.
mixing glass: The heavy glass jug you stir in. A pint glass works. The weight matters more than the looks — a thin one warms up while you are still stirring.
shaking tin: The metal tin you shake in. Two tins that seal against each other (a Boston shaker) chill faster and come apart more willingly than the three-piece kind with the built-in strainer.

Ice

Not a detail. Ice is an ingredient you can get wrong.

clear ice: Ice frozen slowly from one direction so the cloudy trapped air is pushed out. Purely a looks thing, and it looks superb. A small cooler box in the freezer with the lid off will do it.
crushed ice: Ice smashed small. Chills fast and dilutes fast, which suits tiki and juleps where you want the drink cold, frosty and slightly watered as you go. A clean tea towel and a rolling pin is the traditional method.
cubed ice: Ordinary tray ice, for shaking and stirring. Bigger and colder is better — small wet cubes from the bottom of the freezer drawer water a drink down before it is even cold.
large cube: A single big cube for a drink served on ice. Less surface area means slower melt, so the last mouthful tastes close to the first. Worth a silicone mould if you drink Old Fashioneds.

Ingredients

The bottles and syrups that turn up again and again.

acid adjusted: Juice with citric and malic acid added so it behaves like fresh citrus. Lets pineapple juice do a lime’s structural job without the drink tasting of lime.Full guide →
aquafaba: The liquid from a tin of chickpeas, used in place of egg white. It foams just as well, keeps in the fridge, and means nobody has to ask whether the eggs are pasteurised.
bitters: Concentrated botanical tinctures, used a few drops at a time. They do for a cocktail what salt does for food — you would not taste them alone and you would notice immediately if they were missing.
dash: One firm shake from a bitters bottle, very roughly 0.8ml. Not a precise measure, and it does not need to be — but be consistent within a drink.
demerara syrup: Simple syrup made with demerara sugar. Darker, faintly molasses, with more body — the reason a rum drink made with it tastes rounder than the same drink made with white sugar.Full guide →
grenadine: Pomegranate syrup. Real grenadine is tart and deep red-brown; the bright red supermarket bottle is sugar and colouring and will flatten any drink you put it in.Full guide →
orgeat: Almond syrup, usually with a little orange flower water. Pronounced roughly "or-zha". It is the ingredient that makes a Mai Tai taste like a Mai Tai.Full guide →
overproof: Spirit bottled above the usual 40% — often 57% or higher. Used in small amounts as a float or to carry flavour. Measure it properly; it does not forgive a heavy hand.
semi-rich: Syrup at 1.5:1 — 750g sugar to 500g water — rather than the usual equal parts. A little more syrupy, it gives drinks a silky quality and stops them coming out thin. It is what our recipes mean when they say 1.5:1.Full guide →
simple syrup: Sugar dissolved in water. Five minutes to make and infinitely better than the bottled stuff, which is mostly glucose and regret.Full guide →

Serving

How the drink arrives, and why that changes it.

on the rocks: Served over ice. The drink keeps changing as the ice goes, which for something like a Vieux Carré is the point rather than a side effect.
rim: Salt or sugar stuck round the edge of the glass with citrus juice. Do half the rim, not all of it, so the drinker gets to choose each sip.
served up: Chilled and strained into a stemmed glass with no ice in it. The glass is the only thing keeping the drink cold, so get it in the freezer well before you start.
twist: A strip of citrus peel, cut with as little white pith as you can manage. Express it over the drink first — the oils are the reason it is there, not the shape.
wedge: A cut segment of citrus, meant to be squeezed into the drink by whoever is holding it rather than just looked at.
wheel: A round slice cut across the whole fruit. Sits on the rim or floats on the drink. Cut it thin.

The bartender’s note

One drink, one story, one bottle worth buying.

Thursday evening, so you have time to shop. No more than that.