Tips and Trixx
Chill your glassware.
We typically put our glassware in the freezer for 5 mins before filling with a cocktail, but you can also use the bartender trick of filling with ice and water.
Double strain for elevated finish.
We double strain allot of our cocktails to give a cleaner finishing touch. This isn’t alway necessary, especially if you don’t have anyone to impress. But the double strain will keep out any ice chips, pulp from juices and muddled ingredients, and larger/non-uniform air bubbles in the foaming cocktails
Measure out you glassware.
A typical cocktail recipe is for 4 ounces, however glassware these days far exceed that. Most of our coupes and martini glasses are 8 oz and one I have is 12. So this brings us to two points; first if you’d like a full cocktail to feel fancy and make it look good for photos etc, ratio the ingredients in our recipes to fit your size glassware, second remember you doubled the recipe and drink responsibly (we’ve had plenty a nights get sloppy fast and then realized we had twice or even three times the amount of alcohol we thought we had).
The easiest way to measure your glassware is to fill the glass with water, then pour that water into a measuring cup.
Getting that foam to foam.
There are four methods for getting that foam
Add all ingredients to the shaker with ice and shake like hell for a good 30 seconds
Dry shake: shake all ingredients without ice for 20-30 seconds, the add ice and shake again for 20-30 seconds.
Reverse Dry Shake: shake all ingredients, except the egg white, with ice for 20-30 seconds, strain and shake again without ice for 20-30 seconds.
If you own a frother use that in place of a dry shake. Whether you decide to use before or after shaking with ice, the great part about this method is you see when the foam has formed. I give it a good 20-30 seconds to make sure that foam will hold.
Our favorite is the dry shake. It’s one less step than the reverse dry shake and also yields a colder cocktail. We’ve tried the reverse dry shake and found that the chill from the initial shake with ice didn’t hold as well as the dry shake. We also didn’t think the foam was any better with the reverse shake. But it is worth trying for yourself.
Also method 1 is one less step but you’ll have to put more oomph in it to get the same silky smooth foam as the other two methods.
Keep in mind the following when working your foam:
A blender ball can be added to the shaker to get more air into the egg whites which means maybe a little less elbow grease on your part. It almost acts as an internal whisk.
Beware of spontaneous combustion when you get further into shaking, the egg white proteins and citrus are emulsifying and developing air bubbles while putting pressure on the shaker seal. We always shake with a kitchen towel wrapped around the shaker to help prevent those mishaps. It helps “tie down” the top of the shaker.
One egg white should be 1oz though the extra large eggs in the super market these days could easily be more. If you don’t want the extra foam, whisk the egg white slightly to break up the proteins before measuring into a jigger. This way you won’t get the clumps overflowing when measuring. This is also a great idea if you are making more than one cocktail, similarly pre crack all the eggs and whisk the egg whites slightly before hand.
Egg beaters can also be used, though we prefer fresh.
Aquafaba (chickpea juice you can get out of a can of chickpeas) is also a great alternative. Though we have not had the best of luck getting the same full foam as we get with egg whites. It takes very fresh aquafaba and allot more muscle to get that foam.
Double strain to give a more velvety and uniform finish to the foam.