Romeo and Juliet, Batman and Robin, Bogey and Becal, some duos it would seem we’re just meant to be. Uniting the two is more than just chemistry. It's shear poetry. Well believe it or not, dynamic pairs also exist in the cocktail world. Duos are some of the most basic popular cocktails on the menu. Forget your Long Island iced tea. Forget your blood marries. Sometime it pays to keep it simple. Let’s get back to basics with duos.
We can go through a number of classic formulas from the very simple drinks that I call duos which are just a spirit and a liqueur. So a black Russian, a baqiri kahlua, that’s easy. So you can take the kahlua out of that equation and put another liqueur in there instead and you got a new drink.
Unto trios, so the white Russian, baqiri kahlua and cream, we’ll then take the cream out and put bay leaves in there and you’ve a mudslide.
New Orleans sours comprise of a base spirit, cointreau and a citrus juice such as lemon or lime juice. The numbers of classic drinks that fold into this formula are astounding. The sidecar, cognac cointreau lemon juice, the margarita, tequila cointreau and lime juice. If you take that formula and switch out any one of those ingredients for another ingredient within the same family, near as guaranteed. You might have to play with ratios a little bit.
I advice whenever you make a new Orleans sour of your own device, use initially a 3:2:1 ratio. So three parts spirit, two parts liqueur and one part citrus juice 3:2:1, easy to remember.
Let’s try this with a margarita. Add three parts tequila, two parts cointreau and one part lime juice. Delicioso!
Layering spirits is the best way to create depth and character in a cocktail but it can also look incredible. Layered drinks otherwise known as pouse-caf? were very popular back in the late 1800s. you don’t see them around as much today but mastering the technique of layering a beautiful colorful cocktail is always a good—to have up your sleeve. Layering is one of the most difficult skills to master behind the bar. So don’t get discouraged if you bust the job the first time around. Practice, as always makes perfect.
So let’s actually make a layered drink. The first thing we’re going to need to do is find something to help us layer those drinks with. We could use something like a bar spoon. Hello Mr. Bar spoon. How are you? Now remember you can use this to mix drinks this way but in this base, we’re actually going to use the bar of the spoon. Now, I'm going to make for you something called a baby Guinness. I'll explain to you why it's called a baby Guinness after I make it.
Well we have two ingredients we’re going to use. We’re going to use Baileys and Kahlua. Now the Kahlua is the heaviest of those. I'm going to pour about a little bit of ¾ of an ounce in our shot glass. Here is where the layering comes in. take our Baileys, you take our spoon. I'm going to lay it right here at the lip of glass. Pour our Baileys but I'm going to just gently glide it off the back of the spoon and watch as it layers. Very gently now, it's just kind of spilling right off. Watch it until t goes right to the lip and there we go. That is a baby Guinness and it's kind of self explanatory. It looks like an itty bitty kind of Guinness, a nice sweet cocktail for your guest.
Now, let’s graduate this baby Guinness into something else that we call B52. Now we’re going to use the same two ingredients for the moment. We’re going to take our Kahlua. Same way, about an ounce in here, okay. Just remember that is our densest liqueur. Once again, we take our Bailey and our spoon. The back of the spoon again, same thing what we did with the baby Guinness and we pour gently gliding it off the back of the spoon. All right and so far we've got ourselves a slightly older baby Guinness here, right?
But now we’re going to add our secret ingredient to make it B52. It's Grand Marnier. This is even lighter than Guinness. This is actually now we’re layering it with three here right? Okay, watch this. We’re going to be pointing it off the back and this actually floats now on top of the Guinness and gently gliding it off. There we go your B52 and your baby Guinness. Don’t forget the rule of layering, your densest liqueurs on the bottom, and the lightest on top. Your guest will have a wonderful time. Make it at your next party.
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