Bartending Techniques II: Cause a Stir

If shaking a drink is all about chilling in the most violent and rapid way, then stirring sits at the opposite end of the spectrum: It’s controlled, measured, and takes time. When you stir a cocktail, your main goal is to control the amount of dilution that goes into the drink.

Most recipes that call for stirring are only composed of a few ingredients each and, for the most part, tend to be spirit forward. By keeping a close check on the amount of water that will make it to the drink, we’ll avoid drowning out the flavor.

Our second goal with stirred drinks is to target the right temperature for the very few ingredients we’re working with. Temperature affects your taste buds. Warm food will make the electrical signals sent to your brain to function at a higher rate. This is why a steak will taste different depending on its temperature.

Conversely, when something is too cold, we start losing the ability to taste it. Did you ever have a really frosty popsicle as a kid, and the first time you licked it, it wouldn’t really taste like much? It wasn’t until it rose in temperature, and started melting in your mouth that all the flavors really came alive.

How does this apply to cocktails? Much in the same way! If a drink is too cold, your inhibited taste buds won’t be able to taste all the nuanced flavors found in your ingredients – you wouldn’t want to miss out on all subtle flavors from your favorite bourbon, right?

The final difference between both techniques is aeration. If you recall, shaking creates a lot of tiny air bubbles; stirring doesn’t. Stirred drinks (obviously depending on the ingredients) can be crystal clear and very striking to look at.

What do you need to stir a cocktail?

Ice, a vessel, and something to stir with.

As you learned before, the size of the ice you use for shaking will influence the end result – with stirring this is no different. If you use small ice cubes, they will dilute much faster than larger cubes. If you only use large cubes, you’ll be stirring for a long time. Neither option is necessarily a bad one, but it will determine how long and how fast you need to stir.

Go for medium sized cubes if you have them.

In terms of vessels, you’ll often see bartenders use either metal tins (like the ones from your shaker) or mixing glasses.

Metal tins are all about efficiency – metal transfers heat a lot faster than glass, which means you’ll need less time to chill your drink down (and remember, stirring is all about not overdiluting a drink).

Mixing glasses, on the other hand, are more about presentation. They are made of either glass or crystal and are usually etched, making them very beautiful to look at. Obviously, they aren’t devoid of functionality: They have spouts, and they often come with weighted bases to prevent them from toppling over.

To help combat their shortcomings when it comes to chilling, consider keeping your mixing glass in the freezer (if you can spare the space).

Finally, let’s go over the stirring tool: In the very first lesson, when we made the Mojito, we suggested using a chopstick if you didn’t have any bartending tools. While you’d be perfectly fine still using the chopstick, there are certain reasons why you’d want to graduate to the barspoon instead.

The Barspoon

A barspoon is a multi-purpose tool in your bar. Its main objective is to let you stir drinks with ease. Additionally, its bowl will let you measure ingredients. Its long shaft will help you get olives or cherries out of jars without having to try to fish them out with a cocktail pick. The end of the handle is either weighted (to help you stir), or it can have another tool. For example, some of them have forks, or they can have a flat surface that helps you create a float, or to do some light muddling.

It’ll always look more professional if you use a barspoon as opposed to a makeshift tool.

Barspoons require a specific stirring technique. It’s not complicated, but it might require a little practice to fully get used to it. If you master it, your stirring will look and feel effortless. The basis of the technique is that you want the inside of the spoon to always face inwards – this will let you stir without ice getting in your way.

Putting it all together

You can practice by chilling water, but if you want to make yourself a drink, here are three recipes for you to try:

(If you haven’t had any of these before and you aren’t too fond of spirit forward drinks, we recommend the Reverse Martini out of the three.)

Manhattan

Ingredients

60ml rye whiskey
30ml sweet vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Garnish

Maraschino cherry

(Dry) Martini

Ingredients

75ml gin
15ml dry vermouth
1 dash orange bitters

Garnish

One or three olives, or lemon twist

Reverse Martini

Ingredients

30ml gin
60ml dry vermouth
1 dash orange bitters

Garnish

One or three olives, or lemon twist

Instructions

Get a vessel - a mixing tin or glass.

Add your ingredients.

Fill the vessel with ice so that it covers your ingredients completely and by an additional inch / 2.5cm.

This doesn’t have to be exact but err on the side of more ice rather than less.

Place your barspoon in the vessel, with the back of the bowl touching the wall.

Place your dominant hand near the end of the handle. The position of your fingers is down to preference, either have:

Index and middle finger in front of the handle, and your ring finger and pinky behind the handle. Or,
Index in front of the handle, and your middle finger behind the handle.

Some barspoons are really long, so you’ll have to find their sweet spot.

Place your other hand on the bottom of the vessel, this will prevent it from falling over and will also inform you when the drink is sufficiently cold.

Begin stirring by pushing and pulling towards you with your fingers; that is, the fingers that were behind the handle will push forward, and the ones in front will push towards you.

Let the barspoon twirl between your fingers, letting the spiral fulfill its purpose. Your thumb is mostly there to help keep the spoon in place, it’s not really exerting any force.

Remember, you always want to keep the inside of the spoon pointing to the center of the vessel. If all goes well, your hand will mostly remain in the same spot as you stir.

Count between 50-60 revolutions. Somewhere around 30 seconds. Note that as we discussed before, the time you need to stir depends on the ice you used, so adjust accordingly.

Strain the cocktail:

If you’re using a Hawthorne strainer, strain as you do with the cocktail shaker. You won’t have tiny pieces of ice as you do with shaking, so a closed gate pour is unnecessary.

If you’re using a Julep strainer, place it either face up or face down on top of the ice. With your dominant hand, carefully grab both the vessel and the strainer, and pour into a glass. You can use your free hand to help you hold the vessel and prevent any accidents.

Note some mixing glasses are heavy and they’ll be slippery from all the chilling, so be careful.

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And with that, you’ve learned the two primary techniques for chilling and mixing a drink!

Complete Lesson