Cocktail Making

There are a few different ways to pour a drink behind the bar. Many bars require the staff to use jiggers as seen below, which are used to measure the amount of spirit that you require to be put into a cocktail. In the UK jiggers come in 25ml, 35ml, 50ml, 70ml. It is very common to have 125ml, 175ml & 250ml jiggers to measure wine as well.

alternatively you can free pour, which means pouring straight from the bottle. The best technique for free pouring is holding the bottle by the neck with your forefinger and thumb and using the rest of the fingers to support the rest of the bottle

The most common way to hold a bottle as seen below is by the neck with your thumb tucked in. This allows you to hold the vertically upside-down and gives the bartender control over the bottle and the end of the pouring motion

another way is to grab the neck with your hand facing down so that when you flip it your hand is the correct way up.

This technique is very comfortable but makes it a lot harder to end the pour as you have less control over the bottle and have to twist your wrist in quite an unnatural way.

A similar technique is grabbing the neck in-between your middle and forefinger. This gives the bartender more control over the bottle than the previous technique but is less comfortable.

alternatively you can hold the knock with your thumb and pinky and support the rest of the bootle with your remaining fingers. All these types of pour work. You just have to fid the best one for you.

Another technique which looks good but also speeds up the process of making multiple drinks is stack pouring which involves stacking a number of glasses into each other and free pouring into the gaps of each glass. This technique requires the bartender to know how many seconds to pour for the correct measurement.

The video below shows this technique being used to make jaegerbombs

Fan pouring is yet another technique which can speed up the process of cocktail making whilst also giving the customer a show. It involves multiple bottles in a hand and free pouring as seen below.

Once you have poured the ingredients to your cocktail into your boston glass, fill your boston tin with ice and quickly flip the boston tin to fit on top of the glass.

Then flip it over as seen below and make sure that the glass firmly held in place by the tin

Hold the glass at the base with your thumb and the boston tin with your other hand.

And shake over your shoulder for the best shaking motion.