Save yourself some time and effort this holiday season by pre-batching cocktails. Here’s what you’ll need if you’re doing it at home, as well as expert tips and tricks. Prefer to just buy batched cocktails from the pros? Read more here.
Essential Items
Food Scale: We recommend this KitchenAid scale. (If you already have a food scale, though, you’ll be fine—cocktails aren’t rocket science, and being a few tenths of an ounce off won’t matter in the long run.)
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Storage Containers: These are the most useful items you can own when working with large batches. We recommend these Cambros. The size will depend not only on how much you need to batch, but also how much room is in your fridge or freezer. Bonus: There are graduated measurements on the sides.
Measuring Cups: Some batching recipes call for anywhere from 30 ounce to 1.5 ounces, so having measuring cups is important. We recommend these OXO measuring cups, as well as this OXO, which range from small to large.
Tips and Tricks
Chill your batch before serving. Keeping it in the fridge and cooled down maintains that crisp, refreshing mouthfeel.
Pre-dilute your cocktails. Unless you’re working behind a professional bar, pre-diluting cocktails makes for ease and convenience. Experts typically recommend 18 percent for a spirit-forward stirred cocktail and up to 25 percent for a citrusy shaken cocktail. For help with the math while batching cocktails, try the Batch Calculator. (Note: These are large-volume, easy-to-execute libations, so don’t overthink it. Also, just as popular cocktails can change ingredients and ratios from bar to bar, so too can batched cocktails. At the end of the day, if it tastes good to you, that’s all that matters.)
Leave the bitters and carbonated ingredients out. Bitters are a highly concentrated ingredient that can change the flavor of your cocktail over time. This can include muting the other ingredients, so that your cocktail may taste only of said bitters. Also, once you add carbonation to a batch, it will quickly dissipate and over-dilute the batch.
