Blending
Admittedly, my first forays into making my own drinks were with my old Oster blender, a frozen can of Bacardi Pina Colada mix, ice, and some rum. It went over well enough to impress a girl in the library. I didn't blend a drink for about 18 years. 2018 is the year I discovered the Coconaut. That girl in the library missed out on a lot of great things, including Coconauts. Everyone I've served one too has always requested it again. This may be the one drink I've found that is guaranteed to bring everyone happiness. If anything, you should learn how to blend drinks just to make Coconauts.
With mixed drinks, you have four types of blending:
Blending
Combine your Ingredients with ice and blend. This is the most common blending technique.
Dry Blending
If your recipe calls for egg whites or dairy, you’ll want to first blend the ingredients without ice for 10 seconds - this is called a dry blend, and aerates the drink while creating a nice foam. After dry blending, you’ll blend a second time with ice, then strain and pour into your serving vessel.
Reverse Dry Blending
Almost the same as a dry blend, but in reverse. First, you blend your ingredients with ice for 10 seconds. Then, you strain out the ice and blend your ingredients a second time for 10 seconds with egg white instead of ice.
Flash Blending
Using a drink mixer (also known as a spindle mixer, which is not a blender), you blend the drink for 3-5 seconds. This article well not address flash blending - refer to the other article for that information.
Why blend
Blending is the fastest way to make a cold drink. It also dilutes the fastest.
What you’ll need
Of course, you'll need a blender. One with a pitcher that has internal blades and a motorized base. Ideally the blender’s pitcher will be narrower. I get much better results from the narrow pitcher than the wider pitcher.
I really like the Vitamix blenders. Vitamix quite simply makes awesome blenders. I’ve used a few models, and I prefer my neighbors’ 
Can you blend a drink well enough with any ol’ blender, especially one that you already own or that is hundreds of dollars cheaper? Hells yes! Don’t spend a butt load of money on a blender if you
don’t have other reasons to do so! I’ve used a 
You’ll also need ice. Bagged ice from the local store is ideal, as is the ice my neighbor brings me from his freezer’s ice maker. The ice from my usual 
How to blend
If you have the opportunity, freeze everything. This may be a luxury, but you'll get better results. Pre-batch the recipe and freeze it. Put the blender pitcher in the freezer too. You want everything to be very cold.
You'll add the ingredients to your blender pitcher. You should aim to blend in small amounts, perhaps 4 or 5 servings at a time. The reason for this is that larger amounts will increase the dilution.
Next add ice. If the recipe doesn't specify how much ice, I like to use a 1.5:1 or a 2:1 ratio of ice to ingredients. The amount of ice varies based on the water content of the other ingredients.
Blend for as short of a time as possible, typically 10 seconds. Some recipes may call for more blending time and more ice, depending on the intended texture.
Always blend on your most powerful setting. You want to get blending done as quickly as possible, as the spinning blades introduce heat through friction and you don’t want to minimize the melting of ice. So if your blender goes to 11, then keep it at 11.
An air cavity may develop when blending a mixture that is too solid or too cold. This condition is known as cavitation and will cause the blender blades to spend freely without any effect on the mixture. Normally, folks try to resolve this by pulsing the blender or stopping it to stir the mixture with a spoon to remove the air. In my experience, this fixes nothing and you have to stop again and again - the results aren't the best. The correct way to address a cavitation is to reduce the ice, increase the liquid, or make sure your Ingredients are not colder than 10°F (-12°C).
Because of the rapid movement of ingredients across ice, and because the ice is simultaneously being pulverized by the blades which makes the ice more susceptible to diluting, blending can be very difficult to achieve your intended results. You may have to adjust recipes for variables in ice type, ingredient temperature, sugar content, citrus acidity, and blending time.
It's easy to knock blending, especially since many drinkers fear going back to the dark ages of cocktails. Blending drinks seem to spark a dichotomy of thoughts. On one hand there's an overt fear of cloyingly sweet, artificially tasting ice bombs. On the other hand, there are often fond memories of first drinks, of pina coladas and frozen margaritas - drinks people are ashamed to order anymore. The act of blending is easy, but perfecting the technique takes a lot of effort. Blending has a significant effect on the flavor balance of a recipe, and if you’re converting a shaken or stirred recipe to be blended, you’ll need to adjust your recipe. Take these three tips into consideration:
- A colder drink is perceived as less sweet, so you’ll increase the sweetness.
- You’ll need to adjust the acidity, which is affected differently than sweetness by the colder temperature and greater dilution.
- Reduce liquid components as much as possible, replacing them when more concentrated alternatives. Instead of simple syrup, use a rich syrup, or a triple syrup. Use overproof alcohol in lieu of standard, 40’ish proof alcohol. This will help to counterbalance the high amount of dilution that occurs when blending.
Often, as a home bartender I find myself avoiding blending a drink. Not only do I have to get the blender out from a cabinet, I have extremely limited counter space. Plus, blenders are noisy.
On the other hand, if I have 8 friends over and I'm serving them all the same drink, I'll blend instead of shake. I can put everything in one mixing vessel and just go to town. A quick blend, even if it's loud, gets me right back to focusing on the good time and not on shaking batch after batch of whatever.
To hell with judgements: drink what you like, and if you can make it even better, do it.