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Shaking

You're going to need to learn how to shake drinks. The only more used recipe techniques are pouring and straining. Shaking is key for recipes going all that way back through the eras. Your hipster bars shake. Dale DeGroff shook at the Rainbow Room. Isaac Washington liked to shake. The Tiki gods shook. Ada Coleman shook for London. And Jerry Thomas definitely shook some drinks. That's why you are going to learn to shake a drink too.

Why shake

Let's be clear - not every drink should be shaken. You don't shake an Old Fashioned, and you sure as a hell don't shake a Sazerac. Yeah, I would drink it, but I would also judge you and your life decisions over it. If your recipe includes dairy, egg, juices, or is generally not clear in appearance, then you shake it.

Typically, the more opaque your ingredients are, the more likely you are to need a violent mixing technique such as shaking. Shaking works very well with when the ingredients are more difficult to combine. You want to shake drinks when you want a lot of aeration, texture, or foam. Is a Sazerac beautiful because you can see through the ruddy liquid and out the other side? Yup. Is a Sazerac a wonderful garnet of a drink, which you can gaze through from on high, peering down into it's soul even if the twisted orange peel has fallen in? Yup. Don't shake Sazeracs. Shake a drink when the recipe calls for opaque or thicker ingredients like juice or dairy and egg, or emulsions, or when you want a fancy head, like a Ramos Gin Fizz.

What you’ll need

I prefer a two tin setup, specifically, this Cocktail Kingdom Koriko Large 28 oz Tin and Cocktail Kingdom Koriko 18 oz Tin. There are a lot of terms people use to refer to this setup: tin-on-tin, shaker tin, cheater tin, etc.Some folks say it’s a cheater because the second metal tin isn't as heavy as the pint glass used in a Boston shaker setup. Other folks say it is cheating because you can use the second tin as a strainer. I like this setup because it is easy, efficient, and requires less stuff for my bar. I refer to them as mixing tins, because I use them for all my mixing techniques. Regardless, most of what I'm going to share with you also applies to shaking with a Boston shaker or a cobbler because your equipment matters very little with shaking. On occasion I still use a cobbler shaker or a pint glass with my large 28 oz tin.

How to shake

Find yourself a drink you want to make, just not one with egg white. As I write this, I'm thinking about a Daiquiri or a Barbados Rum Punch - those would be a good option for you, but here’s a list of shaken, eggless recipes in Tipply. You might be wondering why I specified "no egg" in the recipe. That's because we're covering the basic shaking technique. If your recipe has egg white or a similar foaming ingredient, you will need to do a shake and a dry shake or reverse dry shake. Ice inhibits the formation of a good head. We'll cover these techniques elsewhere. With basic shaking, you won't produce a good head, but the aeration will produce a faint creaminess or smoothness quality, and can get you a little foam on the top depending on what ingredients you've used.

Put your mixing tins, Boston shaker, or cobbler on the bar. You should have one larger tin and one smaller (tin or pint glass). You build your drink in the smaller tin smaller tin/pint glass. If you’re using a cobbler, it’ll be obvious where to put the ingredients.

Now add ice. Use normal ice. Cubes are good, just avoid crushed, cracked, pebbled, shaved etc. Outside of tiki drinks, these smaller forms of ice are rarely used as prep ice as they can dilute and cool very quickly and unreliably (i.e., make it difficult for you to reliably reproduce a great drink).

How much ice? Use enough ice until the ice no longer floats. I use cubes from my 1.25” Tovolo Cube Mold for most of my prep ice, and I find I only need 3 cubes for a typical shaken drink. Overfilling your tin with ice is pointless. Unless your liquid ingredients are in contact with the ice, the ice will not chill and dilute. Plus, you're just wasting ice. As a home bartender, ice is precious. Ice doesn't magically appear in your freezer, it takes water, filtration plants, chemicals, wells, refrigerant, energy, money, and time. Don't waste it. If you do, you won't be able to make as many drinks in an evening. Or you’ll be begging neighbors for ice late at night.

Having added the ice to your small tin/pint glass, place the larger tin on top so it sits like a cap, over the rim of the smaller. Now tilt it to the side like a drunken sailor's cap - all the way, so the sides of each tin touch. Then give the base of the top tin a good whack with the palm of your hand. That should firm a strong seal, which you can verify by trying to lift the conjoined tins via the top. Everything should lift together and feel secure. If not, put it back down a whack or again.

With your securely conjoined tins, invert them. You do this for two reasons. First, when you start shaking, your larger tin must face outwards towards your guests. If the seal weakens while shaking, it may leak and cause liquid to start flying all over and towards you and not towards who you're making the drink for. Since the larger tin's opening is towards you, those leaks will be directed in your direction. And, as a bonus, you can keep mixing and hang your tongue out for a taste. Or stop, reset the seal, and finish shaking.

The second reason you invert the tins is for when you finish. Your ice will have diluted the drink, the aeration may increase the volume, and the insides of both tins are all wet. With the larger tin on the bottom, when you break the seal and remove the top, your larger tin will catch drips and not overflow. You're more likely to have that problem, a dirty bar, and wasted drink if you open the tins with the smaller on the bottom.

Make a habit of these three things:

  1. Build the drink in the little tin;
  2. Big tin goes on the bottom after you make your seal;
  3. Big tin faces your guests when shaking.

The actual movement and action of shaking is quite basic despite all the crazy looking styles you see bartenders doing behind the bar. I've seen the shaker twerks, the whispering tins, the rodeo shake, boomerang bangarang, the bumpity log role, and the sniper shake. All of those produce the same quality in drink and have more to do a bartender’s visual flair. Follow these three rules and you'll be a great shaker:

  • Shake hard. If you hear your ice smashing in the tins and if you feel it cracking, you're doing it right. There is no need to shake like you're killing it, but don’t treat it like a baby either;
  • Shake for 10-15 seconds. That's all it takes to combine, dilute, and chill the drink. Shake for less than 10 seconds and your drink may not reach the ideal coldness or dilution. Shake for longer than 15 seconds and you're just wasting time and making a noisy racket, since your ingredients will already be at near minimum temperature and unable to continue diluting. Sort of a mind blower there, best covered in Dave Arnold's Liquid Intelligence;
  • Shake on the lateral plane, not vertically. This exposes your liquid contents to more surface area for faster chilling and dilution, as well as more aeration.

Once you are done shaking, remember to keep the larger tin on the bottom, then find the point on your conjoined tins where the rim of the smaller tin is touching the edge of the larger to. Give that point a karate chop with the base of your hand (or a good squeeze) and the seal should break. Chilling the contents causes the pressure to decrease inside the tins, which strengthens the seal. If this makes it hard to break the seal, try harder, or use the edge of a counter to whack the tins against.

Once separated, you're ready to pour your drink into the serving vessel. You may want to strain the ice shards and leftover cubes when you pour, or you’ll dump it all in the serving vessel. I'll cover pouring technique elsewhere, but for now, I'll give you these thoughts:

  • Don't let the drink linger - serve it quickly or risk loss of texture, over-dilution, and warming. You're aerated texture will diminish most rapidly, so get it out and into a nice, chilled vessel;
  • Most shaken drinks are strained, if not double strained - but not always. Other than appearances, there is no harm in using your wet, prep ice as your service ice. If anything, you get gains here: you minimize holdback, you keep the drink colder than if you add new ice, and discarding your ice is wasteful.

So pour that drink, enjoy it, and think about how your next one is going to be even better! If you want to practice without getting yourself tanked, just use water and ice, or make shaken da chanh (Vietnamese lemonade). Get a feel for how things move in your shaker. Start developing your own rhythm and shaking style. The nice thing about mixed drink is you always get to enjoy them after you put in the effort!

Here is a list of all the shaken drinks you can hone your technique on!