Martini drinks have found their share of lovers the world over. What began as a simple and humble drink in the 1800’s has emerged into one of the most popular drinks across the globe. The traditional martini drinkers believe that all digressions from the original martini recipe are to be discounted and not considered martinis at all. But martini lovers worldwide love the different variations that this dynamic cocktail drink has to offer. While one cannot call any drink which is served in a cocktail glass as a ‘martini’, mixologists today have created a vivid gamut of great martini flavors for the martini lover to choose from.

The new age martin drinks allow one to blend our favorite flavors into a number of martini drinks. Be it fruit, chocolate or any other such substitute, you can choose to make your martini in the flavor that you like best. The original martini recipe uses gin and vermouth that are mixed in a 5:1 ratio, shaken or stirred in a cocktail shaker and then served strained into a martini glass. The original martini recipe demands the garnish of the same to either be an olive or a lime twist.

There are many variations that you can find in flavored martini drinks as well. The appletini is one such variation that has found its share of fans across the globe. While it is slightly sweeter than the traditional martini it has a sweetness and a bite to it which makes this drink an all time favorite. An appletini supplements the quintessential gin with vodka and uses apple schnapps or apple cider to give it the apple flavor. An appletini can be made with one ounce of vodka, a dash of cranberry juice, one ounce of sour apple schnapps. These ingredients are shaken together with a lot of ice is a shaker and then strained out into a martini glass rimmed with white sugar and cinnamon.

The vodka martini is also quite popular amongst martini lovers. This drink uses one and a half ounces of vodka and three fourth of an ounce of dry vermouth. The vodka and the dry vermouth are shaken together in a cocktail shaker with lot of ice and strained into a cocktail glass and served with an olive or a lime twist.

Martinis has also evolved and have begun using liqueurs in some of their variations. The chocolate martini and the minttini are great examples of these variations. For a minttini you will need to take two parts of vodka, one part of crème de menthe and half a part of dry vermouth. These ingredients then need to be shaken with lots of ice till the cocktail shaker becomes frosted on the outside. This drink then should be strained into a martini glass and should be ideally served garnished with a mint sprig.

One of the martini drinks becoming very popular is the chocolatini or the chocolate martini. This unusual martini variation uses vodka along with vanilla vodka and a good quality light chocolate liqueur. These ingredients are then shaken together and served in a martini glass which has been rimmed with lemon and baking soda.

It is not difficult to know how to make cocktails once you know its components, its facts and its basic concepts. Cocktails are drinks and beverages with exotic flavors, taste and colors made from a mixture of alcohol combined with different types of ingredients such as fruit juices, tropical fruits, crushed ice etc. They consist of a combination of liquor drinks like vodka, rum, gin, brandy, wine or whisky. It has unique and glamorous presentation and garnishing like sparklers, paper umbrellas and flowers and fruits for garnishing to match or at times also to contrast the flavor and the color of the drink.

There is a wide range of cocktails and so also an equal or double range of cocktail recipes guiding How to make Cocktails. To name a few popular ones from this wide range – Champagne cocktail, Rum cocktail, Summer Cocktail, Vodka Cocktail, Christmas Cocktail, Margarita cocktail, Mojito cocktails etc.

On having a good and detailed peep into Cocktails Recipes one can become a successful and a vibrant bartender by acquiring all the bartending skills of mixing and blending appropriate drinks and liquors in correct ratios and proportions. Along with Cocktail Recipes, there is also a need to know the use of bar decorations, coasters, appropriate glasses for the various cocktails etc.

A Peep into Some Good Cocktail Recipes

COSMOPOLITAN COCKTAIL

Vodka one ounce
Grand Marnier half an ounce
Cranberry juice half an ounce
Lime juice one ounce

Mix and shake all the ingredients in a shaker and pour in a fancy glass or a glass with some unique shape (This is just for presentation) Add crushed ice and use your imagination for garnishing.

Tips for special effects to the home made cocktails

Create a frosted edge to your uniquely shaped glass. Frosting can be done by dipping the rim of the glass in lemon juice and then in sugar.

Use colorful coasters to hold the fancy cocktails glasses.

The glass can be decorated by paper flowers, umbrellas, straws, swizzle sticks etc.

Use fruits on skewers or cocktail sticks to place on the rim of the cocktail glass.

All this little decoration adds to give the cocktail drink and its recipe an exotic appearance along with an exotic and delicious taste and flavor and color.

TEQUILA SUNRISE COCKTAIL

Orange juice 4 ounces
Tequila 2 ounces
¾ ounce of Grenadine

Pour and mix all the above ingredients in a shaker. Once it is well mixed and stirred pour in a well groomed and decorated fancy cocktail drinking glass. Enjoy the easy and exotic preparation of your own hands.

BLUE LAGOON COCKTAIL

Lemonade ¾ ounces
Vodka 1 ounce
Blue Curacao 1 ounce

Just add all the above liquids and stir and mix well. Pour into your favorite and fancy colorful cocktail glass, add some crushed ice. Garnish and decorate the glass and its rim before you serve.

Enjoy a simple but simply delicious cocktail drink. And now you know “How to make cocktails”. Don’t you? I know you do!!

There is no cocktail to quench your summer thirst as a margarita frozen and served in a chilled glass. Today there are many variations of the margarita but it is essential a Mexican cocktail. This drink has such a wide spread and far reaching appeal that it has become one of the most common tequila based drink in the United States and the rest of the world as well.

Traditionally a margarita is made with tequila which is mixed with lime juice and triple sec. It is served in a glass with salt on the rim. It is normally shaken with ice and served either straight up, which means that it is poured into the glass sans the ice or is sometimes blended with the ice to give the exciting frozen margarita.

The margarita cocktail is made with one ounce of tequila, a dash of triple sec and the juice of half a lemon or a lime. This mix is then poured over crushed ice and stirred. The rim of the margarita glass is then rubbed with a little bit of lime and then spun in a little bit of salt. The salt on the rim of the glass gives the margarita its classic look and a little bit of a bite as well.

When you want to make a classic frozen margarita, you will need one cup of ice, one and a half ounces of tequila, half an ounce of Triple sec, half an ounce of lime juice, three ounces of sour mix, a lime wedge for garnishing and some salt for rimming your margarita glass. Take the tequila, lime juice, triple sec, sour mix and pour it all in a blender, Blend all these ingredients until they are a smooth mix. Chill a margarita glass and then salt its rim. Pour the drink into this ready glass and serve garnished with a lime wedge.

Apart from the traditional margarita frozen you can make a number of variations of this drink. One very popular frozen margarita is the apple margarita. You can make an apple margarita the traditional way and serve it straight up or you can blend all the ingredients together to get a yummy frozen margarita.

For making an apple margarita frozen you will need the standard one cup of ice, one ounce of tequila, one ounce of Apple Pucker, one ounce of apple juice, half an ounce of sour mix and a nice green apple wedge for garnishing. Go ahead and blend all the ingredients together in a blender. Wet the rim of your margarita glass with some Apple Pucker and rim the glass with some salt. Pour the drink mix in and garnish with the green apple wedge and your apple margarita frozen is ready to be served.

Watermelon margaritas frozen are a great summer cooler. Take a watermelon, deseed and blend it in a processor till smooth. Strain and freeze this watermelon juice in a freezer in ice cube trays. Take two cups of these frozen watermelon ice cubes, half cup of simple sugar syrup, half a cup of fresh lime juice, two cups of tequila and two ounces of melon liqueur. Blend all these ingredients until smooth and pour into frozen and rimmed margarita glasses.

Drinks’ mixing is an art of mixing drinks with a base ingredient, a special ingredient for coloring and flavoring and finally a third ingredient to modify the drink’s taste. This process produces cocktails which are aromatic or sour.

This sort of drinks mixing is almost becoming a small industry led by professional mixologists and professionally qualified bartenders. Drinks Mixing is an exciting and an indispensible event, conducted at all pubs, bars, private and public parties. Gone are the days when parties would have a bar offering a brandy, whiskey, rum, beer and some wine – May be a scotch would also be there.

Now the time has come when the bartenders are not only serving liquor by itself, but are busy mixing and blending two or more basic drinks with some flavoring ingredients, fruit juices etc. and are serving them as liquor fashioned with drinks mixing; called as cocktails.

Though drinks’ mixing is an art, there are a few principles that go along into mixing and making quality cocktails.

All ingredients i.e. liqueurs, spirits, modifiers and cordials used should be of good quality to fashion a cocktail of high quality.

Drinks mixing – cocktails should sharpen and not dull the appetite of the person who consumes the mixing.

Care should be taken to avoid it to be very syrupy and sugary. Avoid too much of cream, egg or fruit juice.

It should look good to the eye.

The drinks mixing should be nice and chilled.

It should also be pleasing to the palate.

It should be well balanced with smoothness and also liquor flavor

Pre-prandial drinks (before dinner drinks) should not contain Brandy Alexander as they do not work as appetizers but instead dull the appetite.

The Basic Components that go into drinks mixing or fashioning a cocktail are – whiskey, rum, gin etc.

Then for coloring and extra flavoring- Non alcoholic syrups and for alcoholic mixing – liqueurs and cordials are used.

It is the modifying agent that gives the cocktail drink its actual taste or we may say its actual character. These ingredients can be either – Spirits, Aromatic Wines such as – vermouth, smoothing agents and fruit juices. Cream, Sugar and Eggs are good as smoothies.

DRINKSMIXING

Old Fashioned
American whiskey – 12 measures
Simple Syrup – 1 measure
Angostura bitters – 1 – 3 dashes for every drink

Take the bitters and add them to the syrup and stir the glass. Add one ounce whiskey and keep stirring now add ice pieces (not crushed) fill the glass with the remaining whiskey. Garnish with a lemon peel

Martini
English gin – 7 measures
French Vermouth – dry – 1 measure

Mix all the above ingredients and stir in the ice. When well blended garnish with an Olive. Also add a twisted peel of lemon on the drink. –Sip and enjoy.

Sidecar
Armagnac or Cognac – 8 measures
Triple Sec or cointreau – 1 measure
Lemon juice – 2 parts

Stir well – all the above ingredients. Strain into your stem glass. Garnish as desired.

So as we can see – Drinks mixing is no big Rocket Science. Just know the basics and then let your imagination run wild. Enjoy your own Drinks Mixing in the company of your loved ones. You can do some drinks mixing even by yourself and just for yourself. It can make you feel half as good as a loved one would – Try it with a smiling attitude and some good music around.

No party planning is actually complete before the liquor drinks have been finalized. To make as party a success having the right liquor mix is absolutely essential. As the host of a party you need to make sure that along with planning your venue and the food for your guests, you take into account their beverage requirements. This is where your liquor planning will come into focus.

There are a number of liquor options that you can offer your guests. Along with the standard options of whisky, vodka and a dark rum you can experiment with a variety of other drinks and mixes as well. With a little bit of online research you can learn a great deal about different liquors as well as liqueurs. You can gather information on various drink mixes, sweeteners, flavorings and learn how to use fruits to make your liquor drinks even more exotic. One should also get a clear understanding of the different liquor flavor profiles so that you can churn out the perfect cocktails.

Getting different liquor drink recipes online is also a great way to pep up your party. You can amaze your guests with classic cocktails or you can try the new age bartenders guide and can get a little more experimental and daring. If you want to make your drinks as authentic as possible you should look out for the perfect ingredients for your drinks. This means that along with getting the right liquor, you should also look for the right bar equipment.

Having a peg measure, cocktail shaker, ice crusher and a small portable blender is an absolute essential if you want to be the perfect home bartender. Along with this you absolutely must have a corkscrew, wine opener, bottle opener, stirrers and ice tongs. You can make your drinks look a lot snazzier by adding some garnishing umbrellas or using a drinks funnel to finish your cocktail making with a flourish.

Another thing that you absolutely must consider while making your liquor drinks menu is to get the right number of bottles. Again, you can avail the help of the internet to figure out how much of liquor will you need for your party. With the help of a drinks calculator you can get an almost exact figure on how much of liquor that you need to purchase. You will need to key in the party duration, the number of guests and put in an average figure to determine the heavy drinkers and the light drinkers. You can then choose the type of liquor drinks that you will be serving and get set to calculate the number of drinks that you will need.

Along with getting your liquor drinks in place you should also make sure that you have the right glasses to serve your drinks in. Add some wine glasses, martini glasses, standard tall cocktail glasses, rock glasses and a couple of shot glasses to make your bar look more professional. The other advantage of serving the liquor drinks in the right glasses, apart from the obvious professional look, is that it will help you keep an account of the almost exact amount of drinks that are being poured.