Having your friends around for drinks in the summertime always sounds like a good idea, but when it comes down to it, there’s actually quite a bit to organise.
Aside from ensuring the house looks perfect, you need to think about food and music, so wouldn’t it be easier if the drinks could take care of themselves? No, we’re not talking about hiring a bartender, but instead, we’re encouraging you to explore the wonderful world of batching.
Batching may sound hard, but it’s actually not difficult at all. While there are a couple of things you need to remember, it is, in fact, the perfect way to provide tasty drinks for your thirsty friends.
Upscaling Your Cocktails
So, how do you turn the recipe for a single drink into a pitcher or punchbowl of drinks? There are actually a few ways to figure it out.
If you and your friends love classic drinks like a Moscow Mule, a Daiquiri or a Gimlet, you may have noticed a similarity in how they are constructed. They follow what bartenders call the ‘golden ratio’ a simple recipe that dictates 2 parts liquor, 1 part sour (usually citrus like lemon or lime juice), and 1 part simple syrup (or alternative sweetener). You can easily apply the same proportions to ounces, cups, gallons, etc., making even on-the-fly mixing a cinch.
‘Another proportional adage is the ‘1 part sour, 2 parts sweet, 3 parts strong, and 4 parts weak. So what does that mean? Well, the strong are spirits, and the weak can be water (or ice, wine, or champagne—although leave these till last—see below). Sour is citrus; lemon works best with dark spirits, and lime with clear and sweet syrups or liqueurs. Mix it up according to the size you think you’ll need (always drink responsibly), and then the day will be yours to enjoy.
Another common method for upscaling is to change the ounces in a recipe into cups. So, for example, a Martini calls for two ounces of gin and one ounce of dry vermouth, which expanded could equal two cups of gin and one cup of vermouth. This formula allows you to quickly make eight servings of a drink from one single-serving recipe, as there are eight ounces in a cup.
15 Common mistakes
Now you know how to get your proportion correct, here are 15 common mistakes to avoid
1 If you’re mixing up a big batch of egg nog, reserve eggs for single-serving drinks. The same can be said for cream. These ingredients require an armload of shaking to incorporate into a batch of drinks and might easily separate from the rest of the ingredients.
2. If you put anything fizzy in the batch too early, it will simply go flat. So chill your bubbles ahead of time and pour them at the very last second to retain the effervescence in your batch cocktails.
3. When prebatching drinks to be stored in the freezer, dilute the alcoholic ingredients with 20–25% water to compensate for the water that would have been added by stirring the drink with ice.
4. If scaling up recipes with bitters, start with half the recipe’s usual amount and increase to taste.
5. If you are putting your drink in the freezer, it’s recommended that you monitor them to avoid exploding bottles. If ice crystals forming on the bottles, move them to the refrigerator.
6. Citrus-based and lower-ABV cocktails tend to work best as punches.
7. When batching citrus cocktails, prepare the citrus portion on the day to avoid oxidation.
8. Adding one large block of ice to a punch bowl, rather than smaller cubed ice, will allow it to last longer without getting too watered down.
9. Don’t Forget to Dilute. Water is a crucial component of every cocktail, particularly when prebatched, so you need to calculate the water that would have come from stirring or shaking. It’s not about diluting. It’s about balancing the drink. It’s often recommended that you start by diluting about one-fifth to one-quarter of the total drink volume with water,
10. Don’t forget to garnish. Garnishes make any cocktail better, and it can be as simple as placing citrus wheels, maraschino cherries, and/or olives to the side with easy-to-use tongs
11. Don’t let your bitters take over. While bitters are relatively stable, they can also become increasingly bitter the longer they sit out in a batched drink. It’s often recommended to reduce the bitters by half when batching.
12. Even if you’ve diluted your cocktail, it’s still important to have ice. No matter ho much ice you think you’ll need, always double it, particularly during summer.
So these are a few tips that should hopefully get you batching like a pro, but remember, if you’re nervous about batching, there’s no harm in doing a trial run … and it could be fun testing the results.
