Cocktails
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Pina Colada Day – 10th July
Nothing says 'holiday' more than pineapple, coconut and rum. The Pina Colada has been maligned for too long now; with some work, good ingredients and, admittedly a bit of a sweet tooth, this cocktail can be a real pleasure... guilty or otherwise. So crack open the rum, check the date on that coconut cream and get the blender out of the cupboard; it's time to party like it's 1989
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Alt // Spritz
The last year has seen spritz serves hit the 7th most popular cocktail in the UK*, and growing only behind the flavoured Martini in popularity...
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Creating a Hit List
Creating a cocktail menu for your outlet can be a pretty personal experience. A lot of operators have worked their way up through bartending, making a cocktail menu refresh a pretty hands-on experience. Some prefer to let their bar team take on some ownership and create a menu between them, where some like to outsource entirely. There’s no real right answer here, just what works best for you and the time that you have available, but creating a cocktail menu always comes back to the same thing: balance
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Bean Machine
Coffee cocktails have been on many menus for a while now, the espresso martini now an essential addition to every spirits-led bar. We ask Patrick Kempinski, Reserve World Class Bartender of the Year 2018 for Kenya, why his is so special
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Highballing It
Tall, fast, profitable and unimaginably diverse - we're getting into it up to the highballs (and we promise that's it with the highball puns)
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…and be merry
Not everyone reading this will be trying to present customers with complex cuisine, but with a focus on some simple standards you start to learn that most food can be enhanced with the appearance of some spirits. Here are a few very basic flavour suggestions that can cover popular fare from the kitchen, particularly at a time of year when food sales are crucial
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The Daiquiri
Essentially a rum sour. The Navy had a big role to play in the Daiquiri, they were mixing lime with sugar spirits as early as the era of Sir Francis Drake in a bid to fight scurvy
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The Old Fashioned
The Old Fashioned is a classic cocktail that should really adorn every cocktail menu.
Not content with a whole heap of history behind it, arguably more than any other classic, a competently made Old Fashioned is a reliable rubberstamp of quality for customers. If a bar can make an excellent Old Fashioned, chances are that the other drinks on the venue’s list can be deftly delivered too.