Let’s talk a bit about the quality of your ingredients.  There’s an old saying: “You get what you pay for.” When it comes to what you put in your mouth it is very true.

When you’re cooking, you need to use the highest quality ingredients to achieve a five star quality meal. When you’re making a cocktail the same concept applies. If you have one underlying ingredient that is cheap and doesn’t balance with everything else, your entire drink may taste at the worst, foul; at the best, slightly off.

Using the highest quality ingredients in all ingredients really does help flavor balance; revealing the trueness of whatever you are creating. 

One more reason to use quality materials: cocktails made with natural ingredients and quality spirits are less likely to attribute to that nasty next day headache. Balance is the key to happiness in everything.

When looking at mixers, many juices and mixes are pure chemical. Now, I’m a thoroughly modern guy who isn’t about to say that all things manufactured are bad, but when you are making drinks you really need to think about what you want for your outcome. Fresh, natural ingredients will give a fuller flavor, better smell and will mix better with whatever you add. When using a mixer made from mostly chemical ingredients you run the risk of adding a chemical aftertaste or a flavor that isn’t true. 

Consider products as ubiquitous as orange juice and orange drink. When looking at them they both register as orange to our eyes. The juice however is a brighter more healthy looking color to your subconscious. It brings to mind orange groves and sunshine. Orange drink while the proper color always looks flat to me. 

Smelling both usually brings radically different reactions. Depending on the quality of the juice you may have a different density of scent but regardless, the fruit smells real to our senses. Orange drink might smell very much like oranges if it’s a high quality drink but for the large bulk of products on the market the scent is usually very chemical in nature, often not even smelling like oranges in the least.

Tasting the juice, regardless of its quality, will flood your mouth with the flavor of real citrus. Acidity spreads the flavor across your mouth and the juice feels cool and refreshing as it goes down your throat. Orange drink on the other hand may deliver a very orange flavor but the subtle secondary tastes are usually missing. You can often taste a metallic chemical undertone that just screams fake to your brain. 

The aftertaste of juice is usually a gentle pleasant tingle of citrus that fades slowly leaving your palate feeling refreshed. Orange drink might provide the same sensations but nine times out of ten the aftertaste is either fleeting or worse, a lingering chemical flavor that fades into an unpleasant metallic residue.

Even alcohol has variations in quality. Filtering can smooth out impurities in the spirits. The methods of aging and even the quality of the manufacturer’s distillation materials and ingredients will affect the taste of the drink. Usually, but not always, more expensive alcohols are higher quality. Face it; you have to pay more for the manufacturer to recoup his costs of quality production. That being said, expensive alcohol is not always better. Sometimes public demand, celebrity endorsements or just uniqueness of the product will drive the price up regardless of its quality. This is where tasting comes into play. I could list every alcohol on the market and give you a rating for it but this would merely be my opinion. Every mixologist must determine what brands they feel to be good as far as their palates are concerned and then stick with those alcohols.

With all that in mind, what would you want to mix with your drink? Would you like to enjoy every sensation of your libation or do you want to be left wanting at the end with an odd undertone of flavor that you can’t quite pinpoint. This type of sensation can mean the difference between someone loving and hating your creation.

Until next time may your drinks always be tasty. Cheers.