A Cocktail's Most Important Ingredient

When making a cocktail, many people only think about the alcohol, the mixer, and possibly the garnish, but what about the base of most drinks? Most cocktails use ice in one form or another at some point. It can be built, shaken, stirred, or blended, but ice plays an integral part in a lot of cocktails. Why all this talk about some frozen water? Because a lot of people don't understand what ice does for a drink. Let's go over the basic forms of ice and then I'll talk about what ice does for a drink and why this is so important.

Ice comes in pretty much four basic forms:

• Cubed: When most people think of cubed ice they think of the large chunks of ice they make in trays in their home freezer. While these are cubes, other shapes include crescent, cubelet, top-hat (the ice cubes literally look like a top-hat), or the small cubed ice you come across in bars and restaurants that usually measures somewhere around 1"x1"x1/2".
  
  
• Cracked: Cracked ice is made by taking larger cubed ice (about the size you have in your home freezer) and breaking it into smaller chunks. A lot of times this is done by placing the ice in a towel and giving each cube a good whack with a mallet.
  
  
• Crushed: Also called flake ice. While you could just continue hitting your ice with a mallet like you would to make cracked ice, this won't produce consistent pieces and you'll probably wear holes in your towels pretty quickly. To get good crushed ice you need an ice crushing machine. This machine breaks the ice into tiny pieces that are pretty uniform in size which is important. Ice crushers can be either manual or machine driven. If you have a lot of orders calling for crushed ice, invest in a good, machine operated ice crusher. Your bartenders will thank you and your customers will get their drinks faster.
  
  
• Shaved: Shaved ice is pretty much ice that has been blended into the consistency of snow. If you can, use the smallest ice you have available to put in the blender to avoid as much wear and tear on your blender as you can (crushed ice is a good starting point).

This will cover 99% of drinks out there that call for ice.

Now that you know about the different types of ice, let talk about what ice does for a drink and why it is so important. The most obvious thing ice does for a drink is it cools it down. What may not be so obvious is that by lowering the temperature of the alcohol, it reduces the alcohol flavor, the "bite" you notice when drinking alcohol neat (this is why people will put alcohol in the freezer). This allows for the other flavors to come through in the cocktail. Of course not over-pouring helps but I'll get into that at a later time.

The other thing ice does for a cocktail is add a very important ingredient, water. Yes, water! Water dilutes the drink slightly (this is a good thing) which also mellows the alcohol. When new drinks are invented, the unspoken ingredient is this water. Without this added touch of water, the drink won't taste right. And in delicately balanced drinks, it could ruin them. You can test this out yourself. Take two glasses and fill one of them with ice. Now add 1 1/2 oz. of vodka and 3 oz. of orange juice to both. Put a straw in each and taste them. The one without the ice tastes stronger because you don't have that touch of water.

Now that you know what ice does for a drink, another thing to take into account when planning your bar is what type of ice do you need? Most bars will need cubes at a minimum but if you are planning on doing only blended drinks then getting an ice machine that makes crushed ice would be a better choice while a high-end club may have many ice machines churning out different types of ice for different types of drinks. I read about one club in the Chicago, IL area that featured eight, count them, eight different types of ice. Why would a place need that many types of ice? Well, it's because different shapes and types of ice do different things for drinks.

• Temperature: The colder the ice is, the more it will cool a drink but the lower the amount of water (dilution) it will add. Also, some people like to chew their ice and the lower the temperature of the ice, the harder it will be.
  
  

• Displacement: The amount of area taken up by ice will effect how much liquid will fit into each size of glass. If you have an 4 oz. rocks glass and the ice takes up 2 1/2 oz., you would have to fill the glass to the rim for a 1 1/2 oz. shot of liquor which isn't good as you want some room at the top for ice melting and "walking room."
  
  
• Surface Area: Without bringing back any painful memories from high school science class, different shapes of ice expose more area of the ice to the liquid. The more surface area, the quicker the ice melts which means it cools the drink quicker but also the more it dilutes it.

Now you know more than you ever thought possible about the importance ice and its effects on a cocktail. A lot of bar owners never think about this important ingredient and it shows more than they realize. Don't make the same mistakes. Think about your clientèle, about the types of drinks you plan to serve, and choose your type(s) of ice with the same care you want your bartenders to have as they make each and every drink. Your customers will notice.

Icecube picture by Editor at Large (Own work) CC-BY-SA-2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Consistency in Product

While it is great to break off from the crowd and follow your own path at times, sometimes being consistent is a good thing. And when it comes to your products, being consistent is the only way to go. Any time a customer orders a drink, that drink should be the same no matter who serves it. It should always look, taste, and cost the same (drink specials notwithstanding). Lets look at this in more detail.

ICE
The type of ice used and how much is used should not change. If a drink calls for cracked ice, then the bartender should crack the ice for that drink, even if it's a Saturday night and there's a line ten deep at the bar. The customer is paying for that ice to be cracked and if customers start to get skimped on their drinks during the busy times, they won't be so busy for long.
They should also get the correct amount of ice in their drinks. A lot of cocktail recipes say "fill glass with ice." This means to fill the glass to the top with ice using an ice scooper. This doesn't mean that the glass should be filled 3/4 full nor should the glass be overfilled and packed down. Ice is very important (see previous article on the importance of ice) but it needs to be used correctly.

GLASSWARE
There is a reason glassware comes in so many shapes and sizes; they each serve a purpose and should be used for that purpose. When you decide on the glassware you will have for your establishment, make sure everyone knows what drinks are served in what types of glasses. You can't have one bartender serving rum and cola in a bucket and the next serving it in a chimney. Exceptions to this are when ordered either short or tall but there's an exception to every rule. It will change the taste and some customers may feel that they are getting under- or over-served. And as your clientèle gets accustomed to your bar, they will expect their drinks to look the same each time they order them.

POUR
This is a big problem at some establishments and one of the biggest reasons why so many bars have begun to use automated alcohol dispensing guns or measured pour spouts. If your bartenders aren't pouring accurately (either on purpose or accidentally), someone is being ripped off. If your bartenders are pouring even 1/4 oz. over on each drink, this can cost thousands of dollars in lost sales in a very short time. Let's add some dollar signs to this idea.

This example will be based on the following factors:

• Your house shot is 1 1/4 oz. (20 shots per 750mL bottle).
  
• Your average price for a shot is $4.00.
• Your bartenders are over-pouring by 1/4 oz. (only 16 shots per bottle).
  
• You go through 100 bottles per week.
  

With these factors in mind let's do the math:

• You are losing $16 per bottle (20-16=4, 4x4=$16).
• You are losing $1600 per week (16x100=$1600).
• You are losing $6400 per month (1600x4=$6400).
• You are losing $83,200 per year (1600x52=$83,200).

Now your actual numbers may vary but this should give you an idea of how quickly that extra splash of alcohol adds up. Just think of what you could do with an extra $83,200 a year. And when you figure that a kit to test your bartenders' accuracy for $20, there's no reason to be losing money to over-pouring.
Now don't think that you will save money if your bartenders are under-pouring either. Most customers know how there drinks should taste and will be able to taste a difference. If they feel that they are getting ripped off you may not only lose that customer but anyone else they tell about their experience. On average, a person who has had a positive experience at an establishment will tell three people about it, while a person who has had a negative experience will tell ten. Now you have potentially lost eleven customers who are now going to give their money to your competition.

RECIPE

As different people have different takes on what goes into a drink, you need to make sure that your bartenders are using the same recipe. As the number of ingredients in a drink goes up, so does the chance that someone will change something about the drink. If a customer comes in during one bartender's shift and finds a new drink they like, they will expect that they will be able to get that drink during any other shift and it will look and taste the same. Not only does this make the customers happy, it also alleviates problems with inventory. Most modern Point of Sale (POS) systems designed for bars have the ability to show inventory reports. These reports show that when a person orders a drink x amount of each ingredient (as programmed when the system was set up) needs to be taken out of the inventory.

COST
To make life easier on everyone involved, try to keep prices on a pretty even keel with similar drinks. If a well rum and cola is $3.50, then a well tequila sunrise shouldn't be $4.00. The same goes for ordering shots, doubles, and upgrading to call liquor. When it comes to top shelf liquors, there is a wide range of costs involved, so top shelf orders will probably have to be individually priced but try to keep it as simple as possible. Gray Goose and Ketel One cost about the same and should therefore be priced the same. If your bartenders have to look up the price of each drink when a customer asks how much something is, they aren't making drinks and that's money out of your pocket.

GARNISHES
Drinks that have garnishes should be garnished the same way each time they are presented. Some drinks like the Bloody Mary can be garnished with a cornucopia of food but you should decide how they will be garnished in your establishment and everyone should garnish them that way each time they are made.

PRESENTATION
From the ice to the glass to the amount of alcohol used and the garnish a drink is topped with, everything about a drink should be consistent. This will make it easier to do inventory, for your bartenders to make and sell drinks, and alleviate confusion for your staff and customers.