The Art of Shaking

Shaking a drink can be a very nuanced action. In a dive bar, or any high volume bar, you may see that shaking is a quick and brutish motion, serving only as a means to end. At its core, yes, shaking a drink is just a method of preparation. It can be as simple as jiggling some ice and liquid around in a tin. Or it can be more.

My initial assumption about shaking when I first began bartending was that all you had to do was make the drink cold. You didn’t necessarily have to shake it hard, fast or long, as long as the end product was a mostly homogenous mixture of cold liquid. I began to wonder why some drinks tasted better than others if they were prepared in the same way with the same ingredients. My mentors explained to me that shaking was not such a simple process. The four goals of shaking, or really any form of mixing, are diluting, chilling, mixing, and texturizing. It may be hard to imagine, but liquid can have much nuance and variation in texture. I also learned a lot from reading and watching things about Japanese bartending, since they take a lot of care in the process of shaking and stirring. Shaking is a very important process to them, and each bartender has a very different shake based on their ideology, the cocktails they make and their preferences.

My favorite cocktail to make is a gin Gimlet. It’s also one of my favorites to drink. The thing with a Gimlet is that it is simple. This means it can either be really lame, or it can be really good. It all depends on the bartender’s understanding of their ingredients, and their shaking technique. It consists only of simple syrup, lime, and spirit; it can also be made with vodka, but I think vodka is soulless and boring. It lacks the personality that all other spirits possess. To make a Gimlet, you mix two ounces of spirit, ¾ ounces of lime juice, and ½ ounces of simple syrup. While it is simple, your ingredients matter a lot. To achieve a certain amount of aeration, your syrup must have higher than a 1:1 sugar content, meaning it is more sugar than water. Your juice should also be freshly squeezed, as to ensure the acidity and dilution is not tampered with, as some store bought juices will be in order to be mass produced. You should also pick a gin that can stand up to, and get along with, the acidity and sweetness of the other two ingredients: something dry, something floral, and something with nice botanical character.

The hard part is shaking. When you shake something, you only have so much time before it just becomes watered down. You can just shake back and forth, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your drink will be mixed thoroughly, or diluted properly. Think of it like rinsing a glass out with soap. You want the water to catch all the soap before you use the glass. In the same way, you want every ingredient to touch every part of the shaker, and every piece of ice. When everything is sloshing around, it will all get mixed but it may not be uniform. Incorporating a sort of rotating motion will usually solve this problem, as well as ensuring your drink is properly diluted by allowing it to touch all of the ice plenty of times.

You must also consider your level of agitation, depending on your ingredients. With the gimlet specifically, a rich syrup will be thicker, meaning you will have to shake a little harder than normal in order to break everything up. This is also necessary for proper aeration. It is important to note though, that harder shaking will break up more ice, which means more ice surface area will be exposed and your drink will dilute faster. The duration of your shake must be adjusted when shaking harder in order to avoid over dilution. In the case of a Gimlet, there’s more spirit than anything else, so it’s okay to shake a little long and a little hard.

 The result of a more nuanced shake, with attention to motion, aggression and length will more often than not be a more uniform and softer texture. The softness comes from the air introduced into the mixture. It shouldn’t necessarily be bubbly, but there should at least be a little foam head. That’s how you’ll know it properly aerated. If it’s cold enough, your glass should begin to sweat shortly after straining your drink into it. And lastly, if it is properly shaken, it won’t be cloudy, but totally translucent, and the mixture will be homogenous. Next time you find yourself shaking a drink, pay special attention to the way you are shaking it. It might just make your drinks better.