LIQUID INTELLIGENCE

Cocktail-making tips from the top with Jack Sotti

I’ve learnt to make an Old Fashioned four times in my life. Each time, a new pivotal lesson in mixology, guest experience and efficiency, and each time a new milestone in any bartender’s career; a professional coming of age.

18 years old: Misguided magic

The first Old Fashioned galvanized hospitality as a career choice for me. The transmutation of sugar, water, alcohol and bitters into this magnificent entity that encapsulates hundreds of years of shared knowledge, handed down from mentor to rookie, into the hands of a paying, trusting guest. Finished with a luminous red cherry and flamed orange zest. Five minutes, one drink. Pure magic.

Method: Place a square drinks napkin atop your Rocks glass. Delicately place a Perruche brown sugar cube on the napkin and dowse the cube in Angostura bitters. Snap the napkin away, allowing the sugar cube to tumble into your glass. With the back of a bar spoon, crush the sugar and, with a splash of soda, work into a paste. Now, in 10ml and single ice cube increments, add a good-quality bourbon, stirring constantly and only adding the next increment after each ice cube has dissolved, to a total of 50ml. Add ice and garnish with the orange flambé and neon cherry.

21 years old: High-volume luxury

If the end result is the same, and you’re three deep, why not make efficiencies? As a young bartender, you begin to find your style and make connections. It was while bartending in a high-tempo members’ bar that my saline-spiked, rich demerara simple syrup enabled me to make Old Fashioneds en masse, in a Gallone mixing glass, for the whole room. With the aid of my pre-dissolved sugar, I was an OF vending machine.

Method: Dissolve 200g demerara sugar in 100g boiling water with 5g salt. To a mixing glass, add 5ml of syrup to 50ml bourbon and 2 dashes Angostura bitters. Stir until cold and strain over fresh ice into a Rocks glass. Finish with an orange twist and a Luxardo marasca cherry.

25 years old:

Cocktail theatre overkill

How many ways can you smoke a cocktail? The charred stave, the bell jar, the smoke waterfall, the whole glass cabinet… believe me, I’ve tried them all. At 25 you have mastered the little black book of classics and start to explore new ways to surprise and delight your guests. In comes cocktail theatre: shaken and stirred becomes flamed, thrown and smoked, and the punters love it. The humble, timeless Old Fashioned is ruthlessly choked in hot and heavy wood smoke in ways that would put the Kama Sutra to shame. They can’t get enough of it, but the subtle nuanced stories once told by the liquid are gone. Method: Take the previously perfect Old Fashioned, and set it on fire.

30 years old: Ruthless efficiency

Once you get over your fascination with fire and brimstone, with age and hindsight comes refinement and respect – for the original Old Fashioned and the liquids it elevates. The years the makers have put into it, the silent slumber of ageing spirits. And now, you are the final hurdle before it reaches a guest’s lips. In the pursuit of absolute perfection, you seek to control balance, temperature and dilution. And so the only thing left is to batch the damned thing, prediluted, and store it in the freezer at -8°C. And all that missing magic, I hear you ask? Storytelling and warm hospitality will always far exceed smoke and mirrors.

Method: Add 700ml bourbon, 70ml salted demerara syrup and 10 dashes Angostura bitters to a 1L bottle along with 150ml filtered water. Shake to combine and place in your freezer for 2 hours. To serve, pour over a solid block of clear ice and finish with a small orange coin expressed over the top.