Shaken or Stirred: Learning Project Week 6

Image taken from ScreenRant.com

I’m sure most of you, if not all, are familiar with James Bond. His drink of choice is almost as famous as the spy himself: vodka martini with a lemon peel, shaken, not stirred. A classy cocktail for a classy man. But this has lead to many, or at the very least, me, wondering the difference between shaken and stirred. Today, I want to find out why.

What I’ve found have been very conflicting. The book I’ve been reading, the Ultimate Bar Book by Mittie Hellmich, states a quite clear rule of thumb:

“Any drink made with clear spirits is to be stirred.”

This is the first of the rules I found. Cocktails such as the martini or gimlet were given as examples for this rule. Which confused me, since at work, we stir our martinis but shake our gimlets. A gimlet is similar to a marguerite. A cocktail made of primarily gin, triple sec, lime juice, and simple syrup. While its often a blended drink, we shake ours and serve over ice.  This lead me to look at other sources. Mad River Distillers has a good basic article about shaking and stirring, stating another rule of thumb:

“Shake if there’s citrus, stir if there’s not.”

This is a decent definition, and it holds true for my work. At least for the most part. But I kept looking to see if other sources can back it up. Finally, I found a video by Tipsy Bartender, who stated what I believe is the best definition:

“Stir drinks that are spirit forward, and shake drinks loaded with mixers and syrups, fruit, cream, egg whites.”

I think this is one of the best rules to follow. The more complicated, flavored drinks, like a gimlet with its syrups and juice, or a mojito with its mint springs and lime wedges, should be shaken. However, this still leaves some oddities for me at work. For example, a cocktail called the grasshopper is just Crème de menthe, Crème de cocoa, and heavy cream, stirred and poured neat for a mint-chocolate cocktail. By these rules, it should be shaken. Yet, it is not at work. This lead me to instead try and figure out what shaking and stirring actually does to a cocktail.

Image taken from ProofSyrup.com

Sites like Proof Syrup, Monkey Wrench, and Mad River Distillers all have similar information about this..  Stirring and shaking both work to combine ingredients, yet while stirring keeps a cocktail more intact, shaking a drink aerates it. Aerating is combining air into the liquid, giving it a much lighter texture than stirring. This is the main reason for the “stir a spirit forward drink” rule. These spirit forward cocktails, the martini, the old fashioned, the manhattan, are all typically ways for someone to enjoy a spirit in a slightly different way other than just serving it straight up over ice. The extra ingredients in these cocktails add much more subtle flavors, like vermouth in a martini or bitters in an old fashioned. For this, we want to keep the subtle texture of the spirit intact. This is where a common bar saying comes from: “Never shake gin.” Gin, being a very complicated and delicate spirit, is a spirit best kept intact if possible. Its not a crime to shake gin, but could be frowned upon. Compare spirit forward cocktails to a marguerite or a whisky sour, adding the citrus flavors to change the cocktails flavors altogether. We shake these to get a different texture, one that fits better with the flavors presented. This is all entirely up to the bartender. Whether you shake or stir a drink is ultimately your choice, it depends on how you want to present the cocktail.

Now, I’ll be honest with you. I made and recorded a video to show the difference between a shaken and stirred cocktail, but I’ve been having issues editing and uploading it. I made 3 videos, each about 3 minutes long of myself making a drink in different ways to show the difference in how each way results. The first was just pouring each ingredient over ice, showing how the different ingredients will stay fairly separate from each other when just poured together if they have different consistencies. The second was a stirred drink, to show the combination of the ingredients while maintaining a similar consistency. The last was a shaken cocktail, showing the different consistency you get from shaking the ingredients, how it gets that different texture, even getting foam from the aeration when shaking something like orange juice. These took like 2 hours just to get sent from my phone to my computer, since my Wifi is crazy slow. Then, tried getting them on to Canva to try and edit them together and cut them down a bit. Unfortunately, I could not get the videos uploaded onto Canva. Each video took an hour to upload, but when it finished, it would not appear. I would have to try to redownload it, and each time, it would not download properly, and the video would not appear.

After 4 days of trying to edit the video together on Canva, I have given up. I think the videos I want to edit are too large to download right onto the website, let alone to cut up together into one short video. However, I do have a very good video for you to watch anyway.

Maybe the best way to show these methods of mixing wasn’t from myself, but an expert. I’ve checked out a few videos from Anders Erikson, a youtuber specializing in bartending, and he seems like a pro. This video about mixing drinks has a lot of good information.