Making Drinks For A Crowd Has Never Been Easier With This Tip
Playing bartender at your summer garden party soiree can really takeover the evening and lead for a stressful event. Mixing up prickly pear cactus margaritas, zesty palomas, vodka martinis with a twist, or whatever other made-to-order cocktail a guest wants can be time consuming and overwhelming. Luckily, you can streamline this process and make everyone happy. When rounding up drink orders, you should consider grouping cocktails together by their base alcohol, lining up multiple glasses, and finishing each step of the drink's recipe before moving on to the next.
This efficient method can actually help you with your at-home bar setup, encouraging you to prep your ingredients and tools ranging from alcohol, juices, fruits, herbs, and simple syrup to cocktail shakers, muddlers, and strainers. Then, place the items in the logical order that they are needed. This also allows you to move from one drink to the next without missing a beat, keeping quality control in check by reducing the chance of leaving out a mixer or forgetting to garnish that special cocktail glass with a twist of citrus peel.
How it works
While adopting this organized, step-by-step approach ensures you are not sacrificing consistency, it also takes a little time to master. Have your ice and glasses arranged and ready to go. Group your base alcohols — gin, vodka, rum, etc. together, followed by your liqueurs, juices, bitters, syrups, and garnishes so that you don't have to think about where things are. This way if you are making a couple gin and tonics, a French blonde cocktail, and a couple of rosé cocktails with gin & Campari, you are able to pour the gin for each before moving on to the next ingredient.
As an added benefit to this assembly line technique, if you are working in a limited space, you will also find this process keeps things organized in your compact work area. Additionally, if you are worried that this step-by-step method will still leaving you feeling like you aren't giving each guest the time and attention they deserve, you could also pre-mix your cocktails and set-up a self-serve bar so you can chat, relax, and enjoy the evening with everyone else.