Post #251703 by Satan's Sin on Wed, Aug 30, 2006 8:00 PM

1. No.

2. So it's the first thing to hit your lips and coat your mouth with its delicious rumminess.

3. Get out of the habit of measuring. Use what looks right and learn by experimentation and experience. It's very much like cooking. Notice how grandma hardly ever uses measuring spoons? Get to be like that.

4. Try cheap booze. Remember, cocktails were invented to mask the flavor of lousy booze, so in an awful lot of cocktails the delicate flavors of expensive booze are almost lost in the mixing of ingredients. For something simple like a Martini, where there are only two ingredients, well the quality of the source booze is paramount. But in a Cosmopolitan, where there are four ingredients, I've found it's possible to mix a Cosmo with cheap supermarket-type booze and come up with something that's quite as good as any $25 Cosmo I've had in Manhattan made with Grey Goose. Honest.

I would recommend you buy the paperback "Bartender's Bible," and not only for the recipes. The opening chapters discuss bar setup, what to stock for what kinds of bars, basic equipment to purchase, etc. Plus informative chapters on the interesting histories and qualities of the various types of booze.