Why Pre-Batching Cocktails Makes Sense (Sometimes).

How attitudes towards pre-batching have changed.

Pre-batching cocktails used to be seen as cheating.

There was a time when the idea of making a cocktail with ingredients that had already been mixed together was considered inferior to making everything individually, to order, in front of the guest. The thinking was that a cocktail made from scratch was somehow better quality than one that had been partially prepared beforehand, and to be fair, there may have been some truth to that years ago.

But the industry has changed quite significantly since then, and so has the way people think about cocktails.

Pre-batching is now widely accepted as part of modern bartending, with some of the best cocktail bars in the world preparing significant parts of their menus before service even begins. And it isn't just about making drinks quicker.

As bartending has become more technical, we've started using techniques such as fat washing, clarification and acid adjustment to refine the flavour, texture and balance of our drinks. Some of these processes involve combining ingredients and allowing them time to interact, while others involve preparing individual components before they're brought together. Either way, a lot more of the work involved in producing a great cocktail is now happening before the customer orders it.

I remember a time when people would complain about flair bartenders taking too long to make their drinks. "Just get on with it!" was something you'd hear pretty commonly. Well, we as bartenders took that advice on board quite literally and started coming up with ways to get drinks out in seconds instead.

So everyone's happy now, right?...Right?Moving on...

The general consumer is becoming more knowledgeable about cocktails too. People are more familiar with different ingredients, techniques and styles of drinks than they used to be, and I think that has played a part in changing how pre-batching is perceived.

The acceptance of pre-batching reflects a better understanding of what actually goes into making a great cocktail, rather than simply how many bottles the bartender picks up while they're making it.

Of course, not every bar needs to be clarifying cocktails or fat washing spirits. Sometimes pre-batching is as simple as combining a few ingredients to make service more efficient.

Consistency is one of the most important parts of a good bar.

When you order your favourite cocktail, you expect it to taste the same as it did the last time. It shouldn't matter whether it's a quiet Tuesday afternoon or a Saturday night when the bar is absolutely heaving. You should be getting the same drink every time.

That's always been one of the most important elements of a good cocktail bar, and it's one of the biggest arguments in favour of pre-batching.

Every time a bartender measures an ingredient, there's a possibility for human error. It might only be a millilitre or two, but when you're dealing with small measures, that can make a fairly significant difference.

A good example of this is a Long Island Iced Tea.

A fairly standard specification would be:

Now, I don't know many bars that have a selection of 10ml jiggers sitting around waiting to be used, so you've got a bartender measuring five separate 10ml pours before they've even added the lemon juice.

Instead, you could pre-batch those first five ingredients in equal quantities and simply use 50ml of the mixture for each drink. You're now measuring one ingredient instead of five, which is considerably quicker, particularly when you're making several drinks at once.

But the main benefit here is consistency.

Let's say you're making the drink individually and accidentally overpour the Vodka by 2ml. You've now added 12ml instead of 10ml, which is a 20% difference in that ingredient.

If you're measuring 50ml of your pre-batched mixture and accidentally pour an extra 2ml, that's only a 4% difference in the total amount measured.

Assuming the batch itself was made correctly, the balance between the five spirits remains the same. You might have a little more of the mixture in the drink, but you haven't accidentally changed the proportion of Vodka to Gin, Rum, Tequila and Triple Sec.

Now, realistically, a small difference in the proportions of a Long Island Iced Tea probably isn't going to be the end of the world. But there are bartenders out there spending hours developing their own cocktails, making adjustment after adjustment until they've found exactly the right balance of ingredients.

Imagine you've developed a drink that uses 5ml of one ingredient and 10ml of another. If a bartender accidentally measures 7ml and 8ml instead, you've increased the first ingredient by 40% and reduced the second by 20%. That's a pretty substantial change to something you've spent a lot of time trying to get right, and it could fundamentally change how the finished drink tastes.

This is where consistency really matters. If you've put the effort into developing a particular recipe, you want the customer to experience that recipe every time they order it.

Across hundreds of cocktails, reducing the number of individual measurements also reduces the number of opportunities for those little errors to happen.

Of course, you need to make the batch properly in the first place. If you get the proportions wrong when preparing it, every drink you make from that batch is going to have the same problem, which is exactly why preparation, accurate recipes and proper procedures matter.

I'm fully aware that pre-batching can be a lot more involved than simply combining a few spirits in a bottle. I've already touched on techniques such as fat washing, clarification and acid adjustment, and there's a whole world of more technical cocktail preparation beyond those.

I'm deliberately using a very simple example because it illustrates the point I'm making about consistency and efficiency.

Ultimately, you're still making the same Long Island Iced Tea. You're adding the lemon juice, shaking the drink, topping it with Coke and garnishing it in exactly the same way you normally would.

You've just saved yourself four unnecessary pours.

There's a lot more happening before service nowadays.

I think one of the biggest reasons attitudes towards pre-batching have changed is that people have a much better understanding of the work that goes into preparing modern cocktails.

Take clarification, for example. Depending on the method you're using, you can combine ingredients, allow them to interact and then remove certain components to change the clarity, texture and flavour of the finished drink. The result can be something completely different from what you'd get by simply pouring those same ingredients into a shaker and mixing them together.

Fat washing is another example. By using fats to introduce flavours and aromas into spirits, bartenders can create combinations that would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve through conventional mixing.

Acid adjustment gives bartenders more control over the balance of ingredients, allowing them to create a particular flavour without necessarily relying on freshly squeezed citrus for every drink.

These techniques are doing much more than saving a bartender a few seconds during service. They're allowing people to develop new flavours, textures and combinations that might not otherwise be possible, and in some cases the preparation is an essential part of creating the finished drink.

You can't always recreate those results by picking up a few bottles and combining everything in your shaker when somebody places an order. The ingredients might need time to interact, or the preparation might involve processes that simply can't happen during service.

So when a bartender takes a prepared mixture from the fridge and uses it to make a cocktail, that doesn't necessarily mean less work has gone into the drink. Quite often, considerably more work has gone into it, it's just that work has happened before the guest arrived.

I think that's an important distinction, and one that both the industry and customers are becoming more comfortable with.

These more advanced techniques have helped change the perception of what preparation actually means in a cocktail bar, but you don't need to be using any of them to justify batching a cocktail. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to do something much simpler.

You're still making the cocktail.

Something I've never quite understood is why combining certain ingredients before service was ever considered that different from combining them a few seconds later in your tin.

If you're going to put five ingredients into a shaker and mix them together anyway, why would it be a problem if you've combined them beforehand?

Provided the ingredients are suitable for batching and everything is prepared and stored properly, you're not automatically compromising the quality of the drink. You're still measuring the correct amount, using the appropriate technique and finishing and presenting the cocktail as intended. You've just done some of the work in advance.

We make sugar syrup before service rather than dissolving sugar every time somebody orders a Daiquiri. We prepare garnishes, squeeze juices and make sure our stations are set up so we can work efficiently. Pre-batching certain cocktail ingredients is really just a natural extension of that approach.

Obviously, that doesn't mean every ingredient should be mixed hours or days in advance. Some things are better added fresh, and you need to consider how the ingredients will behave once they've been combined.

But preparing the parts of a drink that make sense to prepare beforehand shouldn't automatically be seen as compromising its quality. In plenty of cases, it's doing the opposite.

What about your bartenders actually knowing the recipes?

There is a downside to batching that I think is worth acknowledging, and that's the potential for bartenders to get away with knowing less about the drinks they're making.

If you've got a cocktail menu with thirty different recipes, some of which contain five or six ingredients, that's quite a lot of information for a bartender to learn and retain. Pre-batching can reduce that workload considerably because instead of remembering every individual measurement, they might only need to remember how much of a particular batch to use, which fresh ingredients to add and how to finish the drink.

That's obviously useful during service, particularly for newer staff, but it does create a potential problem.

What happens when you run out of the batch? Or when a guest asks what's in their drink?

Ideally, your bartenders should still know how to make the cocktail from its individual ingredients. They should understand what they're serving, not just know which bottle to pick up.

You could argue that the answer is simply to train your staff properly in the first place, and you'd be right. Batching shouldn't become an excuse for poor product knowledge, but equally, making a bartender remember hundreds of individual measurements doesn't automatically make them better at their job.

There's a balance to be found here, and it's something each venue needs to consider when deciding how much of its menu to batch and how it wants to train the team.

Have we lost the theatre of bartending?

One of the criticisms you still hear about pre-batching is that it takes away the theatre of making a cocktail.

Imagine you've gone into a cocktail bar and ordered a £12 Negroni. The bartender reaches into the fridge, grabs a bottle of pre-chilled, pre-diluted Negroni, pours it over ice, garnishes it and hands it over. It took 14 seconds.

Now, depending on what sort of bar you're in and what you were expecting, you might feel a little disappointed. Perhaps part of the reason you chose that venue was because you wanted to sit at the bar and watch somebody make your drink.

I think that's a perfectly reasonable expectation, but I also think we need to consider what we're actually paying for when we order a cocktail.

Are we paying for the bartender to spend a particular amount of time making it? Are we paying for the number of bottles they pick up? Or are we paying for a well-made drink and the experience that comes with having it in that particular venue?

Personally, I'd argue it's the latter.

That Negroni might have been carefully prepared in advance, measured accurately, diluted to the correct level and chilled so that it can be served consistently every time. The fact that it only took a few seconds to pour doesn't mean that a few seconds of work went into making it.

Of course, there is a difference between a venue where guests come specifically to watch bartenders prepare individual cocktails and somewhere that's focused on getting consistently good drinks out quickly. One isn't necessarily better than the other, but the expectations are different and the way the bar operates should reflect that.

I also think we've become a little too focused on the physical act of making a cocktail when we talk about the theatre of bartending.

There are a thousand other ways a bartender can create an experience for someone, and one of the most obvious is simply engaging with the customer.

Talking to people, making recommendations, explaining a drink, having a laugh and making somebody feel welcome are all things that contribute to a great bar experience. None of them require a bartender to pick up six different bottles.

In fact, by pre-batching certain ingredients, the bartender has a whole lot more time to actually engage with the person standing in front of them because they're spending less time making individual measurements.

I've always thought that's a fairly obvious benefit, but it doesn't get mentioned nearly enough.

Think about a busy cocktail bar where every bartender is completely focused on getting through the orders in front of them. They're moving between bottles, measuring ingredients, trying to keep up with checks and barely getting a chance to acknowledge the guests at the bar.

Now imagine those same bartenders have been able to remove some of that unnecessary work through better preparation. They're still making great drinks, but they've got a little more breathing room to talk to customers and give them some attention.

Which of those sounds like the better guest experience?

For me, theatre isn't just about watching somebody make something. It's about the atmosphere, the interaction and the feeling you get from being in a bar where the people behind it know what they're doing and actually have time for you.

If preparing some ingredients in advance gives bartenders more opportunity to provide that experience, I see that as a pretty big positive.

Then there are fully batched cocktails.

So far, I've mainly been talking about combining certain ingredients in advance while still making and finishing the cocktail to order. But there's another level to this, and that's fully batched cocktails.

Keg cocktails have become increasingly common, with the nitro Espresso Martini probably being one of the most recognisable examples. And I think we can all appreciate why bartenders might be quite happy to spend a little less time standing at the coffee machine during a busy Saturday night.

These systems take batching a step further by allowing a finished cocktail to be dispensed directly, rather than prepared individually every time it's ordered.

There are people who don't particularly like that approach, but I think it depends entirely on where and how it's being used.

Take festivals and large events, for example. You've potentially got thousands of people wanting drinks in an environment where setting up a conventional cocktail bar would be impractical, if not impossible.

Making individual cocktails for 10,000 people isn't particularly realistic, but with properly prepared keg cocktails, you can offer guests drinks that otherwise wouldn't have been available to them.

And what's wrong with that?

Nobody's forcing anyone to order a draught Espresso Martini. If somebody would rather stick to their usual tequila soda, that's absolutely fine, but if somebody else wants an Espresso Martini while watching their favourite band, why shouldn't they have that option?

When did giving guests more choice become a bad thing?

Obviously, the quality still needs to be right. A badly made keg cocktail isn't suddenly good because it's convenient, but the same can be said for a badly made cocktail prepared individually at the bar.

It's the quality of the drink and the experience you're offering that matter, not simply the method used to serve it.

So, should you pre-batch your cocktail menu?

Maybe.

There are plenty of things to consider before deciding how much of your menu to pre-batch. How busy is your bar? Which cocktails are you selling most often? How much preparation time do you have? Have you got appropriate storage? Are the ingredients suitable for batching? How experienced is your team?

And importantly, is batching actually going to improve the drink or the service?

There's no point pre-batching something purely for the sake of it.

You might have a handful of popular cocktails where combining a few ingredients in advance makes a noticeable difference to service speed and consistency. You might have a high-volume venue where batching a much larger proportion of the menu makes sense, or you might run a cocktail bar where making every drink individually is an important part of what your guests are paying for.

All of those approaches are perfectly valid.

The way pre-batching is viewed has changed for good reason. We've developed more sophisticated ways of preparing drinks, we've got a better understanding of how ingredients work together and customers are increasingly aware that a lot of the work behind a great cocktail happens before they order it.

But even without all the advanced techniques, the simple operational benefits are still there. Pre-batching can make your drinks more consistent, make your bartenders more efficient and give them more time to focus on the people they're serving.

Fundamentally, pre-batching is a tool. Like anything else behind the bar, it's up to the venue to decide when and how to use it.

And in my opinion, you should.