Six cocktail recipes

Six drinks cover most of what a bar pours: Old Fashioned, Daiquiri, Margarita, Manhattan, Gin & Tonic, Whiskey Sour. Learn these and you can read any menu, because almost every other cocktail is one of these with a substitution. Measurements are in US fluid ounces. Every one of them uses tools from home bar basics and no equipment past that list.

No bottle brands here. Which category to buy, and what the label terms mean, is in the liquor primers.

Three rules that come before the recipes

Measure. A cocktail is a ratio. Free-poured, it is a different drink every time. Use the double jigger.

Shake or stir, not both. If the drink contains citrus juice, dairy, or egg, shake it — those need aeration and hard chilling. If it is only spirit, sugar, and bitters, stir it. Shaking an all-spirit drink makes it cloudy and over-dilutes it. If the drink contains anything carbonated, build it in the glass and stir once. Shaking tonic ruins it.

Ice is an ingredient. Shaking and stirring chill the drink and add water from the melt. That water is supposed to be there. Use full trays of fresh ice, not four cubes from the door of the freezer.

Simple syrup first

Four of the six need it. Combine equal volumes of white sugar and hot water, stir until clear, cool. That is 1:1 syrup and it is what every spec below means by “simple syrup.” Refrigerate in a sealed bottle; it keeps about a month. One teaspoon is roughly ⅙ oz.

The six at a glance

Two patterns are visible in that table. The sour family is 2 : ¾ : ¾ — spirit, citrus, sugar — and it is shaken. The spirit-forward family is 2 : 1 or 2 plus a spoon of sugar, and it is stirred. Learn the two shapes and you can build a drink from whatever is in the cabinet.

1. Old Fashioned

2 oz bourbon or rye · 1 tsp simple syrup · 2 dashes aromatic bitters · orange peel.

Combine all three in a mixing glass or the large tin. Fill with ice. Stir with the bar spoon about 30 seconds, until the outside of the glass is too cold to hold comfortably. Strain over one large cube in a rocks glass. Twist a strip of orange peel over the surface to spray the oil, then drop it in.

Why one large cube: less surface area, slower melt, so the drink does not water out while you sit with it. Rye makes it drier and peppery, bourbon makes it rounder and sweeter — see the whiskey primer.

When you’d make this: after dinner, when you want one drink and nothing to clean up.

2. Daiquiri

2 oz white rum · 1 oz fresh lime juice · ¾ oz simple syrup.

Juice the limes with the reamer. Combine everything in the small tin, fill the large tin with ice, seal, and shake hard for about 12 seconds. Strain through the Hawthorne into a chilled coupe. Serve up, no ice, no garnish needed.

This is the drink that teaches the sour ratio, and the reason tiki works — every rum punch on a tiki menu is this plus spice. If it tastes flat, your lime was bottled. Bottled citrus oxidizes and there is no fixing it.

When you’d make this: a hot afternoon, with two limes on the counter.

3. Margarita

2 oz blanco tequila · 1 oz fresh lime juice · ¾ oz orange liqueur.

Shake all three with ice for about 12 seconds. Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice, or into a coupe to serve up. For salt, rub a lime wedge along half the rim and roll that half in kosher salt — half, so you can choose per sip.

Note the structure: it is a Daiquiri with tequila, and the orange liqueur replaces the syrup as the sweetener. If your liqueur is on the sweet side, pull it back to ½ oz and add ¼ oz agave syrup. Use 100% agave blanco; the tequila primer explains why the label matters.

When you’d make this: you are cooking for four and want one batch you can scale.

4. Manhattan

2 oz rye · 1 oz sweet vermouth · 2 dashes aromatic bitters · cherry.

Stir with ice about 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a cherry.

Two things people get wrong. Vermouth is wine, so it oxidizes: refrigerate the bottle after opening and finish it inside a month. And this drink is never shaken — the cloudiness and the ice chips both belong to the sour family, not here. Swap bourbon for rye if you want it sweeter; that is the whole difference.

When you’d make this: cool evening, one glass, no juicing.

5. Gin & Tonic

2 oz gin · 4 oz tonic water · lime wedge.

Fill a rocks or highball glass to the top with ice. Pour the gin. Pour the tonic down the side of the glass. Stir once, gently. Squeeze a lime wedge and drop it in.

The whole drink is the tonic. Buy small bottles or cans, not a two-liter, because tonic goes flat and a flat G&T is undrinkable. Fill the glass with ice rather than under-filling it — more ice melts slower and keeps the carbonation. A London dry is the reference point; a citrus-led contemporary gin changes the drink a lot.

When you’d make this: the first drink of the night, when you do not want to work.

6. Whiskey Sour

2 oz bourbon · ¾ oz fresh lemon juice · ¾ oz simple syrup · optional ½ oz egg white.

Shake with ice about 12 seconds. Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass, or into a coupe to serve up.

With egg white the texture changes: shake without ice first for 10 seconds to build the foam, then add ice and shake again to chill. This is a raw egg — skip it if anyone at the table should not have one. Same 2 : ¾ : ¾ ratio as the Daiquiri, swapping whiskey for rum and lemon for lime, which is how the sour family works.

When you’d make this: you have lemons and one bottle of bourbon and nothing else.

Ten substitutions worth knowing

Rum for tequila in a Margarita is a Daiquiri with orange. Gin for whiskey in a sour is a Gin Sour. Vodka in a sour is a plain, clean version of the same drink — vodka adds strength and texture, not flavor. Add ½ oz orgeat and a second, darker rum to a Daiquiri and you are inside Mai Tai territory. None of these needs new equipment.

What you need to buy

Nothing on this page requires more than the six tools: a Boston tin, a double jigger, a Hawthorne strainer, a bar spoon, a citrus reamer, and a coupe plus a rocks glass. Category searches live on Shop — jiggers, tins, strainers, bar spoons, citrus juicers, mixing glasses. As one order, the set is grouped as the bar-tool kit. Tools and glassware only; we do not link bottles.

Would rather someone else measure it? On now shows what is running this minute.

Notes

These are the standard specs a working bar builds from, not house variations. Ratios are given in US fluid ounces; 1 oz is about 30 ml. Adjust sugar to your own palate a quarter-ounce at a time and write down what you change.