Batched and bottled cocktails have exploded in popularity in recent years; a creative and evolving medium aimed at bringing bar quality drinks to the home. And it’s easy to see why.
Stocking a home bar takes time, money and attention. Not to mention perishable ingredients such as vermouth, becoming ticking time bombs in your fridge. Home-bartending from scratch can feel like more effort than it's worth.
The good news is that there are now plenty of ready-made cocktails, batched and bottled by award-winning experts like us, so you can enjoy your favourite bevvy at home, without the hassle. Margarita, Daiquiri, Espresso Martini? Our range of classic cocktails makes it hard to choose!
But not all pre-batch cocktails are created equally, and the breadth of options are variable, presenting inconsistent ABV’s (Alcohol by Volume), ingredient-lists and serving suggestions for the same drinks.
How to serve pre-mixed cocktails: ready to pour Vs shake or stir?
When it comes to quality, one of the biggest distinctions with pre-mixed cocktails is the final step that you need to take at home before enjoying your highly anticipated drink. At Moore House, we keep an eye to the liquid in the bottle, and an eye to how the cocktail will be prepared. Our cocktails come ‘ready to shake or stir,’ whereas many alternatives come ‘ready to pour’.
Let’s unpack this distinction as it impacts three important factors that make a cocktail great: dilution, texture and temperature!
What are Ready to Pour Cocktails?
‘Ready to pour’ here refers to bottled cocktails intended to be poured on ice without any additional mixing. Whilst convenient, this generally means these cocktails have been generously diluted with water so they can be sipped immediately.
Though dilution is indeed a key factor of virtually all cocktails (softening the ‘bite’ of alcohol and opening up flavours), typically bartenders achieve this with mixing (i.e., shaking or stirring), as you chill the drink. Moreover, this ‘mixing stage’ not only chills and dilutes, but also informs the texture of the cocktail. Generally speaking, stirring informs a silky-smooth texture and shaking aerates a drink, creating a softer, brighter mouthfeel.
How to avoid over dilution in a cocktail
‘Ready to Pour’ cocktails are often not suited to mixing, as shaking or stirring will likely result in an over-diluted watery cocktail. Notably, sacrificing this mixing stage generally means sacrificing optimal chill and texture.
Conversely, the Moore House range of ‘ready to shake or stir’ cocktails are undiluted – we create them this way as the most efficient way of chilling, diluting and informing texture is through shaking or stirring with fresh ice.
What makes a perfect cocktail?
We invite you to become the bartender for this final stage of mixing, because not only is it fun and impressive, but yields, in our opinion, the very best results time and time again; a cocktail that is optimally cold, perfectly diluted and texturally dynamic.
So, get those glasses in the freezer, and start shaking!
