It can be a daunting task stocking your at-home bar or drinks cupboard. What are essentials and what are nice-to-haves?

You want to have a few bottles that are extremely versatile that will help you make great drinks at home.

Our focus on cocktail essentials over the next two weeks will help you ‘up’ your cocktail game, without having to go too crazy on specialist and niche products. 

Keep an eye out on or reels for our ‘how-to’ clips and let’s make some great cocktails this Spring and Summer.

Salt and Pepper: Angostura Bitters

Bitters are essentially the salt and pepper for cocktails. They are little drops of cocktail seasoning.

We like to think seasonally about bitters. Orange is perfect for summer drinks. Winter and autumn feel like the perfect time for Cocao bitters. And the rest of the year we can stick to Angostura.

The best thing to do is to try the same drink with different bitters to see what influence you like most. Just a few dashes and away you go!

MAKERS MARK OLD FASHIONED

Ingredients

50mls Makers Mark 46 | 10mls Sugar syrup | Dash bitters | Orange wedge

Method

Step 1: Add all ingredients to ice filled tumbler 

Step 2: Stir for 30 seconds

Step 3: Garnish with orange wedge

Sauce and Modifier: Braemble

Like in any kitchen, you need a few good sauces to add or pour over your favourite dishes. In a bar, it’s no different. 

Braemble is great as a base spirit and (in most cases) it can be used instead of gin, vodka, rum... 

It is also the perfect modifier as it has an intensity of flavour, it has good sugar content and let’s face it, plump Blackberry flavours work with almost any cocktail.

Add around half a shot to any classic cocktail, and it will improve the outcome.

We made a Negroni recently and swapped out the classic gin and the results are incredible.

BRAEMBLE NEGRONI

Ingredients

30mls Braemble Gin Liqueur | 30mls Campari | 30mls Sweet Vermouth

Method

Step 1: Add all ingredients to ice filled tumbler

Step 2: Stir for 30 seconds

Step 3: Garnish with orange wedge

Sweet and Sour: Easy Mixt

Making cocktails such as a Whiskey Sour or a Margarita can be tricky as there are barriers that prevent people from enjoying the making process.

Juicing citrus fruits is something people just don’t like to do…and let’s be clear on this, using a jiffy lemon juice is not an option for cocktail making.

The other challenge is knowing how to create balanced drinks. In bars and restaurants and here at FREDS, we use a sugar syrup of castor sugar to take the edge off our citrus, to create a balanced drink.

A dear friend of FREDS (Stu Bale) has created Easy Mixt to remove the problem of sweet and sour. Easy Mixt is so easy to use and it tastes great. You simply add equal parts Easy Mixt and your favourite spirit and you have a great sour cocktail.

It saves wasting fruits. It helps make balanced drinks. It tastes great. It is the ultimate drinks hack!

EASY MIXT COLLINS

Ingredients

35mls Bourbon/Whisky | 35mls Easy Mixt | Sparkling water | Lemon wedge

Method

Step 1: Add Easy Mixt and Bourbon/Whisky to an ice-filled shaker

Step 2: Shake and strain into ice-filled highball

Step 3: Top with sparkling water and garnish with a lemon wedge