A General Theory of Batching Stirred Cocktails

An easy way to batch Manhattans, Negronis, and Old Fashioneds.

If you like making cocktails, at some point you will probably want to throw a cocktail party. This is always a challenge. But there are ways to make it much, much easier. 

The first time I threw a cocktail party at my home, I set up an almost full-fledged bar station at what was then my back patio window.

We had some rolling carts in the kitchen, so I put together an in-the-round cockpit for making drinks with almost everything I needed.

Almost, that is, because I didn’t have easy access to the sink, which meant that every time I finished making a cocktail I had to awkwardly push through the kitchen crowd — somehow, there’s always a crowd in the kitchen — to dump the ice from the stirrer or shaker. Also, because I didn’t have direct access to a freezer, and it was a warm day, my ice kept melting. Fun, certainly, but from a drink-making perspective, it was not exactly ideal. 

Eventually, I built a small bar in my basement.

The goal was to have everything necessary for making cocktails within easy reach. So in addition to all my bottles, bitters, and glassware, I can access a small fridge, a small freezer, and a sink without taking a single step. It’s truly great, and I feel very lucky to have it.

Making drinks at the bar can be fun: The bar is a sort of command post for a party. It allows me to talk to everyone for a little while. More generally, I really like making things for people. 

But even with a dedicated space, making individual drinks all night means I’m stuck behind the bar. Sometimes I just want to hang out. And while I am relatively efficient for someone who has never bartended professionally, I’m definitely not the world’s swiftest barkeep. If a half dozen people ask for a drink at the same time, someone is going to wait. 

As you have probably ascertained, the solution — or at least a solution — is to make batched cocktails in advance, and then set up a station for your friends to pour their own drinks. 

Batched cocktails are easier than you think, especially if you stick to stirred drinks — cocktails in the Manhattan, Negroni, and Old Fashioned family. They scale easily and straightforwardly, and they are a great way to make drinks ahead of time for a group of friends, so that you don’t have to stand behind the bar — or the kitchen counter — throughout the evening. 

You don’t even have to compromise drink quality: Because everything is batched and diluted in advance, it’s nearly impossible for these drinks to go wrong, so your friends can’t possibly mess up the drinks when they pour their own.

Indeed, with a little bit of cleverness, you can use the batched format to make drinks more complex and more interestingly layered than is typically possible in a single-serve cocktail.

Shaken and Stirred

The easiest classic cocktails to batch are stirred cocktails. That’s what we’re going to focus on today. 

Stirred cocktails are cocktails with no juice. Cocktails with juice require shaking, which, in addition to chill and dilution, provides aeration, which is harder to replicate in a batched drink.

Stirred drinks, in contrast, are constructed entirely with booze, bitters, and perhaps some sort of sweet syrup. They have a silky smooth texture that works well with batched and bottled drinks.

The vast majority of these drinks fit into the Old Fashioned, Manhattan/Martini, and Negroni families. 

These drink families have a lot of variations and of course people — including me! — love to argue over the precise ingredients and ratios you should use to make the very best Manhattan.

But we’re going to set that aside for now, because I want to start with the fundamental structures for each of these drinks.