Found this VERY interesting video:
Just amazing with the cocktail flare! That’s a good way to get tips in the jar!
Still I have my reservations. He’s beating that drink within an inch of it’s life. You can clearly see the frost on the shaker, so that drink is as cold as physically possible, likely subzero temperatures…but unless he is using VERY large well-made ice, there is going to be a lot of ice shards floating in that drink, which frankly I don’t care for.
Now the drink he’s making is a VERY classic Gimlet (I personally don’t see a point in simple syrup as it just adds sweetness without taste or character, so when I mix one I add a shot of triple sec, and just because it really ties the drink together, a few dashes of orange bitters) Now the traditional rules of bartending is any drink that is pure translucent booze (so your martinis, your Manhattans, your negronis, the Bijou (Seriously, give this one a try) you should stir (or in my case gently swirl the spirits around the ice in the shaker) This minimizes air bubbles and chipped ice in the drink, leading to a crystal clear drink in the glass. A shaken drink is much more different than a stirred one than you might think, besides the clarity of the drink, there’s the mouth feel. A stirred drink is silky in the mouth, while a shaken one is velvety. Both are pleasant sensations, but they are quite different.
The one exception I’ll make to this rule is if you’re serving the drink on the rocks, like the Carte Blanche, the air bubbles quickly collect and condense against the ice so shaking the drink simply makes it colder faster.
Now for drinks using opaque ingredients or fruit juice, and especially egg whites (I really need to experiment with those) the rule is to shake. Look at that lime juice he’s using. It’s cloudy, so the rule is just shake that drink and let the bubbles work with that. Still you want to aerate the drink, not turn it into the Weddell Sea with ice bergs. Just shake it hard for about 10-20 seconds and strain. You’ll get more leeway with better ice, and by better I mean larger. Big cubes or spheres will be more reluctant to chip or dilute the drink. This certainly goes for the bars that use ice machines to make their ice. Those machines make LOTS of ice, but they chip and shatter like crazy under hard shaking.
So those are my feelings on shaken vs. stirred.
How do you take yours?
I think what we are seeing is the manifestation of the Japanese belief (hardly limited to the Japanese, but they are firm adherents) that anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
For the most part I agree with you Weerd, but if they have great quality ice, and notice at the end its a ball of ice he pulls out to put in the drink, you can bet its more then likely ultra purified and hard chilled to I would bet around -25c and held there for atleast 24 hours. I know of a few high end bars that pay good money for custom ice. And if that is the case, the shaking it did not water down the drink too much.
Again for the most part unless its a martini, clear drinks should be stirred, but martini’s should be shaken. I think it works the gin better.
It’s not about dilution (as you point out REALLY good ice won’t cause the problems from excessive shaking that cheap ice machine ice in most bars will) but from aeration!
Of course barring the ice chips floating in the drink and excessive dilution (tho most good bartenders will note that a slight melting of the ice helps meld the flavors in the cocktail) it is all about texture and clarity.
This is of course all personal preference. I want my martini to look like a Mountain pool at the break of dawn! Crystal clear and placid, and the texture to be like silk. A well shaken drink will look like the sea after a bad storm, foamy and churned, and the texture will be closer to velvet in the mouth.
Neither of those two things are unpleasant or bad, just my personal preference I want a Martini or a Manhattan to be smooth and placid, while I want a daiquiri or a gimlet to be churned and velvety/