Build & Stir
This is the simplest way of making cocktails. With build & stir you immediately use the glass in which you also want to serve the cocktail. Long drinks are almost always made this way. You ‘build up’ the drink, after which you stir it. Easy does it!

Shake & pour
For this method, you need a cocktail shaker in which you shake all the ingredients for your cocktail and then pour the entire contents into a glass.

Shake & strain
With this method, you first shake the cocktail in a cocktail shaker, and then pour the drink into the glass through a strainer, leaving ice and larger pieces of fruit behind in the shaker. This is the perfect method if you are making a cocktail with fruit, where there is a lot of pulp in the drink. Finestrain’ is not practical as the strainer is too fine.

Shake & finestrain
We mentioned it briefly above. With fine straining, after shaking, you first put the drink through a coarse sieve with a spiral, a ‘Hawthorne strainer’. Then you pour it through a ‘finestrainer’, a fine sort of tea strainer. In the first round, the coarser pieces of fruit and ice are filtered out of the drink; in the second round, all the smaller particles such as fruit pulp or herb leaves are left behind.

Stir & strain
With this method, you first pour the ingredients with ice into, for example, a jug, and stir well to cool the drink. You then use a strainer to pour this into the appropriate cocktail glass, so that the ice remains in the jug.

Muddle
This method refers to the pestle, the ‘muddler’, with which you can muddle the fruit and the herbs for the cocktail. By muddling the ingredients, the flavours are released which cannot be achieved by simple stirring.

Top
Some cocktail recipes say “top” or “top up”. This means adding a soft drink, mineral water or sparkling wine, for example. It is usually a small amount, a dash to finish the drink.