Hey guys my name is Shannon Mustipher. Welcome to Glady's Caribbean. We've been
open here in Crown Heights, Brooklyn for five years. We own one of the biggest
collections of authentic Caribbean rums and today I'm going to talk to you about
my five favorite bar tools. The swizzle stick, also known as a baton lélé is
essential to running an authentic Caribbean rum bar. You'll see here
they've got some spokes on the top. The tree actually grows in this shape and
this is a traditional tool to slightly agitate or mix a rum cocktail. The drinks
that you'll see it used most often in is the Ti' Punch which is a Martinitian old
fashioned made with high-proof rum. The Queen's Park swizzle you might be
familiar with, it's like a mojito but a little more savory with bitters and a
darker rum. When you see this you know you're in the right place for a
Caribbean cocktail. With the baton lélé you can achieve a really gentle form of
stirring action on a cocktail that you can't really do for instance with a
conventional bar spoon. It also acts as a bit of a muddler. You notice that in
there has some spokes so there's a little bit of volume there you can crush
mint with it, you can press lime, you get some lime oil coming out in your
cocktail. So when it comes to making a rum drink this is super important.
I bought this one from Cocktail Kingdom. They're an amazing supplier of all kinds
of bar tools regardless of your program. You can go online to find various
sources but I love shopping with them because in addition to having the best
tools they have a great library of books. There's so much history that you can
delve into where cocktails, rum or otherwise, are concerned — baton lélé.
So the shaker is ubiquitous behind any bar and this is when things started
to get really exciting in the world of cocktails. So keep in mind guys before
1850 ice was not a thing in American beverage culture hence no need for this.
Most cocktails were built in the glass or stirred — really simple. When the shaker
came on the scene, everything changed. Now you can put citrus, liqueurs, various
elements that require like a little more agitation, a little more action to get it
to come together. In some bars you'll see people using a metal tin and a pint
glass and you know there's a merit to that. For bartenders that are very
skilled, they're using the pint glass to visually measure what's going in.
They don't need a jigger, but there's a limitation there: the glass is not as
conducive to chilling as two metal components, so here you get a more
effective chill; you're also able to put a really tight seal on it so that as
you're shaking it it doesn't come apart; and it's a more efficient way to mix
your cocktail.
With cocktails balance is everything. Think about food, right? You want to have the
right balance of savory, sweet, sour, acid — all those things need to come together.
Same is true in a drink and so in order to accomplish that you need to
accurately measure all your elements I love the Kariko-style Japanese jigger
because it's very accurate, A, and B, it's really easy to hold and you kind of flip
it and if your skill set is there you can make it look fancy. Some people will
hold two at a time while they're measuring. That's not me but this is what
you really want when you're measuring your drinks.
The channel knife is a way to create a very elegant and clean garnish to go in your drink.
You want a slim peel, something that goes
on top of a French 75 or in a Tiki drink. This is the best way to carve that out.
There are a couple variations on it but the really simple one does the trick.
This is also from Cocktail Kingdom. Tiki was born in 1930s California with a lot
of Hollywood influence into the environments and to the vibe and so
everything was theatrical. The garnish is king in tiki more than
any other type of cocktail.
A flash blender is a bartender's life line on a
really busy shift. Shaking is great, flash blending is better. So it might take you
maybe 15 seconds, 20 seconds to properly mix a cocktail manually. With a flash
blender you can do two or three cocktails at a time in one tin in about 10 seconds.
There are a lot of tiki bars that I visit that don't use these at all except
for like the rare off-menu drink. Everything is flash blended. It's very
consistent. It's a machine it doesn't matter who's
using it, it makes anyone's life easier.
Thank you for coming to Glady's.
It's been awesome to have you here and chat with you about my favorite tools. I hope
that you'll take some tips away that will help you mix delicious cocktails at
home. I have another tip: my book Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails has a ton of
recipes, classics as well as original, and covers the stuff we talked about here
and more. We'll see you on the beach.