Category: Drinking culture

Consistency is key in making good cocktails; after all, once you find the perfect way to make your Martini, you will want to be able to recreate that perfection each time, won’t you?  And one of the most important ways to ensure this is accurate and consistent measurement of your ingredients. That’s not to say it’s impossible to do this by eye, or by counting your pour time, but that is very difficult to do without years of practice (one of the very best Manhattans I ever had was mixed for me at Tokyo’s Bar Oak by their stellar barman, Hisashi Sugimoto, who did everything by eye; no measuring at all. The drink was sublime) and unlikely to be achieved by amateurs like me.

But one of the key issues in cocktails is that there is no universal standard of measure: you will come across recipes that use ounces, jiggers, ponies, measures, millilitres and sometimes even spoons. And just like home baking, if you start with one set of measurements, you need to keep using the same scale throughout the recipe, as an ounce-to-millilitre conversion may not be accurate.

So, we need measures, and we need good ones, and most helpfully, two sizes: larger and smaller, where the latter is typically half the quantity of the former. Cocktail recipes work on the principles of proportion (e.g. a Negroni is equal measures of gin, Campari and vermouth, whereas a Manhattan requires two measures of whiskey to one of vermouth), so that actual quantity of your measures is often not so important as the ratio between the large and the small being accurate.  And you’ll also soon spot that these proportions (1:1:1 for the Negroni, 2:1/5:2 for the Manhattan) give you the standard 3oz cocktail, so suggesting a typical size for the standard measure – 1 ounce (or around 30ml in our European measures). But where does that leave jiggers and ponies? Confusingly, you’ll see a typical Japanese double-ended measure (the nice conical type that look elegant when poured held between the first and second fingers) are called ‘jiggers’. But the ‘jigger’ measure in American terms is an exact 1 1/2 ounces, and the equivalent ‘pony’ is 1 ounce. But ask for a ‘shot’, and you will get anything from a 1oz pony or 1 1/4 oz or even a 1 1/2 oz generous shot glass. In the UK, we switched to exact millilitre measures in 1985, defining a ‘single’ measure as 25ml or 35ml, and a double measure to be 50ml  or 70ml, at the owner’s preference – the confusing difference being that in Scotland and Northern Ireland, bar measures tend to be on the more generous size, so the larger measure can be used (at one time, asking for a whisky in Scotland would get you a single by default, but adding the prefix ‘a glass of…’ in front of the brand would automatically get you a double).

My collection of home measures, shown above, ranges from government-stamped standard measure of 50ml and 25ml, which I use for most of my home mixing. to the conical Japanese-style jiggers. All of these vary slightly: the brushed-finish ‘typical’ Japanese one in the centre of the image measures the larger size at 40ml (just under the correct 1 1/2 oz), the black version (from a Spanish cocktail set) measures its jigger at 50ml, and the oddly marked middle one, which came with an unbranded shaker set, measure its jigger at around 42ml – or exactly 1 1/2oz. Their smaller ends are then equally confusing: the stamped one has a smaller measure of about 3/4oz – half the jigger end, but not a pony; my regular Japanese measure has a smaller capacity of exactly the same amount (3/4oz), but this is more than half the larger measure & the black measure again has a smaller end that is over half the larger capacity: three measures, with no real consistency of proportion or absolute measure between them.

And then finally I have the odd multi-tool device that Liz gave me one Christmas as a  sort of barman’s Swiss Army knife: the measures there are 35 & 20ml respectively; a Manhattan made with those proportions would be pretty small & pretty sweet indeed.

So why does this matter? Because proportions in cocktails matter a good deal -Manhattans and Martinis made with too much vermouth can be pretty duff (unless you wanted a gin-and-French, of course), so you need your measures to be accurate & consistent. My advice is not to rely on the typical ‘gift set’ measures too much – either buy some decent measures from a catering or bar supply company (my marked measures came from Nisbets in London, and were a couple of pounds each) – or use a kitchen fluid measure cup (I have one from Oxo that measures ozs, ml, tablespoons and teaspoons in one small jug), which is really good for the ultra-precise recipes (usually the ones that include strong flavourings like absinthe) or use a chemistry measuring flask, marked in ml, which if nothing else, will impress your friends by your mixological exactitude.