Skin Diver

The most common fruit juice used in cocktails. This citrus juice is about 6% acid; pure citric acid. Lemon juice should be used the day it is squeezed, some like it freshly squeezed and others like it a few hours old.

A citrus juice used in many cocktails, both for its sweet and tart taste and its color. Orange juice, unlike lemon and lime, can be kept fresh for days. In a blind taste test, most people liked day-old orange juice.

A syrup produced by bees (apis). Pure honey is 82% sugar and very viscous, if you add 64g water to every 100g honey you can make a thinner honey syrup that will substitute (with respect to sweetness) for simple syrup in any recipe, equivalent to 1.1:1 honey to water by volume. We try to always use 1:1 syrups by mass. However, most sources measure honey syrups by volume, this tends to make comparing recipes across sources that use honey syrups complicated, we tried to state what the original source uses in the recipe text. If no extra information is given, assume the syrup to be 1:1 by volume (eq ~1.4:1 by mass). Proteins in natural honey provide structure to bubbles in shaken drinks.

Also called amber rums, gold rums are medium-bodied rums that get their coloring from added sugars like molasses or caramel. These rums can either be left un-aged or slightly aged in charred oak barrels.

A dark rum distilled in Guyana, with a more heavy bodied molasses flavor and darker color. This is a rare variety of rum, if a recipe calls for demerara rum it may only be referring to a dark colored rum, not specifically a Guyanan rum.

The butterfat layer skimmed from the top of milk before homogenization, contains more than 35% milk fat. Also called single/double cream and whipping cream, although these may also add thickening agents making them less useful for mixing in cocktails. This is used as a foaming agent and for fat-washing in cocktails.

A concentrated aromatic bitters made in Trinidad from water, ethanol, gentian and other herbs and spices; used in many classic cocktails like the Manhattan.

A liquid produced from macerating vanilla pods in ethanol. To be considered 'pure' the solution must contain a minimum of 35% alcohol and 100g of vanilla beans per litre. One drop goes a long way.