Expert Article FINAL

Turn Your Vices into Virtues like Water into Wine

A simple guide to turn your bad drinking habits into a skill to impress.


If you’re reading this, chances are you either went to college or are currently a college student. Let’s be honest—I’m sure those memories of shotgunning Natty Lights, sipping on White Claws, and ladling mysterious tropical-flavored battery acid from a plastic storage bin into a sticky red Solo cup aren’t too far gone. During these glory days, drinking was something you did to lose your inhibitions, get wild with your friends, and add a little extra chaos to your night.

Perhaps you’re like me, though. Perhaps, after a long and lonely quarantine, barred from going to social gatherings, fraternity houses, or bars, you’ve become interested in the beauty in the alcoholic drink. You’re older now. You don’t want to wake up with regrets and a hangover anymore—you want to sip with sophistication and learn how to be a true adult. Why not turn what was previously a childish act of rash parental defiance into an act of class and charm by learning how to bartend?

Bartending on a Shoestring

Learning how to bartend can sound quite daunting at first. After all, there is an uncountable number of spirits to choose from, and hundreds of cocktails out there that have names with no indication of what the drink may consist of. Furthermore, if your only exposure to bartending is from going to a bar, I’m sure you’ve seen what the professional bartender’s arsenal looks like.

What if I told you that you don’t need hundreds of bottles to start making great cocktails? Here, I’ll teach you the core basics of how to start bartending on a budget, using what you already have in your kitchen. The key is to figure out how to create drinks based on flavor combinations, instead of ingredient combinations.

What makes a great cocktail?

Like with all things food and drink-related, what differentiates a good drink from a great drink comes down to subtle details. Anybody can throw together a bunch of liquids in a cup and make it taste like exactly what it’s made of. However, making a new, deeper flavor that pleasantly surprises the taster is the real challenge.

I’ll explain this concept with an example from baking, which you may be more familiar with. A quick scroll through the internet’s top-rated chocolate chip cookie recipes will consistently reveal one seemingly strange addition—salt. This might seem counterintuitive given that cookies are a sweet food, making salt the opposite flavor. However, this very contradiction is the key to a great cookie. According to food scientists from the Exploratorium in San Francisco, adding salt to a sweet recipe “perks up the depth and complexity of other flavors,” creating a balance of flavor balance that satisfies the whole palate (Gardiner & Wilson, par. 5).

The same principle of balancing flavors using contrast applies to bartending. There is a popular misconception, especially among younger drinkers, that sweeter is always better since the taste and burn of the alcohol are masked. In reality, my favorite drinks are ones that actually leverage the flavors of the alcohol rather than ones that contain a spirit for the sake of getting people drunk. As bar director Joanna Carpenter from Town Stages in Manhattan, NY said in an interview with NPR’s The Salt, it’s flavor, not alcohol content, that makes a great cocktail. “When you get down to it, we’re selling a toxin,” she said. “If there’s a way to celebrate a flavor and a beautiful experience without always relying on alcohol [content], then we should be doing it” (Hartke, par. 12).


Bartending Essentials Straight from your Kitchen

If you’re worried about bartending because your kitchen and alcohol collections are sparse, have no fear. According to the Sage Encyclopedia of Alcohol, the term bartending was coined in the 19th century when America was experiencing enormous waves of immigration, and many of the ingredients used in classic cocktails were not originally intended for cocktail mixing. This actually means that the fundamental premise of a cocktail is that an iconic drink will combine ingredients invented in other countries for other purposes (Kte’pi, par. 2).

Lucky for you, this means that you can make cocktails with just about anything you can find in your house, even the simplest ingredients. Listed are a few essential ingredients, but keep in mind that you can find your way around a lot of these if you're in a pinch!
  • Your favorite alcohols (flavored or non-flavored, hard or not)
    • If you don't have a favorite, I'd recommend any kind of vodka as a start; unflavored if you want the most freedom of what drinks you can make.
  • Any fruit (go with what's in season or in your fridge)
  • Acid (lemons, limes or other citrus are usually the go to)
  • Sweetener (sugar, simple syrup, honey, or agave are popular)
  • Ice
  • Sparkling/tonic water
Keep in mind that anything in your pantry can be used to make drinks. I've seen drinks be made with anything from jalapeño peppers to bacon, and personally, some funky things I've used for experimentation include Greek yogurt, maple syrup, eggs (it's more common than you'd think), and ginger!

A Starting Formula for Success

Here is a foolproof way to make a simple cocktail that can be jazzed up as you get more and more comfortable with experimentation. I’ve included possible ingredient substitutions as well, if you’re in a pinch!
  • 2 oz. your favorite hard liquor
  • 2 tbs. lemon or lime juice (sub. lemonade or limeade, or any other sour fruit)
  • Ice
  • Tonic water (sub. any alcoholic seltzer e.g. White Claw, or a sweet and extremely light beer, e.g. Coor’s Light, or even plain water if you’re desperate)
  • Sweetener, to taste (omit if using lemonade or limeade)
  • A cocktail shaker (sub. any bottle/container that can be sealed tight and shaken)
For an elevated experience, chill your glass in the freezer for 15 minutes beforehand. In a shaker with ice, add the liquor, lemon or lime juice, and sweetener. Shake vigorously for 20 seconds. Take your glass out of the freezer, add ice (the larger the ice chunk, the better), and strain your drink into the glass. Top with tonic water and a piece of citrus or mint if you have any on hand, and if you want to get fancy, fold a piece of citrus peel in half between your fingers and run the fold of the peel along the edge of the glass.

By now, hopefully, you understand why this drink will taste so much better than liquor mixed with straight soda or juice. Combining sweet and sour elements creates a wonderful flavor contrast and balance that, when combined with a bit of dilution and carbonation from the tonic water, is extremely pleasant to the palate.

This recipe is a perfect example of a core pillar of bartending. Michelin-star barman Vincenzo Marianella said himself in an interview with LA Magazine that his formula for balancing spirit, sour, and sweet is a core part of his cocktails’ successes. “With [my] formula, we’ve been making cocktails for four and a half years and I recall only one bad review on Yelp--and we have more than 500 reviews” (Pardilla, par.13).

With this new knowledge under your belt, you’ll be able to start experimenting with cocktails in no time. As you grow more experienced, you should invest more into getting fresher, high-quality ingredients and proper equipment, but for now, just have fun with it, and as always, drink responsibly!

Works Cited

Gardiner, Anne, and Sue Wilson. “Ask the Inquisitive Cooks: ‘What Is the Purpose of Salt in Cake Recipes?".” Science of Cooking: Ask the Inquisitive Cooks!, 13 Oct. 2003, www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/icooks/10-13-03.html.

Hartke, Kristen. Now, there is Zero Proof that Alcohol is what Makes A Great Cocktail. NPR, Washington, 2019. ProQuest, http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.libproxy1.usc.edu/blogs,-podcasts,-websites/now-there-is-zero-proof-that-alcohol-what-makes/docview/2194912215/se-2?accountid=14749.

Kte'pi, Bill. "Bartending." The SAGE Encyclopedia of Alcohol: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives. Edited by Scott C. Martin. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2015, pp. 226-29. SAGE Knowledge. 10 Feb 2021, doi: http://www.doi.org.libproxy1.usc.edu/10.4135/9781483331096.n72.

Pardilla, Caroline. “10 Tips on How to Make a Great Cocktail.” Los Angeles Magazine, 12 July 2013, www.lamag.com/drinkrecipes/10-tips-on-how-to-make-a-great-cocktail/.

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