Decorations of cocktails: A few trick to make your drinks more flashy and exotic.

Well, cocktails. I bet you’re all used to them, and you have seen, or even drank one at least once in your life.

But… have you even tried to make one? If you want to do them, or you want to give it a try for you or for your friends, there are some tips you have to know first! Because with just putting some alcohol and shaking it in a cocktail shaker you won’t make, most of the times, a real cocktail (although there are lot of cocktails with no decoration at all… but that’s another story).

The decoration is the key. It’s the difference between putting some alcohol together and doing a real cocktail. So let me list all the tricks and ways you have to make your mixtures really impressive and flashy.

By the way, we’re not talking about putting 10 or 20 flashy umbrella or sparkles picks and some stirrers that lot of pubs and clubs use. No no no… we’re doing serious business here! You will need (maybe) some practice, but let me tell you: The result won’t be as flashy as using those picks and stirrers, but it will seem way more professional.

They're, though, a good addition to your cocktails. I'll put it easy if you want to buy them:

so let's explain this tricks/tecniques in order of (my opinion) popularity:

They’re, without a doubt, the most known decoration. It’s very easy to do them: just take a fruit, and slice it in pieces of a considerable width. If they are tiny, they will fall down when you put them in the edge of the cup.

Speaking of that, are you asking yourself how to put them there? It’s easy: just take a knife and cut a bit the fruit. The cut must have a considerable depth, but it must not reach the skin of the fruit.

Remember that this fruit have stick in the edge of the cup without moving… and it doesn’t seem as easy as you imagine when you try to do it! But it’s ok, you don’t need to have an engineering or something.

Very used too. They are sold usually under syrup and they have a hole in the middle so you can stick them together in a pick, because they’re often used for that: To be stacked with a piece of fruit.

You can use any normal pick you want. Toothpicks works very well.

Another technique I bet you all probably heard of. Basically, it’s about some sugar and salt pour in the top of the cup.

To do a salt or sugar rim, you just need two tea plates: one for the salt, or sugar (it doesn’t matter which one of those you use, although you can try to suit it with the drink in the glass (for example, if you’re drinking strawberry liquor you can put sugar because it’s also sweet). In the other plate, you need to put a drink. This will work as “glue”, thanks to this drink, the sugar or the salt will be attached in the top of the drink.

Now you have both plates (and obviously an empty cup!) follow this:

- Take the cup and put the top gently in the plate with the drink, to make it wet. You can make wet all the borders or just a part of the cup

- Now, pour the wet borders in the first cup. Now the sugar is attached!

This technique is more interesting than it sounds: not only because you can put a sweet or salad extra taste to your drink, but also you can give your cups a little color, if you use drinks like grenadine (red colour), peppermint schnapps or liquor (green)… there are lot of possibilities!

And by the way, it doesn’t matter the drink you use as a “glue”, a part of the color. They are all ok.

Another technique involving fruits! This time, we will use their skin, instead of a whole piece.

This is mostly more rare, because you have to use a peeler to not only peel their skin, but peel in a spiral way, with a thin thick.

So you can see why it isn’t that popular as fruit slices? You need a special peeler, and cut it in a very accurate form!

Although it may be doesn’t enter in the same category, you can use plants or leafs. For example, mint, also known as “hierba buena”. That’s used in mojitos, for example!

We’ll finish with this. As far as I know, it’s not very used, but it gives to our drinks a very exotic look to our mixtures!

It’s very easy to do them: just take and ice cube tray, put a piece of fruit (strawberries, oranges, cherries… everything!) and fill them with water.

Wait until the water is frozen, and you’ll have ice cube with fruit frozen in it!

So in this hub we learned about simple techniques to decorate your cocktails and your drinks. They’re cheap and takes a short time. It will give an exotic look to your presentations that you definitely you or your friends will like. As far as I know, those are the most important ones and I think almost pretty much everything you can do when it comes to cocktail decoration.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and leave suggestions, constructive reviews, questions… everything you want! :)