Shannon Tebay, head bartender at Death & Co NYC, builds a Boukman Daquiri, a cocktail created by co-owner Alex Day. Mixed together in proper proportions, these elements make up a balanced, flavorful drink. The fundamental elements of a cocktail-the spirit, the balancing agents like sugar or citrus juice, the modifiers, and water-are the same no matter the ‘doctoring’ you apply. “At its most simple, is alcohol that we’ve doctored up,” says Alex Day, co-owner of Death & Co cocktail bar and the cocktail consulting company Proprietors LLC, as well as co-author of Cocktail Codex. Balancing the Elements of a CocktailĬocktails you order at a bar use the same type of ingredients as the drinks you make at home. Engineering inventive drinks doesn’t demand intricate processes or hard-to-find ingredients, either-just a little math and a willingness to experiment. Tinkering with classic cocktails takes practice and precision, but advancing your home-bar repertoire can be rewarding and delicious. As the mixologist-the drink’s mechanic-it’s your job to help those ingredients work together, to keep the engine humming. The elements of a cocktail are like components in an engine: Each part has a job to do, so if one ingredient is out of whack, the whole drink falls apart.

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