Before posting my coctail recipes, I think it is essential to go through basic coctail information. So here is my humble knowledge all for you.
What do you need to make a coctail?
Shaker
A shaker is the tool in which you make your mixtures. It is an "easy to find" tool. Speaking of my country (Turkey) you would find that in big malls. It is not that expensive as well. Altough I've been making coctails for 4 years now, I don't have a shaker. I just use a glass jar which works perfectly fine.
Ice
Nearly every coctail is made with ice so you'll need that. Your regular ice maker would do. However, for some coctails you'll need broken ice. So here is how you make it. Take a clean towel. Put the ice between towel. Now comes the tricky part. You have to be very careful. If you crush the ice too much it will melt quicker so no good. If you crush it too lightly then the ice won't melt properly, as a result the aroma of the coctail won't be very essential. Crush it gently but effectively and thats that.
Mixer
While making your coctails, sometimes you'll need mixers. By mixers I mean spoons
Each coctail goes with a different glass so 3-4 different sized spoons will do. Besides that, you'll need a flat spoon. Flat spoons are used for making density-based coctails. Those 3-4 different colored, cool looking coctails are made with a flat spoon. You don't have to buy one. Just Take a regular spoon and make it flat How do you make coctails?
Each coctail has a different recipe. I'll post the most common ones (sex on the beach, bloody mary, long island ice tea, B-52, cosmopolitan, Scarlett O'hara, etc. ) in time. However, making coctails is like alchemy, whatever suits your taste it counts as a coctail too. But basically a coctail is made like this: Put lots of ice in the shaker, add the ingredients, shake with full power. Take a slice of lemon and rub inside of the glass with lemon. Put the coctail into glass. Decorate it with another slice of lime.
Besides that every recipe has it own technique and tips so there isn't one common way to do it.
How do you measure?
There is a tool called jigger which is the basic measure for coctails. If you're thinking of coctails as a future hobby buy one. A jigger has two sides. One for full, one for half. However it isn't a must, speaking of me I don't use it barmen do.
When you are trying a new recipe always use a small vodka shot glass. That is the fairly good measure for full. If you don't have a votka shot glass as well, it takes about 3 full table spoon liquid. After you get used to making the coctail of your choice depending on how you like it you won't use measures you'll just know how much to put however that takes a little experience.
I hope the information is usefull =)
