I remember a number of years back, I had just been to my first workshop with Sasha Petraske of Milk & Honey NYC at Oslo Cocktail Conference where he urged all bartenders to stop creating new cocktails. His gripe, well justified perhaps, was based on the tendency of miles-long cocktail lists of strange concoctions even less understandable for the bartender who made it than for the sorry patron who was forced to drink it. Quite typical in young-and-up-and-coming parts of the ever growing world of cocktails. Mr. Petraske´s credo was one that has stuck with me ever since: – If you create a cocktail, be sure that it is one that you would order twice in the same night. Because how many of us can really claim to have made such a cocktail, nevertheless designed a menu consisting of original cocktails that can stand up to this test?

Let me elaborate, for we do not want to kill off the spirit and creativity among the new wave of bartenders, but how can we help focus that creativity and what makes for a well composed cocktail list? The perfect cocktail list is exciting, innovative, carries a thread from the beginning to the end but still with variations to cater to different tastes, is easy to understand for your guests, easy and quick to execute for the bartender and highlights what you want to sell the most of and keeps your patrons coming back for more. This is quite a tall order, and I think most bars (I´ve also been guilty of this many times) tend to forget these rules of thumb as the menu is being put together.

Good luck!

Jesper Høst – Head Bartender No. 19 Oslo Norway and co-founder of Project leader Behind Bars Consulting

Email: cocktailkultur@gmail.com, info@behindbarsconsulting.com

Instagram: @cocktailkultur

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