Shaken or stirred? When to shake or stir a cocktail

The decision comes down to ingredients. Spirit-only cocktails get stirred. Drinks containing juice, cream, eggs, or other opaque ingredients get shaken. That settles most drinks; the cases that break the rule are set out below.

Why does this matter? Stirring chills gently and dilutes a drink while preserving its clarity and silky texture. Shaking aggressively aerates, emulsifies, and integrates ingredients that would otherwise separate.

Stirring suits cocktails built entirely from spirits, liqueurs, fortified wines, and bitters. These ingredients share similar densities and mix easily with gentle motion.

Classic stirred cocktails include the Martini, Manhattan, Negroni, Old Fashioned, Vieux Carré, and Boulevardier. Notice the pattern: all feature base spirits with modifiers like vermouth, amaro, or liqueurs.

Shaking suits cocktails containing citrus juice, egg, cream, or other ingredients that need physical force to integrate. The technique also chills drinks faster and more aggressively than stirring.

Classic shaken cocktails include the Daiquiri, Margarita, Whiskey Sour, Cosmopolitan, Pisco Sour, and Espresso Martini. Each has an ingredient that stirring will not fully mix in, and the coffee in an Espresso Martini needs the shake for its crema.

Our rule: shake anything with citrus or other fruit juice, egg, cream or milk, and stir anything made only of spirits, liqueurs, fortified wines and bitters. The IBA’s specifications draw the same line. The Dry Martini and the Manhattan are stirred in a mixing glass, while the Whiskey Sour, the Espresso Martini and the French Martini are shaken. The IBA’s Negroni is stirred too, built over ice in its own glass.

Citrus does not always mean a shake. A long drink over ice is mixed in its glass, and the IBA builds the John Collins, lemon juice and all, in a highball full of ice and stirs it gently. It gives the Mojito a light stir after the soda goes in. The IBA stirs the Bloody Mary gently in a mixing glass, too. We find hard shaking leaves tomato juice thin and frothy, so we roll ours, as described below.

Never shake anything fizzy. Soda, tonic, ginger beer and sparkling wine go into the glass after the shake, or their gas escapes in the tin.

The rule bends the other way too. The Vesper holds no juice at all, yet the IBA shakes it. Casino Royale, Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel (1953), has Bond ordering one: “Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold.” The Ian Fleming website says the line “shaken and not stirred” first appears in print in Diamonds Are Forever.

A shaken Martini is colder, more diluted and slightly cloudy, because the tiny bubbles a shake leaves survive straining, by Dave Arnold’s microscope tests. In our view nothing is “bruised”: the gin is unharmed, and the bruising people taste is that extra water and air. When Arnold’s panel blind-tasted Manhattans and Negronis made both ways, it preferred them stirred. Make whichever you prefer.

Shaking and stirring are two of the methods. The third, and the most common for long drinks, is building the drink in its own glass. Bartenders also throw drinks between two tins, which sits between stirring and shaking, and blend frozen drinks. Each method has its own section below.

Stir in a mixing glass, or the large tin of a shaker, with a long bar spoon. Our method:

1. Chill the serving glass, and the mixing glass too, with ice and water. A warm mixing glass takes some of the cold for itself.
2. Measure the ingredients into the mixing glass.
3. Fill it two-thirds or more with hard, dry cubed ice, so the ice stands above the liquid.
4. Slide the back of the bar spoon down the inside of the glass and turn it with your fingertips, so the ice travels round the glass as one mass. It should be nearly silent. Stir hard enough to clatter and the drink clouds with air.
5. Stir for 20 to 30 seconds with ordinary cubes, longer with large cubes and less with small ones.
6. Taste from the spoon. Stop when the drink is cold, the outside of the glass has frosted and the alcohol no longer burns.
7. Strain through a julep or Hawthorne strainer into the chilled glass, or over fresh ice.

How long to stir has no exact answer. Dave Arnold’s measurements show a stirred drink never settles at a fixed temperature the way a shaken one does, so the ice and your pace decide. Water is part of the drink: in one of his tests a Manhattan went into the glass at 113g from 77g of mix.

Swirling is not stirring. Turning or rocking a glass to move the drink round it, which is what swirling means, mixes a little but barely chills, because the ice hardly moves against the liquid. It suits a spirit already poured over a large cube, not a cocktail that needs its water.

Shaking is quick, and each step matters. Our method, with a Boston shaker, a Cobbler shaker or a Parisian shaker:

1. Chill the serving glass first, with ice and water or in the freezer.
2. Pour the ingredients into the small tin, or the base of a Cobbler.
3. Fill it two-thirds or more with hard cubed ice. More ice chills faster and dilutes less.
4. Seal it. Set the large tin over the small one at a slight angle and tap it once with the heel of your hand; on a Cobbler, press the strainer and cap firmly home. Lift a Boston shaker by the large tin alone: if the small tin stays put, the seal is good.
5. Hold it with a hand on each end, pointed away from you and anyone near, and shake hard from the shoulders so the ice travels the full length of the tin.
6. Shake for 10 to 12 seconds. Stop when the tin frosts and is almost too cold to hold, and the rattle softens as the ice breaks down.
7. Break the seal and strain into the chilled glass at once.

Why 10 to 12 seconds is under When to Shake, and the detail of ice, grip and rhythm under A good shake is hard, short and full of ice.

To shake without spilling, check the seal before you start and hold a hand on each end throughout. If liquid weeps from the join, stop, open and re-seal rather than gripping harder. Dented tins, or two that were not made to fit together, will not hold a seal.

Shaking is easy to learn. A single drink needs a good seal and a full tin of ice more than strength; it is a night of them that tires the arms.

Some drinks foam without egg. Pineapple juice froths when shaken hard, so the French Martini, shaken in the IBA’s specification with vodka, raspberry liqueur and pineapple juice, gets a pale head from the shake alone. We shake it hard and double strain it.

Shaking does its work through the ice, not through effort. Fill the tin, seal it, drive the ice from end to end and stop as soon as the tin is painfully cold.

Egg white needs a shake without ice to whip into a foam. With no ice to chill and thin it, the white foams fast, and the ice shake that follows chills the drink. For a dry shake:

1. Put every ingredient, the egg white included, into the small tin, with no ice.
2. Seal and shake hard for 10 to 15 seconds. A dry shake seals less firmly, because there is no cold to pull the tins together, so hold a hand pressed on the join.
3. Open the tin, fill it with cubed ice, re-seal and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds.
4. Double strain into a chilled glass, and let the foam settle for a few seconds before you garnish.

For a reverse dry shake, the order turns round:

1. Shake everything hard with ice for 10 to 12 seconds.
2. Strain the drink into the empty small tin and discard the ice.
3. Seal and shake again, without ice, for 10 to 15 seconds.
4. Pour into the glass. There is no ice left to strain.

Many bartenders find the reverse order gives a firmer foam that lasts longer, and both work. The IBA’s Ramos Fizz takes the reverse route at length: two minutes of shaking with ice, a double strain, then a minute of hard shaking without ice before the soda goes in.

A whip shake mixes a drink without chilling it much. It is for drinks served over crushed ice, which does the chilling and diluting in the glass.

1. Fill the serving glass with crushed ice.
2. Add the ingredients to the tin with a small handful of crushed ice, or two or three cubes.
3. Shake hard for about five seconds, until the tin turns cold.
4. Pour the whole lot, unstrained, into the glass and top with more crushed ice.

Many tiki drinks are built this way, and it suits any drink that would otherwise be diluted twice, once in the tin and again on the crushed ice.

Straining keeps the ice in the tin. A Hawthorne strainer, flat with a coiled spring, fits a shaker tin. A julep strainer, a perforated bowl, sits inside a mixing glass and is our choice for stirred drinks. A fine-mesh strainer held under either catches ice chips, pulp and herbs: that is a double strain.

1. Fit the strainer in the tin or glass and hold it in place with your index finger.
2. For a shaken drink with citrus, fruit, herbs or egg, hold a fine strainer over the glass as well.
3. Pour in one steady movement, tipping the tin right over at the end so the last of the drink drains through.
4. Leave the fine strainer out for stirred drinks; there are no chips or pulp to catch.

We double strain anything served without ice that holds citrus, fruit, herbs or egg. Ice chips float on a drink served up and melt into it; on a drink served over ice they do no harm.

Building is the third method: the drink is mixed in the glass it is served in. Highballs, the Collins family, spritzes, the Old Fashioned and most hot drinks are built. Our method:

1. Chill the glass, or warm it with hot water for a hot drink.
2. Fill it to the top with cubed ice, so the drink stays cold and dilutes slowly.
3. Add the spirit, then any syrup, juice or bitters.
4. Top with the mixer last, poured gently down the side of the glass or down a bar spoon, so it holds its gas.
5. Stir once or twice, lifting from the bottom, just enough to mix. A built spirit drink with no mixer, such as an Old Fashioned, takes about 15 seconds of stirring instead, because it carries on chilling as it sits.

A swizzle is built on crushed ice and mixed with a swizzle stick spun between the palms, until the outside of the glass frosts.

A fizzy canned cocktail is served the same way: pour it gently over fresh ice, and do not shake the can.

Throwing pours a drink from one tin to another through the air, so it takes in fine bubbles without the froth of a shake. Difford’s Guide, a secondary source, traces the cocktail method through El Floridita in Cuba to Miguel Boadas, who trained there and opened his Barcelona bar in 1933. Its review of Boadas records that the bar has since stopped throwing Dry Martinis, and points to a wine-based drink such as an Adonis for the throw.

1. Put the ingredients and a few cubes of ice in one tin, and hold a Hawthorne strainer over it.
2. Hold the full tin and the empty one together, high, one in each hand.
3. Start pouring, then let the empty tin drop away below, so the stream stretches out as it falls.
4. Bring the tins back together to finish the pour, tip the drink back over the ice and repeat.
5. Strain into the glass.

Difford’s suggests four to five throws, and says the method suits drinks built on vermouth and sherry. Try a thrown and a stirred Bamboo side by side.

Rolling is the gentle version. Pour the drink and its ice from one tin into the other, close together and without height, five or six times. It mixes without frothing, which is how we mix a Bloody Mary.

Some cocktails break the rules deliberately. Understanding the exceptions helps you make informed choices.

The tools you use affect your results. Choose equipment suited to your preferred technique.

Even experienced home bartenders make avoidable errors. Watch for these patterns.

When facing an unfamiliar cocktail, ask these questions in order:

Does it contain citrus juice? Shake it.

Does it contain egg, cream, or puree? Shake it (dry-shake first for egg).

Is it made entirely from spirits and liqueurs? Stir it.

Do you want it crystal clear? Stir it.

Is it a long drink topped with soda, tonic or another mixer? Build it in the glass.

Do you prefer a lighter, colder texture? Consider shaking.

These guidelines handle the vast majority of situations. For everything else, taste both versions and decide which you prefer.