Wow with your wedding drinks

The bartending industry and wedding industry go hand in hand each time they meet, since there is always someone looking for a great bar experience in a wedding. And throughout the years, the bar game has evolved.

Back when the openly drinking at a wedding taboo was shattered, straight drinks along with soft beverages — or even drinking straight out of the glass and the bottle for that matter — were a big hit. Moving ahead a few years, flavors, mixers, different bases and concoctions entered the picture. These provided the consumers better options of what we now call regular or classic cocktails.

Evolution is the key to our existence and growth, and our desire to change and explore better options just doesn’t stop. Similarly, the hospitality industry needs to evolve and change to provide consumers with better options each time.

The latest trend that is going around at weddings is a theme bar set-up. This enables us to set up the bar in a particular theme and curate cocktails that go well with their respective themes. Here are a few of the most innovative ideas I have experimented with in a bar set-up:

Neon Cocktails

As the name suggests, the cocktails are meant to glow in the dark. Now how do we achieve that? Well, you need to simply use ingredients that are not very easy to find in your regular kirana store. They are easily available on online platforms, though. Say, you want a purple neon cocktail; all you need is gin, butterfly pea flower tea, lavender syrup, lemon, ice and a cocktail shaker. One would need to brew a concoction out of the tea bag or tea leaves and let it cool. Take a cocktail shaker, add ice, gin, tea, lavender syrup, and lemon, and shake well for a few seconds and voila! Pour it in a glass and top it off with a little club soda and put off the lights. See the glow-in-the-dark magic for yourself!

Molecular Cocktails

Now, molecular mixology is a whole new ball game. Using various molecular techniques, one can eat the cocktails you make! Cocktail spheres are quite hot and trending now. This serves the purpose of having cocktails like dessert too! Not very hard to make, all you need is a cocktail recipe, a sphere mould and a syringe. Fill water in to the mould as per instructions, and put it into a freezer. Meanwhile, make the cocktail of your choice and fill it into a syringe. Once your sphere is ready, take the ice sphere and make a hole with the syringe by turning the needle into it clockwise and anti-clockwise without breaking it. Once your cocktail sphere is ready, gently place it into a rock glass and either break it to serve or bite into it.

Flaming Lamborghini

Our very own favourite, consumed by many is the Flaming Lamborghini. This is very easy to make but it requires some caution. Now, this cocktail is full of live action — it’s made even while you sip on it! We take a glass, pour an ounce of Sambuca and an ounce of Kahlua and light it up. Put a straw into the flaming drink and ask the guest to begin sipping. As the cocktail comes to the end, we start pouring one shot each of blue curacao and Bailey’s Irish cream to compete a full different flavoured blazing experience.

Charcoal

The last one is a little unusual but can be used for many different bar set-ups — it is a charcoal activated cocktail. Take an edible charcoal capsule, and dissolve it into your favourite concoctions. For instance, take a little simple syrup and stir in a capsule of charcoal powder till it dissolves, add it to the cocktail shaker, add coconut rum, white rum and a little pineapple juice and squeeze in a little limejuice. Shake well and strain it into a martini glass and top it off with a slice of lemon. This cocktail tastes amazing provided you dilute the charcoal powder really well. It goes along with a garage theme set-up to make it look like used motor oil in a glass or cooled lava for a Hawaiian Tiki bar set-up.

Binny is the founder of Flaming Trio