Bartender's Friend - General Directions

From The Bartender's Friend, by A Mixer.

General Directions for Those Tending Bar

• Use only the best of liquors, cordials, and other ingredients. They hold customers and make new ones.
• Be sure to use clean ice only.
• Do not touch with your fingers ice or fruit going into a drink. Use a spoon, tongs, or a scoop.
• Use fine or shaved ice in making juleps and frappes. In mixing cold drinks which contain no water but principally spirits, fine ice is to be preferred.
• Use cracked or small lump ice in mixing cold drinks in which any substantial amount of milk, egg, wine, Vermouth, water, or effervescent is used.
• Do not put ice into the glass when serving a milk drink.
• Do not put ice into the glass when serving wine.
• Syrup is preferable to sugar in mixing cocktails. It saves time.
• Granulated sugar is to be preferred when plain sugar is to be used in any drink which is to be shaken.¹
• Fine, powdered, pulverized, or confectioner's sugar is to be preferred in fizzes and stirred drinks.²
• Loaf or lump sugar is used in the old fashioned cocktails.
• Where sugar is to be used in a cold drink, first dissolve it in just enough cold water, except when you are to shake the drink with fine ice.³
• Before putting an egg into the ingredient glass, break it into a seperate container without the view of the customer. This is to determine its freshness, and may avoid nauseating him.
• Do not stir egg or milk into spirits--stir the spirits into them to prevent curdling.
• Before using a glass for a hot drink, rinse it in warm water and put into it a spoon to prevent breaking. Thin glasses are best for hot drinks.
• In using bitters put in a minimum. You can always add, if desired, but you cannot take away.
• In filling a wine glass always leave about a quarter inch at top.⁴
• Do not shake a drink containing an effervescent. Stir it.

Notes:
¹By this, A Mixer would mean today's superfine sugar.
²This noder expects that A Mixer would not mean today's confectioner's sugar, which includes a small amount of corn starch that would haze or cloud a clear drink.
³The temperature change may precipitate out the sugar.
⁴When this noder orders a bottle of wine in a restaurant, he would never allow the glass to be filled so far to the top. However, when ordering wine by the glass at a bar or restaurant, this noder appreciates a fuller glass.