Level Up Your Cocktail Technique With Toby Maloney

In our July/August 2026 issue, we talk with longtime bartender and educator Toby Maloney about life post-Violet Hour, the joys of mentorship, and his newest book, The Classic Cocktail Sessions, which published in June. A follow-up to his James Beard Award–winning debut The Bartender’s Manifesto: How to Think, Drink, and Create Cocktails Like a Pro (both co-written with Emma Janzen), the book emphasizes technique over following exact recipes. As Maloney explains it: “We are really trying to get people to personalize their own cocktails and figure out what is the best drink for them, understanding how to change ratios and work with the techniques. I think that’s much more important than just following somebody’s recipe.” To that end, we sat down with Maloney a second time to talk cocktail technique, step by step.

What Makes a Great Cocktail?

Toby Maloney has been bartending for more than 30 years. If you were to apply the 10,000-hour rule of mastering a skill, he has about 60,000 hours under his belt. And when it comes to crafting a great cocktail, he has some thoughts. “‘Good enough’ is the absolute enemy of great,” he says matter-of-factly.

So how does one level up their cocktail technique to ensure that every drink is a truly great drink? Maloney says that flavor is one of the least important factors to focus on. Or rather, flavor is created through multiple elements that can be dialed in individually, while also understanding how they are intrinsically linked in the overall tapestry of the drink.

“The idea came about years ago when I was training people at Violet Hour. I realized that everybody talked about flavor when they talked about cocktails. But one day I had a drink that was so bad that I don’t even remember the actual drink. But the texture of it was like razor wire with thumbtacks,” says Maloney.

“I had this light bulb moment where I realized texture is the most important part of a cocktail. But then, a couple of days later, I was served a room temperature Margarita that was just coming off of a keg. And I was like, okay, texture is the most important and then temperature is next. When I started thinking about it, I realized that balance is part of both of those things. And then aroma is the first thing that you get in your nose and that can really change the drink. Now, when I talk about flavor, it’s like the 16th most important thing.”

In addition to texture, temperature, balance, and aroma, Maloney adds a fifth factor: Narrative arc.

In addition to texture, temperature, balance, and aroma, Maloney adds a fifth factor: Narrative arc. Meaning? “Originally, my definition was from the first sniff to the last sip,” says Maloney. “But the drink actually begins with a look. So the garnish and the glass and the ice and the napkin below it—that’s part of the narrative arc. And now I realize that oftentimes the narrative arc starts when you’re sitting at a bar and you see a drink go by, and you think ‘Oh, I want that.’ That’s the beginning of the anticipation.”

To offer insight into his personal level of expertise, Maloney walks us through each factor step by step. Demonstrating how these elements function both individually and impact each other, Maloney uses two examples: a shaken, citrus-forward Jungle Bird and a stirred, spirit-forward Manhattan. So grab your notebook and your mixing tin because class is in session.

Texture

“If you’ve ever had a flat Coca-Cola, that illustrates the difference between good texture and bad. Bad texture in cocktails can manifest as being too sweet, so it’s kinda slick and almost gummy. If the drink is too boozy, it has a hot mouthfeel. So that’s bad texture,” explains Maloney. “Obviously, egg white brings in texture. Cream brings in texture. The bubbles in a Tom Collins—that’s good texture. Texture is about using technique to bring out the best mouth feel in a drink.”

In a cocktail like the Jungle Bird, the texture will be impacted by a variety of overlapping factors, from the strength of the spirits to the sweetness of the juice to the aeration and temperature created by shaking. Maloney considers each element individually to gauge how they will come together in the final drink. “For the the Jungle Bird, you can make a different drink if you use all Pusser’s rum or a blackstrap rum—that proof and the weight of those particular rums is going to change how the cocktail moves along. If you split the base and use a regular 80-proof rum and a splash of 151, that’s going to change how much you shake it.”

In a stirred, spirit-forward drink like the Manhattan, one sees an even more direct line between texture and temperature. “You want to get it down to right around 20 degrees, if possible, because it becomes heavier. The coldness of the drink actually changes the texture, so the drink itself is heavier and more weighted on your palate,” says Maloney. “When you’re shaking, you want that lively effervescence, but when you’re stirring, you want something more like maple syrup. I also say double-strain everything as kind of a rule. If a drink has a straw, it doesn’t matter nearly as much because ice floats. But there’s very few reasons to have little bits of ice floating on top of your drink because that is a terrible texture. It’s like sand in your peanut butter and jelly on the beach—it’s just the worst.”

Temperature

This very telling facet of the mixing process goes beyond simply whether a drink will be enjoyably chilled. “Temperature is the most important part of a drink because it’s a really quick way to tell you that the texture and the balance are wrong, because you don’t have enough water content or your ratios are off in your spec. You can’t get the right temperature out of a drink that is not boozy enough because you need the alcohol to bring down the frigorific temperature so that you can get something that’s colder than 32 degrees,” explains Maloney.

“In the Jungle Bird, I’m adding the overproof rum because I know that I already have the water content in the pineapple juice,” says Maloney. “So let’s say we have an 80-proof and a 100-proof rum. I know I’m going to have to shake it a little bit longer to get it extra cold. You want to have it really nice and cold before it goes onto the rocks, so you don’t get another blast of dilution once it hits the ice in the glass. I want those first couple of sips to be boozy and sweet because it’s going to have that longer narrative arc as the ice melts.”

Maloney suggests tasting early and often to gauge where the drink begins and where you want it to end up.

When mixing at home, make sure to have your glassware as cold as possible by storing in the fridge or freezer, or simply filling with ice and water before use. And when making a stirred drink, like the Manhattan, Maloney suggests tasting early and often to gauge where the drink begins and where you want it to end up. Once it hits the glass, both temperature and dilution should be dialed in.

“When a drink is served up, it is only going to warm up from there. This is great for whiskey drinks specifically, because we’re very used to drinking whiskey at around room temperature, and you’re going to get so much more complexity out of that drink,” says Maloney. “As it warms up temperature-wise, it also warms up alcohol-wise, and it’s going to feel more boozy.”

Balance

Balance is both crucial and somewhat nebulous because it is influenced by every other factor in a drink. “If I say that texture is the most important, and then temperature is the next, balance is part of both of those things,” says Maloney. “With balance, what you’re really trying to do is understand the complexity and the characteristics of each component before you start shaking it, or stirring it, before you put ice in your tin or your glass.”

With a drink like a Jungle Bird, elements to consider are the proof and characteristics of the rums, which red bitter is being used, or whether the pineapple juice is fresh or from a can. For a Manhattan, is your base spirit rye whiskey, or bourbon, or a mix of both? “If a drink feels hot and burns in my mouth, I know I have to stir it more because it’s got too much booze in it. To gauge sweetness, I think about whether it feels sharp or round on my palate.”

Dialing in the balance on a cocktail is another argument for tasting your drink and its components as you go. “I might think, this could use one more dash of bitters, or this could use a 16th of an ounce of rum to add a little bit more complexity. Maybe I’ve over-stirred it a little bit and I can throw a quarter of an ounce of rye in there to really make it bright again,” says Maloney. “Balance is the most important part of a cocktail because without balance, no drink is going to work.”

Aroma

While aroma seems a more obvious and straightforward facet, it still functions on several levels in a drink. Aside from how a cocktail appears visually, it will be your first sensorial interaction with the drink. “Think about the difference between a Mojito with and without a big, fresh mint bouquet,” says Maloney. “Those are just two different drinks.”

In addition to drawing drinkers in with a captivating scent, aroma forms an important interplay between ingredients, influencing the overall balance of a drink. For a cocktail like the Jungle Bird, aroma can serve to emphasize the flavors to come. “You could do something as simple as a piece of fresh-cut pineapple on the edge to give you a big pineapple nose. Or you could spray it with a little bit of Angostura, which has a lot of the same notes as the rums,” says Maloney.

Conversely, for a drink like the Manhattan, an aromatic garnish can provide a lively counterpoint. “You have all of these ingredients that are ‘cooked.’ The distillation is cooking the grains. The aging in barrels for years is like cooking. And when you have something that’s cooked for a long time, usually the last thing you do is throw a little bit of acid and brightness on top: some flat leaf parsley, some cilantro and onions, some citrus, etc. So that lemon twist or orange twist on top of the all of those cooked ingredients in the cocktail adds a counterpoint that both shows off the ingredients and gives you balance as well. It can be a good foil to cinnamon and clove and vanilla and all of these things that are inherently in whiskey,” explains Maloney.

Any wine drinker can tell you that aroma impacts perceived flavor, and the same holds true in cocktails. “You can have a drink that is sweet. And when you add a lemon peel on top, the brightness of that lemon peel actually tricks your mind into thinking that the drink is less sweet,” says Maloney. “So you can really ratchet up the sugar in a drink to get the texture you want by using an aroma to trick your brain into thinking it’s not as sweet.”

Narrative Arc

The narrative arc of a cocktail is not any one component, but the experience created as a whole by texture, temperature, balance, and aroma. “A drink is a story. And understanding how that story is going to unfold and making sure that it is a great, solid story every step of the way is the purpose of thinking about the narrative arc,” Maloney says.

Maloney compares the arc to the three stages of tasting wine: the attack (or first impression), the mid-palate development, and the finish.

Similar, again, to wine, Maloney compares the arc to the three stages of tasting wine: the attack (or first impression), the mid-palate development, and the finish. “My favorite cocktails are usually a little bit sweet and boozy in the beginning, with a long, complex middle, and a dry finish.” A cocktail like the Jungle Bird can hit that mark dead center, with the sweet, juicy pineapple and robust rum up front, followed by the complexity of the Campari, while the slow dilution on ice dries out the finish.

“I’ve noticed something they’re doing in bars is, if somebody’s drinking a Martini, halfway through they’ll come over with a frozen glass and pour your Martini into a new frozen glass. So that’s like a plot twist in your cocktail’s narrative,” says Maloney. “Or if somebody’s drinking a Manhattan and there was lemon on it, I’ll go over halfway through and just add a little tiny bit of orange and that takes it into a different direction.”

Whether you are serving a cocktail to someone, or simply fixing a drink for yourself, Maloney believes there is no reason you shouldn’t aim to make every single drink taste as delicious as possible. “I wouldn’t call myself a metaphysical person. But I truly believe that the more concentration, the more energy you put towards a drink, the better it’s going to be. Intention matters.”