Cocktail Making Classes - In-house & Online

On three prodigiously pleasant weekends in July, August and September we set up in a leafy Georgian square in Bloomsbury to bring bitesize versions of our cocktail making masterclasses to the crowds at Cocktails In The City; a festival-style celebration of the capital’s cocktails, the ingredients that go into them and the people that create them.

This series of events is always a highlight of our calendar and over the years we’ve seen it grow in both size and popularity. 2022 marked the first time it’s been held three times in one summer, with each event taking place over an entire weekend in the picturesque Bedford Square, just a few hundred metres from The British Museum.

With a prime spot at the centre of the square, we assembled seven of our custom-built cocktail workshop bars and got ready to greet the public alongside stands occupied by more than twenty of London’s finest drinking establishments.

At each CITC we work in partnership with one or multiple spirit brands and create distinct cocktails that showcase why we like them and how we like to use them. This year we teamed up with Brockmans gin and 1800 tequila, designing a selection of twists on a classic cocktail that would accommodate and highlight the flavour of both these spirits: the daisy.

This pre-prohibition cocktail could be argued to be the template for the majority of modern sours. The daisy’s first incarnation appeared in print in the second edition of Jerry Thomas’s The Bartender’s Guide or How To Mix Drinks: The Bon Vivant’s Companion in 1876, as ‘the brandy daisy’: a mixture of brandy, Curaçao liqueur, gum syrup and lemon juice. Over the years though, variations of the daisy were created using almost every major spirit, from vodka, gin and white rum, to whisky and eventually tequila. In fact, ‘daisy’ translates to ‘margarita’ in Spanish, suggesting that the cardinal tequila cocktail started out as a humble tequila daisy.

This customisable touchstone of classic mixology provided the perfect blank slate for us to guide our guests not just through making a cocktail, but creating one. Attendees were invited to design their own daisy using either gin or tequila, lemon or lime juice, triple sec and one or more of a selection of specially crafted syrups made by TT Liquor’s bar manager and resident cocktail-chemist Sasa Ruvidić. Sasa used fresh fruit and whole spices to create the three syrups that were flavoured with pineapple & coriander seed, cucumber & chilli and fresh raspberry, each one working alongside either spirit to compliment and accentuate different aspects of their flavour profiles.

To allow as many people as possible to take part in this cocktail making experience, we slimmed our usual two hour, five drink class down to a one drink, fifteen minute crash course with all the interactivity, expertise and fun of a full-length session. Over the three weekends we taught over five hundred eager cocktail connoisseurs and got to rub shoulders with some of the leading pioneers and innovators in the industry, and even sample a few of their creations ourselves.

Cocktails In The City is going from strength to strength, organising more events than ever and we can’t wait to get involved with whatever they cook up next. In the meantime, if you want to take part in one of our fully interactive cocktail classes you can come down to our flagship venue, TT Liquor in Shoreditch, where we host twice-weekly public classes and private classes anytime, or we can come to you, bringing our full mobile set-up anywhere in the country to cater to groups of any size. Just visit our website or give us a call to find out more.

Cocktails and the sunshine are a match made in heaven, so we were thrilled to take our mobile cocktail making class service up to Herefordshire for a hen party the other week. They had rented a grand old manor near Welwyn for the day, boasting beautiful grounds, and the weather was absolutely perfect for alfresco cocktail making.

We pride ourselves on being able to take our mobile cocktail making classes on the road with us – to almost any destination – and we’ve done a number of events in the great outdoors now, all of which have been a great success.

It’s a great way to take advantage of the limited sunny days of the British summertime, and cocktail making classes also happen to be perfect hen party material – after six or so cocktails everyone seemed to be in good spirits!

We can host our cocktail making classes at our new permanent home, on Kingsland Road in Shoreditch or we can take our cocktail making classes to almost any external venue of your choice throughout London or the UK.

Replay Jeans approached Mixology Events to provide our mobile cocktail bar service for the star-studded launch of their “The Flexibles” collection at The Old Selfridges Hotel, just off Oxford Street in central London.

A host of A-list celebrities attended the event including international football star Neymar Jr. Neymar was joined by fellow Brazilian, supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio – who is an ambassador for the brand. A number of British stars were also present including Professor Green, Tinie Tempah and Daisy Lowe, who performed a DJ set for the night’s entertainment. The venue itself was suitably impressive – a cavernous industrial space situated on Orchard Street directly behind Selfridges’ flagship Oxford Street store.

Mixology provided 8 of our mobile cocktail bars, including a special VIP bar to ensure none of the attendees were kept waiting. We only used high-quality spirits, such as Belvedere Vodka, El Dorado Rum and Bombay Sapphire gin to make sure our cocktails were worthy of the illustrious guests.

Replay Jeans supplied every member of our team for the evening – which was thirty strong – with brand new Replay clothing that we were all allowed to keep, which was very much appreciated!

Generally, after a longer conversation with your event organiser about your event, you will need to put down a 30% deposit to confirm your booking and provide a home or company address to detail. This will all be sent over via email, along with the terms and conditions outlined. The final balance will be due a week before your class or event, generally once numbers are confirmed.

Once we have sent you the deposit invoice your event has been confirmed, therefore if you wish to cancel your event you must do this by email so we have written proof and you must do this at least 14 days prior to your event date to be eligible for a refund of your deposit. If you have booked your event with less than 7 days lead time, a cancellation must be received within 24 hours of your invoice being sent to avoid liability of payment.

The balance of your event must be paid 7 days before your event, if payment has not been made someone from our accounts team will contact you to make payment over the phone.

No, due to our licence under 18s will not be able to attend your class in any capacity – mocktails or not.

All your really need is an empty space for us to come and set up in, we can come to offices, houses, gardens, tents, rooftops… as long as we have the space and the access we can set up anywhere, you don’t need anything on your side at all.

We’d recommend you allow a space of about a meter and a half depth and a meter and a half width for each bar. That allows enough space for the bars to be set up and for people to stand behind them. The bars are assembled on site and pack down to be fairly compact so there’s no need to really worry about door-width.

We’re happy to work with most spaces but for instance, in an office, it wouldn’t work in a room full of desks. We also try and avoid using spaces with lots of columns or other obstacles that might block people’s view of the instructor. Anything on a slope wouldn’t be ideal either. We are based in London and are happy to come and do a site visit anywhere in the city if you’re unsure whether or not your space would be suitable.

Depending on your group size we will need 1 ½-2 hours before and after your event to set up and break down.