How to Approach Mixed Drinks in Your Draft System
For self-serve bars that want to pour more than beer from their taps, mixed drinks and other fruit-infused booze can be a struggle. But for bars using the iPourIt, custom draft systems can be equipped with tools that ensure mixed drinks go with the flow.
Cocktails on tap is not necessarily a new concept, although it can be controversial. On the one hand, pre-batched booze can take away that customer-bartender connection, turning the whole shake-and-stir show into a draft pour. On the other hand, we happen to love draft pours, even if that means mixed drinks or sangria (and so do all these bars pouring cocktails on tap across the country). Why? Because pre-batching cocktails means multiple drinks served at a time, more time for servers to engage with customers, and more customers getting delicious drinks, self-dispense style. As an added bonus, your thirsty slurpers can sample cocktails before committing—and you get paid for every sip.
The real problem with draft dispensed mixed beverages like a mojito or sangria is that pulp, sediment and separation are bad for flow. If mixed cocktails are not agitated (think of the mixologist rigorously shaking a cocktail mixer over her head), they become separated, leaving a solution that’s half juice, half liquor (yuck). In self-serve cocktail applications, it’s important to use non-pulp mixtures. Another great tool iPourit recommends as a solution for separation: SpinSticks.
The SpinStick Beverage Motor Base and Mixer create a continuous blending mechanism to make sure mixed beverages keep moving. This super cool tool is FDA-compliant, quiet-operating, and your new best friend if faster service, higher profits and more consistent mixed drinks are what you’re hoping to get out of your self-serve beverage wall.
By using “vortex technology” (basically, a badass way of saying a mass of whirling fluid), the SpinStick stirrer acts as a magnet, gently circulating whatever is in the beverage tank to keep cocktails continuously blending. To set it up, all you have to do is mix your cocktail with non-pulp additive, drop the SpinStick stirrer into the filled beverage tank, place the tank on top of the motor base, and within minutes, that sangria is swirling.
So, if you’re considering offering mixed beverages on your draft system, consider the SpinStick system—it’ll save you time, headaches and profits.
