Whoever is standing at the gun already has the fridge, the ice, the citrus and the soda. What is missing is the flavour, and it fits on the shelf in one small bottle rather than a case of anything. Four moves turn that bottle into everything a glass asks of it: a drop straight in, a syrup for the pump, a charged cream floated on a fresh soda, and a long drink.
- For a bar or a cafe
- Takes a shift's prep, one syrup batch and one charged cream, then drinks in under a minute
- You need a soda gun or a fridge of cans, the drops, a 500 ml whipper and chargers, a 500 ml bottle for the syrup batch, citrus, ice
What you need
- The drops, in whichever flavours the shelf wants
- Pouring cream, at least 35 per cent fat
- Sugar
- A lemon or two
- Whatever the gun already pours
How to make it
- The drop in the glass. Gun the cola or the lemonade over ice, add the drop, and stir: cherry cola, cream soda, whatever the bottle on the shelf says. The bottle's own starting point is one drop per 150 ml, which puts a 330 ml can or glass at two and a 425 ml schooner at three. Read both as where to start, not where to stop: taste it, then decide about a second. How to use the drops has the rest of it.
- The syrup for the pump. A rich syrup, 66.7 Brix, is five minutes of work and no stove: 355 g of sugar shaken clear in 170 ml of warm water, left to cool, and 5 ml of flavour stirred through, which fills a 400 ml bottle. A pump then pours it exactly like any other syrup, because that is what it now is. How to make a flavoured syrup has both syrups, and the syrup calculator scales them.
- The cream for the dirty soda. Build the charged finish of Flavoured Cream: 300 ml cream, the syrup, one charger, three days in the fridge rather than the few minutes a whisk or a jar gives you. Floated on a freshly poured soda over ice, cola, ginger beer or whatever the gun has, that is the whole of a dirty soda. How to make dirty soda creams and foams has the method; How to make a dirty soda has the move.
- The long drink. Real citrus, a shrub, or a spoon of tonic against the same syrup, and the drink already stands on its own, the way acid and sugar were always going to before anything else got added.
Why it works
A bar is the natural home for all four of these moves because none of them ask it to learn something new. A syrup is bar prep it already runs for every other bottle behind the gun. A charged cream is the same whipper a bar already reaches for wherever a drink needs to hold its finish for more than a few minutes. Citrus, soda and ice are already stocked by the case. The one new thing on the shelf is the drop itself, standing in for a syrup, a cream, or a flavour that would otherwise have had to arrive as three separate ingredients.
Make it yours
- The Basedrop Builder works out any of these for a given glass: the base, the flavour, the top, and the drops or the syrup.
- Bar Staff, the room on the Discord for anyone who pours drinks for a living, is where the harder questions about a long shift get answered.
- Buying for a bar or a cafe? Get in touch about wholesale.
Notes
A syrup batch keeps the way its own page says: about 2 weeks refrigerated for simple syrup and 4 for rich, working ceilings the house holds to rather than verified food safety claims.
A charged cream keeps the way How to charge a cream says too: three days, refrigerated at 4 degrees C or below, the same kind of working ceiling rather than a tested claim.
A 120 ml bottle covers twenty-four batches at 5 ml a batch, each about 400 ml of syrup. Straight into the glass, take the line on the bottle as the count instead.
Allergens and warnings. Contains: milk, from the cream. The bottle is the authority on what is in the concentrate, not this page.