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A note from the editor: Raising the bar at home

For our cover story this week, we got some of the country’s better-known mixologists and bartenders to provide tips and tricks to make cocktails at home

From tossing watermelon chunks in the blender with gin, the home bartender has moved on to experimenting with unusually flavoured mixers, infusions and cocktail kits.
From tossing watermelon chunks in the blender with gin, the home bartender has moved on to experimenting with unusually flavoured mixers, infusions and cocktail kits. (iStock)

The pandemic, for those who seemed to have boundless time and enthusiasm, began with posting photographs of delicately iced cupcakes and gooey banana bread; many of them have now shifted to posts about mental health and managing anxiety. When it comes to drinking at home though, things seem to have gone the other way. From tossing watermelon chunks in the blender with gin, the home bartender has moved on to experimenting with unusually flavoured mixers, infusions and cocktail kits.

For our cover story this week, we got some of the country’s better-known mixologists and bartenders to provide tips and tricks. From basics like which YouTube channels to follow and how to make perfect ice in your fridge, to picking the right glasses and music and explaining how to blend easy syrups for that extra flair, each of them offers pointers to help you improve your cocktail mixing at home. And if it’s too much effort to measure, mix, shake and pour, you could order cocktail pre-mixes that have been launched by a slew of small companies, many run by bartenders who have been forced by the pandemic to take a hiatus from nightly mixing.

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Everything has come home during the pandemic, including, of course, school. As a class XII student writes for Lounge, students have taken to apps, focus rooms and online study circles to recreate the feeling of the classroom—and have discovered new productivity aids. What has really taken the student world by storm is the Pomodoro method of splitting tasks into smaller, manageable ones—but they practise it as a community, following YouTube videos and working alone together. These videos seem quite relaxing, too, if you need a calming soundtrack of office-like white noise in the background. If you find it hard to focus on work at home, there might be something to learn from the methods of these 17-year-olds.

But it’s the weekend, and it’s time for a break from work—so we have suggestions for books to buy, shows and films to watch, virtual exhibitions to check out, and teas to brew (or cocktails to mix) while you relax.

Write to the Lounge editor shalini.umachandran@htlive.com Twitter @shalinimb

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