 Welcome back to Drinks Made Easy because cocktails don't have to be difficult. Today we're looking at a comparison between the stirred and the shaken Manhattan. Now a lot of people have some strong opinions on this but I don't think most people ever tried them side by side especially when using a large format ice cube for the shaken variety. Now I have my own opinions. We're gonna do them side by side. At the end, Mike is gonna do a taste comparison. So stick around and let us know what you think. Without any further ado, let's make some cocktails. To build the Manhattan, you'll start with two dashes of Angostura bitters. Next you'll add one ounce of sweet vermouth, which I will do to each, and two ounces of rye. Now here on my right, basically just giving you a quick stir. If you built this in just a regular double rocks or a bucket glass, you would have a Manhattan on the rocks, which is quite popular and one of my preferred ways. But that's not what we're comparing today. So, put our Manhattan ingredients into a shaker tin with one large format cube and we're gonna give this a good shake. Now we're gonna pour our two different styles of making Manhattan's into our martini glasses and our resident expert tester Mike is gonna give his opinion on which he prefers. Do you want your garnish, Mike? Garnish with a Luxardo cherry. Do you want me to let you know or do you want to just try? Yeah, let's do a little taste test, a blind taste test. I think I know what this one is. I would take that one. To me, I can taste more of the vermouth and the whiskiness because there's less water. I think the biggest difference being, this is actually a little bit warmer also, which is gonna lead to more flavor. That one's definitely colder for sure. This one's colder. And that one has more dilution. Correct. The biggest difference, absolutely though, was the fact that I used a large format cube when I shook this. If I'd used the same size ice and shook it for the same amount of time, this would be the one that would be overly diluted by comparison. I still like that one. I don't know why. Maybe it's because there's less water and more of the mouth and stuff is playing together with it. Yep. That's it. I like that one. Yep. Well, there you go. I mean, at the end of the day, it's food. So the different variations on this of temperature and dilution are gonna change up your flavor of the Manhattan. We used 100 proof rye in this. And it's just to go to show that there isn't really just one right way to make a cocktail. Again, I think the reason why people poo poo shake in Manhattan so much is because in the past, you would be using smaller ice and you'd have really heavy dilution. That being said, if you have rapid dilution from using that smaller ice, you're getting kind of the same result as if you had had your Manhattan on the rocks and just let it sit there for a while and dilute down. So if that's your preferred way, getting it shaken with that dilution just gets into your flavor preference more quickly. My personal opinion is drink it the way that you like to drink it. And if people say there's only one way to make something, they either don't know what they're talking about or they're in sh**hole. You said the airway. Thanks so much for watching. If you have any comments, questions or conundrums about what we have done today, go ahead and leave them in the comments below and we will do our best to respond kindly as long as the comments are kind. Cheers.