How to Set up a Home Bar With the Equipment You Really Need
In addition to basic motor skills and moderate self-control, making cocktails requires some specific tools and a knowledge of why we use these tools the way we do. That’s why I, the bartender , are here to help. This article is broken down into checklists of what you need and what you don’t need, with varying degrees of necessity and uselessness. But before we go shopping, let’s go over a few basic rules of what makes cocktails good and bad, as these rules govern many of the choices on this list.
Rules
- Rule 1. Ice is your enemy. We’ve all seen the Titanic. The minute you scream “ICEBERG” and drop these cubes into the mixing jar, you become a tortured string quartet away from an overly diluted watery grave. Don’t add ice until you’re ready to shake or stir, and drain the ice onto your face as soon as it’s ready. Cocktails, like your recently retired parents, start to die the moment they sit still.
- Rule 2: Ice is your friend. Cocktails were born out of utility. Before the ban, there were fewer strict rules governing the quality of drinking water, which meant that many alcoholic beverages tasted damn bad. But since the goal was still to peek into the esophagus, sugar, bitterness and ice – read: really cold water – became mood medications.
- Rule 3: Your home is not a bar. Bars and restaurants are a hallowed environment. You cannot steal or reproduce a fun conversation with a real rando, you cannot steal or copy a professional-grade juicer, built-in refrigerator, or ice well. We all know people who try to do it anyway – they can be identified by their arsenal of KichenAid gadgets,domestic dip circulators and wicked disregard for the natural order of things. Don’t be one of these people. Just focus on what you have the means to do in the best and easiest way you can do.
Now that we have it sorted out, here’s what.
Things you need
Jigger
Any drinks must be accurately measured. There are some very vaunted cocktail bars that rely on free pouring, but they are like the Bobby Fischers when they look at a glass and wonder how much it contains. Unless you are an outstanding expert at guessing glass, you will need a jigger. Despite being disgusting and not cool at all, it is the best option for your home. The thing about using vibrators is that to get truly accurate and consistent measurements, you need to be able to fill all the way to the top. You cannot do this because your hands are shaking. I know you think you can; but you can’t. However, this jigger is larger than you will ever need for a single serving of a cocktail ingredient, and so you never have to fill it to the top – just to small stripes.
Small can and big can
Use them, you guessed it, to shake cocktails! You can use a pint for the little end of a Boston shaker situation, but you shouldn’t. When you shake a cocktail, you do three things: cool, dilute, and create tiny bubbles. You can shake it like a salt shaker and your drink will cool, dilute and taste exactly as intended, but to get the serious frothy head you see when ordering a daiquiri at a real cocktail bar, you need to shake it out. this eternally loving bejesus. This makes shaking a pint mug difficult because pint glasses are heavy. Plus, if the tin slips out of your sweaty palms and flies straight in someone’s face (which actually happened to me), the metal shaker won’t fly into a million pieces.
Pint Glass
However, you will still need a pint. This is what you will use to stir drinks like manhattans and martinis (which are always stirred because they do not contain citrus or other opaque ingredients that need to be aerated and / or otherwise frothy). There is no discernible difference in the product you get when mixing in a pint versus a fancy pants mixing glass, and for the cost of one fancy pants mixing glass that will always shatter, you can buy pretty much everything else on it. list.
Filters
If you’re only mixing cocktails, you only need a Hawthorne strainer. Generally speaking, the ice should not break with stirring until small pieces start to accumulate in the drink. But, being an ambitious drinker, you probably want to shake up too, and when you really shake, you will do it very hard, as we said. This will create ice chunks that will need to be kneaded with one of these helpers unless you chew cocktails and brush your teeth with the Sensodyne brush for the rest of your life.
Bar Spoon or Chopstick
This is for mixing drinks, which is a damn complete thing that we’ll talk about later. I interviewed bar managers in Michelin-starred restaurants who didn’t know how to stir a cocktail. This is a skill that takes a lot of practice and you should be very proud of yourself if you can master it. That being said, if you want to prepare a drink without meditation, just turn the spoon over and use the handle. As a last resort, a chopstick is perfect.
Big Cube Tray
Yes, your refrigerator makes ice, but that ice sucks. Remember the rules? The ice that your refrigerator produces is more torn and chipped than the front bumper of my Corolla, and therefore dissolves faster in both your mixing bowl and your glass. Enter the Brutalist Big Cube . Like Soviet architecture, it is solid, robust and utilitarian. Make Old Fashioned in your glass, stick into it and stir a little. Break three of these into small pieces to stir the mug of Manhattan. Shake the sour with one to get extra sour foam to coat your mustache.
Elbow Juicer
Squeezing lime by hand is a really inefficient way of juicing, but a great way to make your next handshake sticky and rough.
Y-Peeler and P aring knife
Functional side dishes like curls go a long way towards creating the finished product of your drink, which is why I’m a huge fan. Use a Y-peeler to cut a thin strip of citrus peel and squeeze the peel towards you to release these aromatic oils. From there, you can toss it into your drink, throw it in the trash, or fold it into a decorative paper crane. You will need a fruit and vegetable knife, but be careful: once you finally figure out exactly how much lime juice to add to a perfectly balanced daiquiri, the last thing you need to do is squeeze each other’s ding-dong. lime wedge in it. This is why I prefer decorating with wheels.
Masking tape and tag
Presumably you already have these things in your home; but they appear here as an excuse to talk about the dating of perishable foodstuffs. Vermouth, like most new relationships, deteriorates after a month, so mark it when you open it and throw it away when its time is up.
Things You Don’t Need, But Beautiful
Take a few of them if you want to pamper yourself.
Filling spouts
As we mentioned, Mr. Shaky Hands, it’s a good thing you’re not a surgeon. Pouring a quarter ounce of something straight from the bottle is difficult, expensive, and invariably frustrating. The pouring spouts help reduce leakage and even have a small air hole that you can close with your thumb to slow the process even further.
Spill mat
Do you know rubber mats in front of service stations? These are called spill mats, and apart from advertisements for brands that most bartenders hate, they also hold back any drops and drops of booze that happen during service. They are less necessary at home because you theoretically make fewer cocktails, but they will still keep your countertop dry and minimize clutter.
Things you don’t need
You can skip this.
- Fancy mixing glass: see above. Save $ 70 on what you really need, like a trendy tiger t-shirt on it.
- Fancy Bar Spoon: There are many fancy bar spoons. There are spoons to use as travelers (practical!), Trident-tipped spoons to make you feel like Poseidon (sea!), And spoons covered in real gold (WHY). The one above costs $ 5 and works great.
- Moscow Mule Cups: Ametal cup won’t make your drink that much better.
- Muddler: You have a wooden spoon, don’t you?
- Julep Filters: They do the same thing as other filters you already have.
- Japanese jiggers: they look pretty but are often misused even in professional bars. The slim silhouette theoretically allows for more accurate measurement, but also means that whatever you shake will fly out without delay if you’re not very careful. They are also designed to be used top-down, which is about as convenient as signing up for Tidal.
- Cherries: Cherries are not a functional garnish; they are candy. Go buy some sweets, it’s delicious!
That’s it for the hardware. Now, all you need is initially excellent taste, professional knowledge of spirits, fortified wines and liqueurs, and monastic discipline for the healthy development and improvement of a hobby that is also a life-threatening addiction.
Just kidding! Preparing drinks at home is a safe and cheap way to end the night, as well as a way to impress anyone. As you learn more about the products that are sold behind bars, you will feel more comfortable with them, and a better understanding of the trade we all engage in will make you a more informed and conscientious shopper and will be much cooler overall. To your health!