What Tools Are Needed for a Home Bar?
The tools that are needed for a home bar are mostly inexpensive and include a cocktail shaker, measuring jiggers, bar spoons, a citrus press, and a notebook.
You don’t need too many tools for a proper home bar, which will take your cocktail-making skills to the next level. Most of them are inexpensive and are easily found on places like Amazon. You can easily buy all-in-one complete bartending kits, which are convenient, although you tend to get better quality when buying items separately.
There’s plenty of information online as to how to use your new gadgets, and lots of books that will teach you your basic bartending skills. Here, then, are some of the items that should be on your home bar shopping list, or that you should be dropping hints about when birthdays or holidays are looming.
In each case I’ve checked the customer reviews on Amazon and chosen recommendations that balance the top ratings with affordability. Click on the photo to go to the Amazon page and read the reviews yourself.
Cocktail Shaker
This would be your first obvious purchase. Everyone likes using a cocktail shaker, and a good bartender turns his shaking into a show. No more pouring everything into a glass and stirring it with a straw. Some cocktails are meant to be shaken, some stirred.
Jigger
A jigger is a double-sided conical measuring cup made of metal. The larger side of the jigger is normally 2 ounces, and this is the measure of a shot, or a jigger shot. The other side is half of that, 1 ounce, and known as a pony shot. Some come with 1.5 ounce and 0.75 ounce measures, and good ones have several measuring lines inside each cup.
Using a jigger ensures you get the same measure every time, for consistent cocktails. It’s just like cooking. If a dish is a success, you want to be able to repeat it exactly. No more eyeballing it.
Notebook
A notebook is important for the same reason. By all means experiment with your cocktail-making, but write down what you do every time. This will also help to enhance your skills and experience. If, for example, you make a Whiskey Highball one time with rye whiskey, another time with bourbon, you should think about how the results differ, and note down your impressions.
Citrus Press
You’ll need a press to make sure you only put fresh juice into your cocktails. You can get separate ones for limes and for lemons, or dual ones, or you can get fancy and more expensive proper citrus juicers. They do look more impressive, and are probably more efficient, but it’s entirely up to you.
Muddler
Muddling is like the liquid equivalent of using a pestle and mortar for herbs and spices. With a muddler you can crush things like fresh herbs and fruit to extract the maximum flavors possible. There’s a reason cocktails in the best bars taste so good – they’re made using the best and freshest ingredients, prepared in the proper way.
Bar Spoon
A bar spoon has several different uses, and is an essential tool for the home bar. You can use it to take a sip of a cocktail hygienically, to test the taste. You can obviously use it to stir things, if you’re making a drink that needs to be stirred and not shaken. It can also be used as one of your standard measures when adding small amounts of ingredients. You can use it to break ice, and also help to make those impressive-looking layered drinks, by pouring ingredients slowly over the back of the spoon.
Waiter’s Friend Wine Opener
The best wine opener is known as the waiter’s friend, and you should have one. Apart from opening bottles with it, it has a little knife on it that comes in handy for cutting the silver foil over a cork – whether it be a wine or spirit bottle.
Strainer
You’ll sometimes need to strain a cocktail when pouring it into the glass. You therefore need a strainer. The Hawthorne strainer is the one bartenders recommend, although it is a little more expensive.
Sharp Knives
Someone recently gave me a pair of carbon steel knives, and I now won’t use anything else. They are razor-sharp, and a joy to use. This is one area where you might have to splurge a little, but you won’t regret it.
Good Ice
If your tap water doesn’t taste good, don’t use it to make ice cubes. Instead of using your fridge’s built-in ice-maker, use bottled water in ice trays to make your cocktails. And the bigger, the better. One large ice cube in a cocktail not only looks impressive, it keeps the whole drink cooler for longer, because of the larger surface area in contact with the liquid. It also doesn’t dilute the drink as quickly, because smaller ice cubes melt faster.
Some people swear by granite ice, or other non-ice ice cubes, like stainless steel ones. If they work for you, that’s fine, and they do look kind-of cool, but I stick to the one large ice cube made from pure water.
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