Cocktail & Barware (Drinkware & Bar)

Half tools, half glass: that is the inventory of a home bar. The tools are a shaker, a jigger, which means a small two sided measuring cup marked in fractions of an ounce, a strainer and a long bar spoon. The glasses are the rocks or old fashioned glass, short with a thick heavy base, and the stemmed shallow coupe, plus the highball it borrows from the everyday shelf.

Measurement and dilution are why the tools exist at all. A cocktail is a recipe in ounces, which the jigger enforces. Shaking with ice does two jobs at once, chilling the drink hard and melting roughly a quarter of its volume in water, dilution that the recipe expects rather than suffers. The rocks glass carries its thick base so you can muddle, crushing sugar, citrus or herbs right in the glass, without punching through. The coupe is stemmed for the opposite service: drinks strained and served with no ice, where a hand on the bowl would warm them.

Cousins from the neighboring shelves cover more of this than buyers expect. An everyday highball is a bar highball, full stop. The coupe gets used for sparkling wine, though the wine glasses one page over hold aroma better, and a sturdy tumbler muddles almost as well as a purpose bought rocks glass. What no other shelf supplies is the measuring and straining hardware.

A starter setup for a cocktail-curious household is one shaker, one jigger, one strainer, four rocks glasses and four coupes, which covers the large majority of classic recipes. Mocktail makers use identical gear. The 20 piece boxed kits mostly pad the count with duplicate tools and novelty pourers, and non drinkers who entertain twice a year can borrow everything a kit offers from the kitchen drawer.

Between shaker styles, a Boston shaker, two tins sealed by a tap, pours faster and cleans easier, while the cobbler style with its built in strainer cap is friendlier at first and famously sticks shut when cold metal contracts. Rinse the shaker immediately after use, since dried citrus and sugar weld it closed, and wash coupes by hand for the same stem reasons as wine glasses.