Some Bar Basics

There are a LOT of bar tools out there. Everyone will tell you what you need to have. Well now I'm here to tell you what I actually use and give a few product recommendations. Of course all of this depends on if you make cocktails often enough to make these tools worth it. I guess if you're trying to do something and think, 'bah! why is this so hard?!' there is probably a tool to help make it easier and faster.

Of course we have the most important here. After all, without a wine and/or beer opener you can't even get into the drink! I like a wine opener with a little knife which helps in removing the foil before removing the cork. There are a lot of fancy wine openers out there, but unless you are physically unable to open wine with a lever opener there isn't a need for anything besides this. Go with versatile and classic. This was a gift so I'm unable to link you... but this one looks pretty good and it comes in colors!

I am totally in love with this OXO Angled Measuring Jigger. I always see the double sided jigger in bar sets, but this one is much less messy. A shot is 1.5 ounces, but this goes up to 2 ounces which is often called for in drink making. The other awesome thing is that it goes down to 1/4 of an ounce (kind hard to see here). So you can easily and precisely measure for drinks.

I have a couple wine stoppers (and there are a lot of good ones out there) but the real gem here is the champagne stopper. I've had this stopper for 5 and a half years. I bought it for $7.00 and now it's even cheaper. I think sometimes champagne gets ignored as an all the time drink partly because once you open it you can't keep it bubbly, so there is pressure to finish it. Well! No longer. This stopper will keep it bubbly! This works more by number of times you open it- verses days. Say you open and have one glass then stopper and refrigerate. Then don't open it for a week, it will still be good one week later. Now you can incorporate champagne in cocktails without worrying about wasting it.

A good shaker seems hard to find. I have had two shakers before this one. They were fair, some leakage, not the best strainers etc. I searched for a while before settling on this Arctic Chill Cocktail Shaker Set. At first when it arrived I had the devil of a time to get the top off. Actually I thought I'd have to return it! But eventually got it off and have never had a sticking problem after. It stays sealed very well and the large size is fantastic if you are making one cocktail or a couple at the same time.

A hand held citrus juicer makes cocktails like margaritas, side cars -or anything that utilizes citrus fruit as more than just a garnish- so much faster and easier. This EcoJeannie Professional Jumbo is my second juicer (first I had a Norpro Stainless Steel Citrus Juice Press, the pin fell out constantly and it was pretty much unusable) and I've put it to pretty constant work. I haven't had it long, but it's proven it's worth for sure.

These stainless steel cocktail picks are more towards the fun side than necessary. They make a martini look very nice and are great for corralling multiple olives!

These two items are lesser used but come in handy. I got this bar spoon a while ago but it doesn't seem to be available anymore. No matter, there are way prettier ones out there anyway! I only use this when mixing up a pitcher of cocktails. It took me a while to find a muddler since I wanted something narrow, wooden, not lacquered and with a flat bottom. This Orb Wooden Muddler fits all these bills. A good muddler is really nice to have, but there aren't a ton of cocktails (that we make at home) that I need it for. If you love cocktails with herbs you should probably pick up a good muddler. 

This tool gets a big fat OVERRATED stamp. This is a channel knife. It's recommended for making perfect citrus twists. I could not get it to work. Maybe it's just me, but it had a really hard time biting into the citrus peel and I ended up with a really fragile, narrow peel with too much bitter pith. Skip this one for the bar. I have found other uses for this tool around the kitchen, carrot flowers are way more fun to eat than disks, but over all it's my one bar flop.