A Holiday Gift Guide For Home Bartenders

What to get for the aspiring home bartender(s) in your life.

Happy holidays, all. 

If you’re in search of a gift for the home bartender in your life, or if perhaps you are the home bartender in your life, you’ve come to the right newsletter. 

Home bartenders and drink makers need bottles of booze to mix. But they also need tools and implements — shakers, strainers, stirrers, spoons — as well as glassware, garnishes, ice molds, and so on and so forth. Making cocktails at home doesn’t have to be an elaborate, gizmo-intensive affair. But part of what makes the hobby enjoyable is all the kit. You can drink a Martini out of a coffee mug if you want. But doesn’t it feel better when served in an elegant, thin-stemmed Martini glass?

Bartenders also need reading material — books with recipes, histories, and techniques to study. My own collection of cocktail books has grown considerably this year, and at the end of the list, I recommend a handful of new cocktail books that made a particular impression on me.

If you are so inclined, you can also give the gift of this very newsletter.

This newsletter is an even better value than ever, since recipients not only get new editions, but access to two full years of archives, going all the way back to its humble beginnings. It makes a great gift!

But it’s nice to have things you can wrap and unwrap too — and that brings us to our first category…

Shaking, Stirring, Straining, Measuring, Peeling, Making

Metal shaker tins:

I know there are people who are partial to three-piece shaker sets with built-in strainers, and they do indeed look nice. But they also have a tendency to freeze shut. That’s why I always use a pair of weighted metal tins for shaking cocktails. My favorite shakers are the Koriko shakers from Cocktail Kingdom. I also have a set from A Bar Above that I quite like.

Hawthorne strainer:

If you’re going to shake cocktails with a pair of tins, you’ll need a Hawthorne strainer with a spring to strain your drinks. You really can’t go wrong with OXO’s inexpensive, incredibly durable cocktail strainer. The only complaint I’ve ever heard about these strainers is that the spring isn’t tight enough. But if you buy two, you can remove the spring from one and then place it on the other for a tighter double spring. If you want something with a handle, I recommend this heavy-duty strainer from Barfly.

Conical strainer:

Sometimes you need to double-strain a cocktail to remove fine particles. When a double-strain is required, you’ll need a handheld fine-strainer like this one to help ensure a smooth and consistently textured drink.

Cocktail jigger:

Making cocktails requires a lot of small measurements, which means using a jigger. Once again, OXO makes my favorite model, with a 1 1/2 ounce large side and a 1 ounce small side that’s great for making complex split-base drinks. If you want a more traditional 2 ounce/1 ounce, try this Japanese-style jigger from Piña Barware. 

Stirring vessel:

Sure, you can always stir your cocktails in your shaking tin or in a pint glass. But there’s something incredibly satisfying about a dedicated stirring vessel. Over the last year, I’ve become quite fond of my metal Mixtin stirring vessel, especially for drinks like Martinis where achieving the coldest possible temperature is important. But my go-to for most stirred drinks remains my HiWare 24-ounce cocktail mixing glass.

Cocktail spoon:

Yes, you really need a good cocktail spoon. Those long, spindly cocktail spoons bartenders aren’t just for show: They really do make it much easier to properly stir a cocktail, allowing for a smooth motion that circulates the ice without bashing it about. I have far too many cocktail spoons, but my favorite is this 18” spoon from Mixologists.

Fruit & vegetable peeler:

You can cut a swath of orange peel for garnish with a small paring knife, but it’s much easier to use a vegetable peeler to cut strips of citrus for cocktail garnishes. Some people Y shaped peelers because they can cut wider swaths, but I tend to reach for an ordinary veggie peeler. 

Bar mats:

Do you need bar mats to make good cocktails? No. Do bar mats create a stable, easy-to-clean surface that helps prevent spills and makes it easier to manage messes? Yes. Bar mats also define your working area, and are particularly helpful when making drinks for larger groups, when efficiency is a priority. I am especially fond of my stripe-lined bar mat from Highball & Chaser, but I have several basic black bar mats as well.

Glass dasher bottles:

Yes, most bottles of bitters come with a built-in dasher or dropper. But glass bitters dashers look nicer and can help produce more consistent dashes across different styles of bitters.

Cocktail smoking kit:

Smoked cocktails are silly. They are also fun, and always a hit with guests. There are a lot of kits and systems out there at various price points. I own this one from Taigin, which is designed for smoking a single drink at a time.

Glassware & Garnishes

Double rocks glasses:

If you only own one set of cocktail glasses, it should probably be a double rocks glass of about 13-14 ounces with a heavy base, like this set from Libbey. This sort of glass is great for crushed ice drinks like the Mai Tai, sours on the rocks, and larger stirred drinks served over ice, like the Negroni. A glass like this wouldn’t be my first choice for a Manhattan or a Martini, but they’ll work in a pinch.

Coupe glasses:

For a Manhattan, a Martini, a classic Daiquiri, or any similar drink served up, you can’t go wrong with small coupe glasses, like these from Luminarc. For larger sours, especially those with egg whites, I am quite fond of Libbey’s Capone coupes.

Nick & Nora glasses:

A Nick & Nora glass isn’t strictly necessary for any cocktail, but it isn’t just an affectation either. The smaller opening on the bowl means you’re less likely to accidentally spill your Manhattan if you hold the glass at an angle.

Martini glasses:

As I have come to love Martinis, I have also come to love Martini glasses — those vaguely silly V-shaped vessels that serve essentially no practical purpose except to signal that yes, you are in fact drinking a Martini. I strongly prefer smaller glasses, like these delicate 4.5 ounce glasses from Riedel. No one needs a 13-ounce Martini.

Old Fashioned glasses:

You can always serve your Old Fashioned and Sazerac-style drinks in double rocks glasses, but for this class of cocktails, I prefer something a little bit more compact, like this set of 11-ounce glasses from Libbey.

Tiki mugs:

Why wouldn’t you want to drink a Three Dots and a Dash out of a ceramic parrot? Or a Fog Cutter out of a mug shaped like Baby Yoda?

Metal cocktail picks:

When I was a kid, my grandmother always kept a collection of plastic cocktail swords, which I of course used to stage various action-figure battles. You can still buy plastic cocktail swords, and you could probably still stage some great action figure battles with them, if you’re into that sort of thing. But adults are probably going to get more mileage out a nice, sleek set of metal cocktail picks.

Swing-top bottles:

If you are someone who makes cocktail experiments or batches — infusions, eggnogs, freezer bottle variations — you will need bottles to store them in. I am quite fond of basic swing-top bottles, which come in a range of sizes.

Improve Your Ice 

Small ice mold:

Look, you can probably make decent cocktails with the little moon-shaped ice chunks from your refrigerator. But whether shaking or stirring, it’s much, much easier to properly chill and dilute your cocktails with 1” to 1.25” cubes made in a silicon mold. These small cubes are also great for serving drinks, especially if you’re not using large ice molds. I strongly prefer small ice molds that do not have angled/sculpted bottoms. If you’re only going to purchase one ice mold, make it this one from Tovolo.

Large ice mold:

Cocktail science types can debate all day about whether large cubes of two inches or so actually melt more slowly or keep a drink colder for longer, but the reality is an Old Fashioned served over a large cube of ice just looks much, much cooler — pun intended? — than one served over smaller cubes or moon-shaped bits. Extra-large 2.25” cubes don’t fit into all glasses, but work great for bigger sours served on the rocks in double rocks glasses.

Clear ice mold:

You know what looks even cooler than large ice? Clear ice. And for clear ice, you need a clear ice mold system. These systems use directional freezing to push the air that makes ice cloudy into a bottom layer of what amounts to a very large block of ice. A mold is then used to pull off the clear top layer and separate it into individual cubes. Clear ice mold systems generally take 20-40 hours to produce a round of ice, and they can be a bit tricky. But they’re worth it for the window-clear ice they produce. ClearlyFrozen makes a good, relatively affordable system, although some of the components do have a tendency to crack or tear after many uses. Those with the urge to splurge should consider the Ghost Ice mold system. It’s considerably more expensive, takes up more freezer space, and takes longer to produce a round of cubes than the ClearlyFrozen system — typically about 35-40 hours in my deep freezer — but it really does make the best blocks of clear ice I’ve ever encountered in a home environment.

Recipes & Reading 

Raising the Bar — A Bottle by Bottle Guide to Making Masterful Cocktails at Home, by Jacob Grier and Brett Adams

One of the co-authors of this book, Jacob Grier, is an old friend, so take this recommendation with an appropriate grain of salt. But this is truly and genuinely the single best cocktail book for enthusiast-beginners I have ever read.

The idea is devilishly simple: Grier and Adams start with a single bottle — bourbon — and teach you to make drinks with that bottle and some basic home ingredients. They then add another bottle — vermouth — and teach you to make drinks with just bourbon, vermouth, and ingredients you probably have around your house. From there, they move on to gin, orange liqueur, tequila, Bénédictine, Chartreuse, absinthe, and, yes, eventually, some of my favorite weird bottles, Cynar and Fernet. It’s structured a progression toward a home bar of about 25 bottles, depending on how you treat the vermouth and sherry sections. There are over 200 recipes, and while I obviously haven’t made all of them, from my sample, they are universally excellent. This is my favorite cocktail book of the year.

Cure: New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ‘Em, by Neal Bodenheimer and Emily Timberlake

A kind of spiritual successor to Stanley Arthur’s Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ‘Em, this is a book of weird and wonderful cocktails. This is the north star for fans of Peychaud’s bitters, and a fascinating insight into one of the great New Orleans bars.

The Bartender’s Manifesto: How to Think, Drink, and Create Cocktails Like a Pro, by Toby Maloney and Emma Janzen

Another excellent new book from one of the country’s best bar-wizards, Toby Maloney of The Violet Hour in Chicago. This book is somewhat more focused on core cocktail-making techniques than Cure, but it’s still very much a recipe book, built around the drinks that made The Violet Hour one of the most well-known and highly regarded cocktail bars in the nation.

Modern Classic Cocktails: 60+ Stories and Recipes from the New Golden Age in Drinks, by Robert Simonson.

A smartly curated collection of modern drinks that stand out from the pack that doubles as a survey and summary of the fruits of the cocktail renaissance. Simonson also has a cocktail Substack!

Cocktail books from the archives:

In addition to the above books, all of which came out this year, I also continue to strongly recommend…

• Death & Co.’s Cocktail Codex: It’s somewhat advanced, but it’s probably the single best book for thinking about cocktail structure.

• Spirited: Cocktails from Around the World, by Adrienne Stillman: A fantastic pure recipe book.

• Smugger’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki, by Martin Cate: If you only own one own book about tiki drinks, this should be it.

• The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, by David Wondrich and Noah Rothbaum: A massive, incredible compendium of booze history and detail. You’ll learn something from every entry.

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