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Measure It Out
Cocktail Kingdom Japanese-Style Jigger
Shake It Up
Piña Barware Boston Shaker Tin Set
Stir It Around
Mixing Glass
A Good Strainer
Cocktail Kingdom Strainer
Nothing draws the attention of a party like a bartender, swinging open the doors of a bar cabinet and taking their place among the glistening bottles of brown and clear liquors, colorful spirits with foreign names, and sparkling cut glassware. Beer is a fine drink, as is wine, but they don’t match the spectacle of mixing a cocktail.
I’ve had more bad cocktails in my life than I care to remember, and it often comes down to the maker splashing in too much liquor or not straining their solid ingredients. You need a measure of knowledge, a splash of experience, and the right tools, which we’ve collected below. As we head into the holiday gathering season, the right cocktail tools and some basic bartending skills can make you popular with friends and family.
Be sure to check out our other buying guides and gift guides, like our Boozy Gift Ideas and Gifts for Coffee Lovers roundups.
Updated October 2023: We’ve added new books, glassware, a knife, ice crushers, and mixers.
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Photograph: Cocktail Kingdom
Measure It Out
Cocktail Kingdom Japanese-Style Jigger
Spirits are measured in small amounts when making a cocktail, and you have to be exact with your measurements when you’re crafting a drink. You’ll need a jigger—what you might call a tiny cocktail measuring cup. When you think of a jigger, you probably think of an hourglass-shaped, tall, slim Japanese-style jigger. It’s more versatile because it has multiple sizes, and the hourglass shape is easier to hold and pour.
Most drinks call for a standard 1.5-ounce shot, so you’ll probably want to start out with a standard 1- and 1.5-ounce jigger. Jiggers do come in smaller or larger sizes if you’re making exotic or batch cocktails, but don’t worry—even your standard size has notations on the inside if you want to add just 0.5 or 0.75 ounce of something.
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Photograph: Amazon
Shake It Up
Piña Barware Boston Shaker Tin Set
Some cocktails should be shaken, not stirred. A good rule of thumb is that whenever a cocktail includes a mixer—like citrus or egg white—you need to shake it to mix the alcoholic and non-alcoholic ingredients thoroughly, dilute it, and chill it quickly.
A Cobbler shaker is the classic three-in-one option, and it’s easy to use, as it has a built-in strainer. But professional bartenders prefer a simpler Boston shaker, which is comprised of two mismatched tins. It holds more ingredients and doesn’t get jammed closed as easily when the cold contracts the metal parts. They’re also easier to clean. You will, however, need a separate strainer.
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Photograph: Cocktail Kingdom
Stir It Around
Mixing Glass
Your second rule of thumb is that drinks that are all liquor need to be stirred. Steel conducts heat more easily than glass, so ice melts faster and dilutes your drink. These include most classic, spirit-forward cocktails like Manhattans and, yes, martinis. You should use a mixing glass instead.
It’s really easy to break a cheap, thin mixing glass, usually when the person wielding the spoon gets too carried away. Buy something well built, like this one from Cocktail Kingdom, to keep the heat of your hands from melting your ice and stop your Negroni from sloshing all over your bar top. Don’t forget a bar spoon for $13 to make mixing easier, since regular spoons are too short.
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Photograph: Amazon
A Good Strainer
Cocktail Kingdom Strainer
Whether you’re using your Boston shaker or your mixing glass, you’re going to need a way to keep the mixing ice and other ingredient debris from falling into the serving glass when you’re dumping your finished drink. There are a two types of strainer you need among your cocktail tool kit:
A Hawthorne-style strainer uses a spring to fit more tightly inside the rim of the shaker tin or mixing glass compared to other strainers. If you only get one strainer, buy a Hawthorne. It’s the most often used of the bunch. The Cocktail Kingdom model I’ve used for years has held up without its spring losing any of its ability to hold snug against mixing glass rims.
A mesh strainer is sometimes used as a last step to catch tiny bits of ingredients used in some cocktails, such as drinks using muddled herbs. A mesh strainer such as the Cocktail Kingdom Coco for $10 is typically used in addition to another strainer, not as a substitute.
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Photograph: Cocktail Kingdom
Juicer
Cocktail Kingdom Queen Beehive Juicer
Unless you’re opening your own drive-through daiquiri shack, keep it simple and use a hand juicer, instead of springing for something with a motor. Make sure you get one large enough to squeeze not just lemons and limes, but oranges and grapefruits, too—you’ll regret not being able to make a fresh-squeezed Paloma or Brown Derby at Sunday brunch. (If you are opening a DIY drive-through daiquiri shack, please send us an invite.) Just don’t put it in your dishwasher. Speaking from experience, it’ll take all the finish off.
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Photograph: Cocktail Kingdom
Muddler
Cocktail Kingdom Natural Wood Muddler
Muddling is a technique used to crush herbs and fruit in the bottom of a glass to release certain oils and flavors. There’s some debate over whether you should be muddling mint for your mojitos, but a mint julep on Derby Day wouldn’t be the same without it. Muddlers come in a lot of different materials, but aim for an unvarnished natural wood or plastic muddler. A varnished muddler will chip over time and flake into your drink. Natural wood muddlers also stain. If you’re mixing a drink with fruit, pick up a channel knife for $24 to add a fun garnish with the zest on top.
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Photograph: Amazon
A Knife
Kiwi Brand Chef’s Knife
Inevitably you’ll end up slicing and dicing the oranges, limes, lemons, cucumbers, and grapefruits used in so many cocktails, and you’ll want a proper knife that can slice through medium-size fruit. The Kiwi has a thin blade, but for the money it can’t be beat. It’s why senior product reviewer Scott Gilbertson recommends it in his guide to the Best Kitchen Knives.
From time to time you’ll need to sharpen the knife. A dull blade is dangerous to use. Scott recommends the Presto EverSharp Electric Knife Sharpener for $40.
Avoid plastic and bamboo cutting boards. They’ll both dull your knives terribly. Hardwood, such as maple, is kindest to your blades. This John Boos 16×10-inch Maple Cutting Board for $49 is about as small as you’d want for a cocktail bar cutting board. If you have a larger one in the kitchen already, by all means use it, but much larger and it won’t fit on your bar cart. Much smaller and you won’t have room to cut up fruit and garnishes.
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Photograph: Cocktail Kingdom
Your Basic Drinkware
Cocktail Kingdom Cocktail Glasses
If you’re starting out, you need three basic glasses. The volume can differ from glass to glass, but you don’t need 10 ounces unless you plan on only drinking doubles (in which case, good for you!).
Rocks glasses are short, sturdy glass tumblers that hold about 6 to 8 ounces of liquid. They’re for neat pours or classic cocktails served over ice—most famously, the Old Fashioned.
Coupe glasses are beautiful, stemmed glasses with a shallow bowl that hold 4 to 6 ounces. These are drinks served “up”—chilled, without ice.
Collins glasses are tall, slim tumblers for highballs, like, well, a Tom Collins! They’re also for drinks served over crushed ice.
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Photograph: Amazon
More Fun Glassware
Secondary Cocktail Glasses
Cocktail and liquor glasses are beautiful to look at and to hold. Once you have a few standard glasses, you can start rounding out your collection with specialized glassware. It’s worth noting that you can use any or all of these for nonalcoholic drinks as well.
Moscow mule mugs are copper mugs used for serving—you guessed it—Moscow Mules and the dozens of popular (ahem) mule variations. When the drink was invented in mid-19th-century America, the mug was marketed as part of the experience. You can also drink a mule in a glass, though.
Hurricane glasses and margarita glasses are for fruity, icy summer drinks that might not fit in a Collins glass. Pick up a few for pina coladas, painkillers, or margaritas that are frozen or on the rocks. Libbey is a quality manufacturer that won’t break the bank.
Even though it’s not for cocktails, pick up a couple of Glencairn glasses for $20 for guests who enjoy a nice whiskey neat (that is, without ice). Glencairns became popular in the past decade due to their association with distillers in Scotland, who use the glasses to taste their whiskey. The shape of the glass directs aromas upward for a fuller tasting experience.
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Photograph: Cocktail Kingdom
Ice Trays
Cocktail Kingdom Ice Trays
Whether you’re shaking ingredients in a tin or stirring them in a glass, you need mixing ice to chill the drink to its serving temperature and dilute it with the right amount of water. There are three trays you should keep on hand:
1.25-inch cubes to use when making drinks. These melt at just the right speed, so that the drink isn’t too under- or overdiluted by the time the mixing is complete. These small ice cubes don’t end up in the final drink. They’re removed by the strainer.
2-inch cubes are for serving with the drink. They don’t melt as quickly as the smaller cubes, so you can enjoy the drink more leisurely without it watering it down so fast.
Spears are used for drinks served in a Collins glass, such as the classic gin and tonic, that would dilute too quickly with crushed ice or ice cubes. The Cocktail Kingdom Collins Ice Mold for $10 has given me years of use without any noticable wear and tear.
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Photograph: Wintersmiths
For Premium Ice
Wintersmiths Phantom Mini
Spherical ice melts more slowly than cubes. Ever wonder why your ice is cloudy and not clear like a good bar’s ice? It’s the impurities in tap water. Ignore popular advice and don’t bother with distilled water. Ice made with it will still be cloudy. Wintersmiths makes perfectly clear ice by freezing the water at the top of the container first, pushing impurities down and away from the ice ball molds. Don’t pour the ice used to mix the drink into your drinking glass–that’s the point of the strainer, to filter out this already melting ice. Put a fresh piece of ice in your glass when it’s ready to be served.
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Photograph: Amazon
For Crushed Ice
Winco Manual Ice Crusher
Not everyone has a refrigerator that can spit out perfectly uniform shards of ice for the immense number of cocktails that require it. This Winco model’s operation is simple. Turn the hand crank right for finely chopped ice and left for more coarsely chopped ice. The fine ice chips were surprisingly uniform in size, while the coarse ice chips varied a bit more between shards and ice dust. For a drink that calls for crushed ice, either one would be more than adequate. Rubber feet on the bottom do a good jump of keeping it from hopping around on the counter while grinding.
There are minor issues. The place where you load the ice is small, so you’ll have to continually stop grinding to reload it. The lid also jumps open, so you’ll have to hold it closed while grinding. And nobody will feel the plastic and think it to be of particularly high quality. But it functions fine, and for the money these are quibbles that don’t impact the main attraction, which is its performance at shredding ice.
If you need to make a lot of ice cubes and would rather not crush your perfect ice spheres and cubes, take a look at the Antarctic Star Countertop Ice Maker for $40. Reviewer Nena Farrell says that while it’s not exactly quiet, it’s not exactly noisy, either, and it can make batches of ice in a little as 15 minutes.
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Photograph: Barnes and Noble
A Good Recipe Book
Cocktail Books
Jim Meehan, who founded New York City’s PDT (Please Don’t Tell) speakeasy in the East Village, was a part of a wave of bartenders to popularize cocktails in the 2000s. Meehan’s The PDT Cocktail Book includes a breakdown of how to organize your tools, select your ice, and choose good mixers and base liquors. It also has more than 300 of Meehan’s recipes, some of which are his creations and others are reprinted from history’s best bartenders.
Gary Regan, who helped haul cocktails out of their dusty old-fashioned image as a rock star bartender in the 1980s and 1990s, wrote The Joy of Mixology to break down drinks based on categories. There are really only a few categories of cocktail, and almost all recipes can be broken down into variations of a few. It also has more than 350 of Regan’s recipes. Both are excellent books, not only for recipes but also for a better understanding of how to mix drinks and know the craft. Tools and exact measurements are only a part of making a good cocktail. A lot of it, maybe most, comes down to technique.
More perennial favorites among cocktail enthusiasts include those from Death & Co, one of New York City’s best-known cocktail bars, as well as Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki for $28, The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks for $23, The Savory Cocktail Book for $31, Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl for $25, and Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails for $28. All have something unique to offer beyond just lists of cocktail recipes, whether it’s delving back into the history of the way cocktails used to be mixed, beautifully written narratives, or entirely new ways to view the relations between seemingly distant types of drinks.
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Photograph: Total Wine
What Else Do I Need?
Additions
Looking at different vermouths, bitters, and other ingredients is one of the most fun parts of making cocktails. Some common additions you’ll probably need include two styles of vermouth, a type of fortified wine.
Dry vermouth, or white vermouth, is essential to stalwart drinks such as the martini. Noilly Prat Extra Dry Vermouth is my favorite, although Dolin Dry is acceptable.
Sweet vermouth, or red vermouth, is a key ingredient in Manhattans. Carpano is a bit pricier than other fine sweet vermouths, such as Dolin Rouge, but I think it’s worth the extra bucks.
Bitters are another fun way to spice up your drinks. There are so many good bitters being cranked out by many manufacturers, small and large, old and new, and they can vary a lot. A herby Angostura is the most common. Southerners will need Peychaud’s for Sazeracs and mezcal fans will love Xocolatl mole bitters. It also works well to put a chocolaty spin on bourbon and brandy drinks.
Gourmet cherries delight everyone. Luxardo Cherries are a traditional, tasty alternative to the unnaturally red maraschino cherries you find in most refrigerators.
Orange blossom water is a great way to elevate classic brown-liquor cocktails like Old-Fashioneds and Manhattans. It gives those fiery concoctions a fragrant, delicate finish. A drop or two per cocktail is all you need. Really—the aroma is so powerfully floral that any more than that would be overwhelming.
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Photograph: Amazon
Tasty Additions
Mixers
You’re gonna need mixers for a lot of drinks. Many cocktails require infrequently-used ingredients, but these popular mixers are staples worth stocking. Even if you don’t plan to use them, a guest will inevitably request them.
Tonic water is an integral part of the yearlong refresher, the gin and tonic. Don’t skimp on the tonic, since it makes up more than half of this three-ingredient drink. I’ve downed a lot of G&Ts, and Fever Tree takes the win over Q, another common specialty tonic water.
Ginger beer is used in a number of cocktails, but it’s most notably associated with the dark and stormy. Never heard of it? It’s a variant of the Moscow Mule, but it swaps in dark rum (typically Goslings) in place of the vodka. You’ll need a good ginger beer for both. Serve them without a copper mug at your own peril.
Club soda is a nearly universal mixer. Canada Dry edges out the other common brands for taste, in my opinion, while still being common enough to purchase in large quantities for parties and punches without breaking your wallet wide open.
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Photograph: Amazon
Bar Cabinet
Crosley Landon Bar Cabinet
You don’t absolutely need one, but it’s a touchstone piece that draws oohs and ahhs from party guests. It also gives you a place to mix your cocktails and store your tools and bottles without taking over all the room inside your kitchen cabinets. The Landon is made from solid wood with real acorn wood veneers, plus the manufactured-wood back panel. It’s very well-built, and once fully constructed it’s sturdy as a rock. Inside, you can hang up to 12 stemmed glasses upside down, plus there’s room for a couple dozen bottles of liquor and most of (if not all of) your tools and drinking glasses. There are also seven cubbies for storing wine horizontally.
In my experience with multiple units (and from reviews on several retailer sites), pieces tend to arrive with abrasions on the corners due to poor packaging during shipping. You may want to pick up a pack of furniture markers to touch up those areas, if they bother you. Even taking that into account, though, the Landon is the best deal I’ve seen on bar cabinets. At this price, competing bar cabinets are almost entirely particleboard or wire mesh, and other solid wood bar cabinets run closer to $1,000.
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Photograph: geckophotos/Getty Images
Your Cocktail-Mixing Station
Setting Up Your Bar
Keep your glasses and shakers upside down if you store them on top of your cabinet and not inside, if your cabinet doesn’t have solid doors. It’ll keep dust from getting in them. Most bar cabinets have room for drinking glasses inside, but the larger mixing glasses and shakers might not fit.
Mix your drinks on a rubber bar mat on top of the cabinet to catch spills and keep wet glasses from warping the wood. Keep cocktail napkins on hand, as well as cocktail picks to use when a recipe calls for a skewer of garnish, such as olives for Martinis and cherries for Manhattans. Limes, lemons, and oranges are the fruits most often used in popular cocktail recipes, so get plenty of them.
Before a big party, estimate how much ice you’ll need and then double it. Maybe even triple it. You always need more ice than you think you need, and even though the recipe for ice is super easy (cold plus water), it takes too long to make once you’re out of it. You’ll need to stock up on extra ice trays if you want to have a bunch of people over for drinks.
Don’t store liquor in a bar cabinet’s wine cubbies. While it’s preferable to store wine horizontally or at a slight diagonal angle in order to keep the cork from drying out and spoiling the wine, the higher alcohol percentage of hard liquor will eat away at the cork if kept in contact with it for long. I was given a bottle of whiskey once that had been stored this way for a year, and it had dissolved bits of cork floating it in. I still drank it, because there’s no way I’m pouring out Four Roses Single Barrel, but yeah, I’d have preferred it without the debris.