Tool Options for Your Home Bar

I'm Allen Katz for howdini.com Before we start mixing cocktails, I want to take you through
some of the elemental tools for creating a great home bar.

First and foremost, we're going to talk about shakers. These two glasses comprise a classic
Boston Shaker. They fit wonderfully together and create a great seal so that you can stir or shake
just about any cocktail. When you're shaking the cocktail, you want to make sure that the tin or
the larger compartment is always facing you. Just in case there's an accident and it comes apart,
the cocktail comes on you and not the guest that you're serving. To seal the cocktail shaker once
you have the ingredients, you simply tamp down on top of the cocktail glass. To release you're
simply going to give one, maybe two, swift taps to the side, and with relative ease, the two
compartments will disengage.

The next critical element, the critical tool in any home bar is a measuring tool. Classically we use
jiggers, and they come in various sizes ranging from quarter ounce to over two ounces. Just
about any size that you'll need for classic recipes. Jiggers are very inexpensive and can be found
at restaurant supplies stores, specialty food stores, and even now some specialty bar stores. If you
don't have jiggers or can't find them, you can also use a classic kitchen-measuring cup, but it's
just important to keep in mind that you want to measure out the ingredients as you make the
cocktails. Of course once the cocktail is complete, you need to get the cocktail from the shaker
into your glass, and that for that we use two different styles of classic strainers. Both fit
comfortably into the mixing glass, and allow you to strain into the appropriate glass for any
given cocktail.

Some of the tools that are thought to be a little more extraneous but are ideal in my opinion, are
one, a simple inexpensive vegetable peeler. When we're doing citrus garnishes like lemons, it's
so swift just to take the citrus peeler across the fruit and get a wonderfully fresh aromatic garnish
for the cocktail. It's that simple and these cost a dollar in most kitchen stores.

Equal to the usage of citrus is a classic citrus squeezer. Now they make different sizes for limes,
for lemons, for oranges, but lemon falls right in the middle range. The fruit fits right into this
bottom chamber and whether over your mixing glass, into a jigger, you can simply squeeze fresh
juice which is so instrumental in creating great cocktails and it's easy to watch easy to store, and
should last a long time.

Next, a bar spoon, both for measuring but also for stirring cocktails. They're many classic
cocktails like Manhattans or martinis that are ideally stirred rather than shaken, and this simple
bar spoon is the ideal tool to use in that scenario.

Finally, and this is a fun one, we have a muddling stick or simply muddler, and this tool is based
on the classic pestle as in mortar and pestle. It’s used when we're combining ingredients like
fresh fruit, citrus or otherwise, perhaps fresh herbs like fresh mint. When we combine them in
the mixing glass or when we extract some essential oils, or some of those important flavors. We
simply use the tool to muddle or to mash those ingredients together, so that the elements
combine in our mixing glass.

Those are some of the tools just to help you get started in creating a great home bar. I'm Allen
Katz for howdini.com