Stocking Home Bars

In addition to your cheapskate friends, you need to keep your home bar stocked with the following items. It may also be a good idea to add a tip jar to help recoup some of your costs.

For a classic, fully-stocked bar, you should start with the following:

• Vodka, Tequila, Gin, White Rum, and Bourbon/Scotch Whiskeys
• Mixing ingredients: Rose’s lime juice, dry Vermouth, Grenadine, and Angostura bitters
• Fresh ingredients: Mint leaves and lime/lemons
• For garnishing: Cherries, kosher salt, cocktail onions, and of course, olives
• Mixers: Soft drinks, cranberry/grapefruit juices, club soda, tonic water, and tomato juice

These are some of the materials you’ll need in your bar:

Drink Glasses. Duh, you’re serving drinks, so of course you need to have drink glasses. You won’t want to have just one type of drink glass, but rather, you should have many kinds depending on what types of drinks you’ll be serving. A few nice Martini glasses are an absolute must, as are some beer mugs and glasses. How many should you buy? Well, that will depend on how many guests you’ll be entertaining at your bar at any particular time. But it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll need at least 2-3 of each kind.

Corkscrew. Opening wine or champagne bottles without a corkscrew is pretty difficult. Even if you don’t “plan” on serving champagne or wine in your home bar, there’s still a chance guests may bring a bottle of wine, so you’re gonna need that corkscrew. There’s a lot of different corkscrews on the market, but you’ll probably want to choose one that has several tools in one. Avoid the cheapest corkscrews, as they’ll often break when you’re trying to open the bottle.

Jigger. If you’ll be mixing drinks, the jigger is essential. It measures alcohol accurately to prevent many common mixing at home mistakes. You have a couple of options as far as what jigger to get. The steel jigger comes in several measuring sizes, while the glass jigger comes in just a 2 tablespoon size.

Bar Spoon. Do you really want to mix that drink with a regular spoon? Of course not, because a regular spoon isn’t very long, and there’s nothing worse than having your finger accidentally dip into the drink you’ve just prepared for your friend. A typical bar spoon is 10 inches long, made of steel, can crush bar ingredients easily and can even be used in lieu of a jigger.

Knife. Making a drink with fresh fruit? You’ll definitely need a good knife, then. You don’t really need to buy a special “bar knife,” as a regular knife will suffice. A couple of long knives and pairing knives are a good purchase.

Mixing Glass. You’ll need a quality mixing glass if you’re planning on making good cocktails served on ice. The mixing glass will adequately stir the cocktails so they turn out good.

Other essential items, but not mandatory:

Electric Blender: Blenders are useful not just for making milkshakes, but also for blending tasty alcohol drinks. The Strawberry Daiquiri, as well as many other drinks, require a lot of mixing, and it’s much easier to just toss the ingredients into a blender than it is to mix it by hand.

Champagne Stopper. If you don’t plan on downing that bottle of champagne or wine all in one night, you’ll definitely want to get a stopper. Stoppers keep wine and champagne from going flat, so you’ll be able to enjoy your opened bottles a bit longer.

Bottle/Can Opener. Even the strongest man or woman may have occasional trouble with opening a can or bottle of beer. A good bottle/can opener isn’t an essential item in your home bar, but it’s certainly a good purchase.