Home Bar Starter Kit: The Shortest List That Works

Every cocktail technique you need at home comes down to six jobs: shake, strain, measure, stir, squeeze and peel. Buy one good tool for each job and stop there. That is the whole secret to building a home bar.

Your kitchen already covers the rest. A knife and board handle garnish. A small sieve handles double straining. A freezer handles ice. A blender handles frozen drinks. Add the six tools below and you can make any classic you are likely to meet.

Make more ice than you think you need. One shaken drink uses a big handful, and old ice from the back of the freezer tastes like the back of the freezer.

Buy in order, not all at once. Start with the three tools for shaken drinks, then add the others as your recipes call for them. That way you learn each tool before the next one shows up.

Start with two steel tins. They shake anything, and either tin doubles as a stirring vessel, so you are buying two tools in one. Spend here first, because a shaker that leaks takes the fun out of the whole thing.

Add a Hawthorne strainer next, because tins do not strain. It sits on the tin, its spring holds back ice and pulp, and your finger keeps it in place while you pour.

Then get a jigger, the tool most people skip and should not. Cocktails are small, so a small slip is a big share of the drink. No jigger yet? A tablespoon is 1/2 oz.

A long bar spoon is how you stir a Martini without fuss. Look for about 12 inches, enough to reach the bottom of a tin, and a twisted stem that spins easily in your fingers. The bowl holds about a teaspoon, so it doubles as a small measure.

A hand citrus press is the biggest upgrade on this list, because fresh juice beats bottled in every sour. Budget ones work well. Pick one big enough for a lemon and it will handle a lime too.

A Y-peeler does every twist you will ever need. It takes a wide strip with very little bitter white pith, and the oil in that strip is half the smell of an Old Fashioned. The peeler in your drawer is fine if it is sharp.

Skip the 25-piece kit. Those boxes pad the count with pieces you will not use, and you still have to find room for them. Six good tools beat a drawer of filler.

A muddler can wait until Mojitos are a habit. The end of a wooden spoon presses mint and sugar just fine. A mixing glass can wait too, since a tin stirs as well as glass does, and a big pint glass will do if you want to see the drink.

Leave the rest off the list for now: julep strainers, channel knives, pour spouts, ice tongs and anything that makes smoke. They are fun. You just do not need them yet.

Where you spend matters more than how much. The tins, strainer and jigger are worth spending on, since you use them in nearly every drink. The spoon, press and peeler are simple tools, so budget ones are fine.