You’ve built your bar, stocked it with essential spirits, mixers and modifiers and bought your bar tools. Now it’s time to look at the glassware you need for your home bar.
Elegant glassware is an essential component of a home bar, bringing the bar culture into your own home. In the fifth and final part of How to Set Up a Home Bar series, we’ve partnered with Spiegelau to present their Perfect Serve Collection.
The glassware collection was designed by international bartender Stephan Hinz for use in the home and in bars. The special cut decorations in the tumblers and stemmed glasses give beautiful light refraction and they’re a pleasure to hold and sip on. The glasses are resistant to scratches and breakage and are dishwasher safe which make them ideal for the home bartender.
Here is the essential glassware for your home bar as shown from left to right.
Essential Glassware for a Home Bar
1. Single Old Fashioned
Also called a rocks glass, lowball and tumbler, the Single Old Fashioned is often used for drinks that are built in the glass over ice. The heavy glass bottom also makes it suitable for drinks which are muddled in the glass.
Use for: Gin and Tonic, Negroni, Whiskey Smash, Whiskey Sour, Sazerac, Old Fashioned
2. Cocktail Glass
More commonly known as the Martini glass, the V-shaped Cocktail Glass with a thin stem is used for drinks that are served up, whether shaken or stirred.
Use for: Martini, Espresso Martini, Margarita, Gimlet, Cosmopolitan
3. Long Drink Glass
Also called a Highball Glass and a Collins Glass, the Long Drink Glass is tall, slim with straight sides used for long drinks that are usually served over lots of ice and occasionally with a straw.
Use for: Whisky Highball, Paloma, Gin Fizz, Bloody Mary, Mojito, Gin Rickey, Tom Collins
4. Coupe
Based on the earlier champagne glass thought to be moulded from Marie Antoinette’s left breast, the Coupe is the most elegant of glassware. It’s used for shaken or stirred drinks served without ice, hence the stem by which to hold it and keep it chilled.
Use for: Manhattan, Trinidad Sour, The Last Word, Blood and Sand, Sidecar, Aviation, Daiquiri, Margarita
5. Double Old Fashioned Glass
The Double Old Fashioned Glass, or double rocks glass is the larger variant of the Single Old Fashioned and comes in handy when you use a large cube of ice or an ice sphere. Aside from the larger capacity, it’s used with double shot drinks and drinks that you build in glass.
Use for: Old Fashioned, Dark n Stormy, Caipirinha, Mai Tai
Pro Tip:
If you can’t remember which glass to use, as a rule of thumb use a highball for tall drinks served with a lot of ice, tumblers for drinks built in the glass – with or without ice – and stemmed glasses for a shaken or stirred drink without any ice.
This concludes the How to Set Up a Home Bar series to get you up and going. You can always build on the basics according to your taste. If you have a home bar, no matter how humble or elaborate, share a photo of your home bar with us on Instagram by tagging @cocktails_bars and using the hashtag #cocktailsandbarsathome.
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