Shakers, Strainers and Bar Spoons: Choosing Bar Tools

Mixing cups

The classic mixing cup is a standard pint glass: cheap, fairly rugged, transparent and usable for shaking, which is why many bars have them already. Against it: it is glass, it is not sexy, and its narrow base tips during a vigorous stir. Alternatives are the cut-crystal Japanese mixing cup shaped like a beaker, and large stemmed mixing glasses like squat, overgrown wineglasses, which look great and have wide stable bases and pour spouts but are expensive and one careless drop from the bin. A scientific beaker is a goofy but good choice, with a wide base and rough volume marks that help a home bartender who has not learned pour height by rote. Fancy cups are an investment that pays only if you mix in front of guests.

Arnold’s own choice is the 18-ounce metal tin, in fact stainless steel. Metal has a much lower specific heat than glass, and glass cups are thicker and heavier, so they are a thermal mass that changes the temperature and dilution of the drink. A chilled glass cup and a room-temperature one give noticeably different stirred drinks. So either always use chilled glasses, or never, or be a savant who can compensate. Metal tins hardly affect the drink at all.

Shakers

The first criterion is that a shaker withstands violent agitation without spilling on you and your guests. There are three types:

• Three-piece cobbler shaker: a cup, a top with an integral strainer and a tiny cap. It comes in sizes from single drinks to multilitre party shakers, and suits bartenders with small hands. Arnold’s bar does not use them: they strain slowly, give no control over straining, jam after shaking, are incompatible from set to set and, when cheap, leak. He thinks the claim that their shape, or a soft plastic body, forms better ice crystals is hokum, though he has not tested it.
• Two-piece Boston shaker: two cups, one fitting inside the other, the favourite of professional American bartenders. It is hard to believe it will seal at first, but it does, reliably. Metal-on-glass is a 28-ounce tin over a pint glass; he dislikes it because the glass can break, it has a large thermal mass and it is hard to shake one-handed without orangutan hands.
• Parisian shaker: two pieces, the drink built in the small top section; as you shake the large cup chills, contracts and seals around it. Cool looking, but less versatile and more costly than tins.

His preference is metal-on-metal, “a set of tins”, a 28-ounce and an 18-ounce tin. The 18 is called the cheater tin because in a pinch it can be a strainer. They are indestructible, light on heat, easy to handle and sound good. Build the drink in the small tin, add ice to the rim, put the large tin over it, tap to seal and shake. The large volume lets you make two or even three drinks at once. To break (open) the tins, smack the large one where the seam begins to turn into a gap. Cheap, floppy tins are hard to break and just slide against each other; good ones are now easy to find as matched pairs.

Strainers

You need three: julep, hawthorn and tea.

• Julep strainer: an oval with large holes for stirred drinks. It strains fast, and since it fits inside the mixing cup the lip stays unobstructed.
• Hawthorn strainer: a spring around its edge lets it fit a metal tin and many mixing glasses, and it holds back mint and small ice better than a julep. Most springs are still too coarse for everything a careful bartender worries about, so many use a tea strainer with it; Arnold uses a Cocktail Kingdom hawthorn with a very fine spring. It sits on the outside of the cup and is prone to drips, but gives much more control: the index finger slides it to change the gap, called “adjusting the gate”. A closed gate holds back ice crystals; an open gate lets more float on top. Some hawthorns split the stream to fill two glasses at once, a gimmick for slow nights.
• Tea strainer: any small fine-mesh strainer, once used to keep ice particles out and now used at Booker and Dax to keep big herb pieces out of nitro-muddled drinks.

Ice crystals on a shaken drink were long a sign of poor craftsmanship; now Arnold, like many, loves a shimmering layer of crunchy crystals. The objection is that they melt quickly and dilute the top of the drink. His answer: drink faster.

Shaken drinks deteriorate immediately after they are shaken.

Bar spoons and stirring

Bar spoons are long, thin, usually twisty-shafted spoons. Arnold once thought them unnecessary, and now knows they make elegant, repeatable stirring possible: great stirring looks effortless and is efficient and repeatable, and some masters stir two drinks at a time, even four. A teaspoon cannot do that. You need a well-balanced spoon with a shaft that suits your style, and it also measures: his are 4 ml. The trick is not to circle the hand. Push and pull the spoon with the lower fingers while its top rotates in the pocket between thumb and forefinger. Keep the back of the spoon against the inside wall of the glass, so the spoon turns when you push; do not pinch the shaft, which must be free to twirl. Push forward with the ring finger, pull back with the middle finger. Use the spoon to fish a cherry or olive out of the jar, never your fingers.

Small tools

• Bar mat: cheap, rubber nubbins a quarter inch high that capture spills and stay nonslip; rinse it at the end of the night. Also a good drying mat.
• Muddler: most have too small a crushing area and just push things around. The Bad Ass Muddler from Cocktail Kingdom is a big solid cylinder, plastic but unaffected by liquid nitrogen; second is a straight-sided rolling pin. Avoid cheap plastic or rubberised muddlers with liquid nitrogen, which makes them brittle.
• Misters: more accurate and less wasteful than a rinse for applying aroma to a glass.
• Knives: a decent paring knife in a guard, and a small cutting board.
• Droppers: glass bottles with screw-on eyedroppers for saltwater, bitters and the like; at home, old Tabasco and Angostura bottles, washed and refilled.
• Ice storage: at the bar, insulated wells with drains and metal scoops or tins; at home a bucket and scoop or tongs, never your hands in front of guests unless they are close family. His ideal bucket has a drain tap and a rack to keep ice from swimming.
• Capper: a cheap hand-held bottle capper from a home-brew shop, for bottled drinks.