Cocktail gear & glassware

This is the hub where small amounts of money make the largest difference to how a bar feels to use. A good shaker and a good jigger together cost less than a single bar stool, and you will touch them every time you make a drink. It is also the hub most padded with things nobody needs, so the useful question is not "what is available" but "what is the shortest list that makes every standard cocktail".

The shaker decision, which is the only hard one

Two designs dominate. A cobbler shaker is the three-piece one most people picture: tin, built-in strainer, cap. It is self-contained and beginner-friendly, and its weakness is mechanical — the cap seals by friction and cold metal contracts, so a properly chilled cobbler shaker can stick shut hard. A Boston shaker is two tins (or a tin and a mixing glass) that you seal against each other and break apart with a tap. It is what bars use: faster, larger, it never jams, and it needs a separate Hawthorne strainer. If you expect to make more than a couple of drinks at a time, buy Boston tins and a strainer and never think about it again.

The shortest tool list that actually works

1. Shaker — two-tin Boston, or an insulated hybrid if you dislike holding frozen metal.
2. Jigger — the one tool worth being fussy about. A Japanese-style 1 oz / 2 oz jigger with internal graduations lets you measure 1/2, 3/4 and 1 1/2 oz accurately. Cocktails are ratios; eyeballing is the single biggest reason a home drink tastes wrong.
3. Hawthorne strainer — the spring-edged one, for pouring out of a shaking tin.
4. Bar spoon and mixing glass — for anything all-spirit and stirred, which is most of the classics. Shaking a Manhattan bruises it and clouds it.
5. Muddler — only if you make mojitos, caipirinhas or anything with fresh fruit or herbs. Easy to skip otherwise.

That is five items. A boxed kit gets you all of them plus a stand for roughly what the shaker and jigger cost separately, which makes kits the obvious starting point — and also means you should judge a kit by its shaker and jigger, because those are the pieces that get used and the pieces kits cut corners on.

Glassware: four shapes cover everything

A heavy-based rocks / old fashioned glass for spirits and short drinks. A tall highball or Collins glass for anything with soda. A stemmed coupe or Nick & Nora for drinks served up without ice — the stem is functional, it keeps your hand off the bowl. And a wine glass. That is it; everything else is specialisation. If whisky is the point, a tulip-shaped nosing glass does something a tumbler genuinely cannot: it concentrates aroma, which is most of what you taste. Buy glassware in fours or sixes, buy a shape you can replace in two years, and assume breakage — which is a good argument against expensive crystal for a bar that gets actual use.

The mistake buyers make: a 20-piece kit of gadgets with a flimsy shaker, instead of five good tools. The second: forgetting ice is an ingredient. Great tools and freezer-tray ice still makes a watery, freezer-flavoured drink — see the ice makers hub, because it will improve your cocktails more than any tool on this page.