How to set up a home bar

Step 1: the six bottles

A whiskey (bourbon or rye), a gin, a tequila or mezcal, a rum, a sweet vermouth and a bitter liqueur such as Campari. Add a bottle of orange bitters and one of Angostura. Those eight items make an old fashioned, a Manhattan, a negroni, a margarita, a daiquiri, a martini, a whiskey sour and most of their variations — which is to say most of the standard canon.

One important note on vermouth: it is wine, it oxidises, and it belongs in the fridge once opened. A bottle of vermouth left on a bar shelf for three months is the single most common reason a home Manhattan tastes stale, and almost nobody is told this.

Step 2: the five tools

A shaker (two Boston tins, or a cobbler if you prefer self-contained), a jigger, a Hawthorne strainer, a bar spoon with a mixing glass, and a muddler if you use fresh herbs or fruit. That is the complete list. Everything beyond it is specialisation.

Be fussy about exactly one of them. A jigger with internal graduations for 1/2, 3/4 and 1 1/2 oz is what lets you hit a recipe; a plain two-sided cone forces you to guess every fractional measure, and guessing is the biggest single reason a home cocktail tastes wrong. Shaking versus stirring is the other rule worth knowing: anything with citrus, cream or egg gets shaken; anything made only of spirits gets stirred, because shaking clouds it and spoils the texture.

Step 3: four glass shapes

A heavy-based rocks glass for spirits and short drinks. A tall highball or Collins for anything with soda. A stemmed coupe or Nick & Nora for drinks served up without ice, where the stem keeps your hand off the bowl. And a wine glass. Buy in fours or sixes, in a pattern you can re-buy, and assume breakage — which is the argument against expensive crystal in a bar that gets used.

Step 4: ice, which is an ingredient

This is the step people skip and the one that most changes the result. Freezer-tray ice is small, wet, cloudy and tastes of whatever else is in the freezer, and it dilutes a drink before you have finished making it. Large, hard, dry ice is what lets you shake long enough to properly chill a drink without watering it down. A countertop ice maker is the cheapest purchase that improves every drink simultaneously; a directional-freezing clear ice tray is the few-dollar version for spirits.

Step 5: where to put it

Three requirements, and they are modest: a working surface you can wipe, light on the bar itself, and tools within reach rather than in a drawer. A bar cart satisfies all three in about three square feet; a wall rack beside it stores bottles and hangs glasses in space that was doing nothing. Our layout guide covers the options from a cart up to a basement build.

Keep bottles out of direct sun, which fades labels within a season and slowly degrades liqueurs. Store glasses upside down so they stay clean. And put a bar mat on the working surface: it catches drips, stops glasses sliding while you pour, and gives washed tins somewhere to drain.

What to add next

In order of how much each changes things: a beverage fridge, because cold storage is what a bar opens daily; then seating, because people stay where they can sit; then a game, because that is what makes a bar a destination rather than a stop. Darts is the cheapest real game and needs only a patch of wall.