Cocktail Cabin

The tools, in the order to buy them

Every tool on this page is one the Cabin's own recipes ask for, and the order is how many of them ask: the number beside each one is counted from the instructions of the published drinks rather than taken from a bar manual. Buy down the list and stop when the drinks you like the look of are covered: the top of it is most of the book, and the bottom is a handful of drinks each - and those rows are the ones that wait longest.

A recipe asks for a tool by naming it ("fill a shaker with ice") or by saying what it does ("strain into a chilled coupe"), and the two are counted separately because they are not the same claim: a row about a strainer says how many drinks ask for one and how few of them ever write the word down. Both numbers are on the row with the drinks they were counted from, and neither is a guess.

What to pour The measuring tools The glasses All cocktails

  1. 1. Bar spoon

    A long-handled spoon with a twist in the middle, which stirs a drink, layers a float on top of one, and fishes a cherry out of the bottom of a glass.

    77 drinks ask for one 16 of them name it
    Mojito ★ 4.6 Manhattan ★ 4.6 Penicillin ★ 4.6

    What to look for

    Length is the whole point: it has to reach the bottom of a highball, which is 30 cm or so. The twist is not decoration either - it is what lets the spoon spin between two fingers rather than waving about in the ice - and the small end does the fishing. A long iced-tea spoon from a kitchen drawer does everything the stirring thirds of this page needs, so buy the real one for the look and for the layering rather than for the stirring, which a table knife and a steady hand will also do.

  2. 2. Strainer

    The mesh across a hoop that holds the ice and the leaves back while the drink goes into the glass.

    62 drinks ask for one 1 of them names it
    Espresso Martini ★ 4.7 Manhattan ★ 4.6 Penicillin ★ 4.6

    What to look for

    A hawthorn strainer - the one with the wire spring around the rim - is the strainer for a shaker, and it is the one to buy first: the spring is what keeps it sitting on the tin while you pour, and a loose one is a second pair of hands you do not have. The drinks here that say "double strain" are asking for a second, finer one - a small fine-mesh sieve is that, and it is the tool that keeps the crushed mint and the raspberry seeds out of a Southside. Neither needs to be expensive; both need to be dry-clean dry, or the mesh rusts shut.

  3. 3. Shaker

    Two tins that fit together, so a drink can be shaken hard and poured out without the ice following it.

    47 drinks ask for one 22 of them name it
    Espresso Martini ★ 4.7 Penicillin ★ 4.6 Tommy's Margarita ★ 4.6

    What to look for

    Buy a Boston shaker - two tins and no lid - rather than the three-piece shaker with a built-in strainer: it loads faster, it washes faster, and the two tins are what "roll between two tins" means on the drinks here that get mixed without being shaken. Test the seal before you buy it if you can: fill the tins with water, twist them together and hold them over the sink. A cobbler shaker with its own cap and strainer is a tidier thing on a shelf and a worse thing in the hand, because the strainer is the one part of it that will clog.

  4. 4. Peeler

    What cuts a twist: a strip of peel whose oil is squeezed over the top of a drink, which is how a third of the drinks here are finished.

    24 drinks ask for one
    Oaxaca Old Fashioned ★ 4.6 Old Fashioned ★ 4.5 Boulevardier ★ 4.5

    What to look for

    A Y-shaped peeler is the one that makes this easy, because the blade works on the pull and the peel comes off in a strip rather than in pieces. What you want from it is a swivel blade and a handle you can pull towards yourself, and what you do not want is the kind with a fixed blade and a slot for the peel, which cuts through the bitter white pith and no deeper. A small sharp knife does the same job in a slower way - the drinks here that say "peel a long strip into the glass" are written for whichever of the two you own.

  5. 5. Muddler

    A bat with a rounded end, for pressing mint and fruit and sugar in the bottom of a glass or a tin.

    9 drinks ask for one 4 of them name it
    Mojito ★ 4.6 Penicillin ★ 4.6 Sazerac ★ 4.5

    What to look for

    Wood or hard plastic, with a flat, unvarnished base and a length that leaves your hand above the rim of the glass. A varnished one sheds its varnish into the drink, a metal one chips the glass, and a short one does not reach the sugar at the bottom of a Caipirinha. Nothing here needs the toothed end that some muddlers are sold with: mint wants pressing rather than shredding, which is the whole of what the drinks that ask for one say about it. The end of a wooden spoon is the standard stand-in, and one of the drinks here names exactly that.

  6. 6. Blender

    For the frozen ones: ice and fruit that have to become one texture rather than a drink with ice floating in it.

    6 drinks ask for one 4 of them name it
    Virgin Piña Colada ★ 4.5 Virgin Strawberry Daiquiri ★ 4.3 Piña Colada ★ 4.3

    What to look for

    Any jug blender will do it, and the two things worth checking are the ones that decide whether it will do it for long. It needs a motor that will run against crushed ice without being nursed - the frozen drinks here ask for twenty seconds at a time - and a jug that comes apart at the base, which is where the ice and the coconut cream collect. Six of the drinks here want it and every one of them is a drink to make two of: a blender is the tool on this page that is hardest to justify for one glass, and the drinks that ask for one know it.

  7. 7. Grater

    A fine grater, for the nutmeg over a flip and the chocolate over a Mudslide - which is what finishes six of the drinks here.

    6 drinks ask for one
    Irish Coffee ★ 4.5 Painkiller ★ 4.4 Brandy Alexander ★ 4.3

    What to look for

    A fine one rather than the box grater in the kitchen drawer: nutmeg wants the rasp that turns it into dust, and the box grater's fine side is designed for parmesan. A microplane-shaped grater with a handle is the cheap answer, and it earns its place for the coffee and the citrus zest as much as for the nutmeg. Buy whole nutmeg with it - the ground sort in a jar has none of the smell that the four drinks here are asking you to grate over the top of them.

How this list was made

The order is the answer to one question asked of every recipe: how many of the Cabin's drinks would be harder without this? A drink counts once for a tool however often its instructions use the word, and the whole quick version and full method count together, because two ways of saying the same thing are one drink. Nothing here is ranked by what a bar is expected to own.

A tool no drink here asks for is not on the page, and that is a promise rather than a flourish: there is no row for a juicer, a cocktail pick or an ice scoop, because none of the recipes names one or does the thing one does. The recipes arrived before the list did. Publish a drink that muddles and the muddler climbs; publish fifty and it leads.

The three a measure is poured with - a jigger, a pair of spoons and a jug - are counted the same way and kept on a page of their own, because a number is not what a reader needs from them: the measures puts them side by side with what each one holds in millilitres and in ounces. Two of the tools here are also on the converter, which is the same arithmetic asked one measure at a time.

The drawings are the Cabin's own, one line drawing each, and they say what the thing looks like - which is half of what somebody about to buy one is asking. None of these rows leads to a shop: what to look for in a tool is the advice, and the only thing this page sells is the drink at the end of it.