What glassware do I actually need for my home bar?
This is probably the single question that we get asked the most and honestly I've slightly resisted
doing this episode because my simple answer is, whatever glassware you like drinking from.
Not to get all Marie Kondo on you but there's no point having 90 different styles of glasses if
you only ever drink out of one or two. Similarly you could have my problem,
I'm obsessed with vintage glassware and have heaps but it's often not sort of standard sizes
or shapes, so I'll happily drink a dark and stormy out of a fluted goblet rather than a
standard high ball because it makes me happy to use a beautiful glass rather than a boring one.
That said, I do understand that it can get a bit overwhelming so in this video I'm going
to explain what each style of glassware is good for and that way you can decide if it's
something that you need or maybe what the best substitute of what you already own would be.
This video is more of a focus on what you need for cocktails and we'll look more closely at
your options for sipping spirits in another video soon, so do hit that subscribe and notification
bell to make sure that you don't miss it. Some of the glassware I've got here is from
my personal collection and I'm sorry but you can't have it. But we've also had some beautiful
examples sent over from Rona glassware so if any of those catch your eye then we'll drop a link
below and at Bomba we do buy a lot from Chefs Hat, which is kind of our local hospitality supplier,
so I'll pop a link for them too. You know that this pineapple glass
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For me the three glasses that you actually can't live without when making cocktails are
a rocks glass, a high ball and a cocktail glass. The rock's glass also known as a tumbler or an
old-fashioned glass is short and fairly wide so it can hold a spirit mixer or a cocktail
served on the rocks. Now as a general rule of thumb I do tend to serve brown spirits in short
glasses like this and then white spirits in tall glasses when mixing them with the exception being
white rum which I also serve short but I don't really know why, it's just one of those things.
Now of course these glasses can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes but if you
are planning on using them for cocktails then go for larger ones so that you can fit
a big block of ice or just lots of cubed ice in, so something like this one is 13
ounces or 390 mils, so really nice and spacious. They're sometimes called double rocks glasses,
and then single ones like this little guy are good if you like drinking spirits on the rocks
or if you do prefer to drink cocktails served up so with no ice, but you just like drinking them
out of a rocks glass rather than a stem wear. Although if you do this because stemware
threatens your masculinity then you really need to reassess how manly you are in the first place.
Now getting a larger size will also make sure that shaken drinks such as sours will
fit in because you obviously need to have room for that lovely fluffy egg white head,
as well it does mean that your wash line, so how high the drink comes up to in your glass, will
be a little bit lower for your sort of smaller stirred down drinks but I still think they look
good as long as they're about three quarter full. Anything larger than around the 10 ounce or 300
mil mark works but shaken drinks will fill them right to the brim
so if you do prefer a little bit of space then look for something around 12 ounce or 350 mils.
You can go for something sleek and streamlined like this very elegant one from Rona or we've got,
you know, the little ornate vintage one or this one from Linton is really nice and heavy.
So just make sure that it feels good in your hand and you'll never have a bad drink out of it.
As the name suggests this is what you want to serve old fashions in
and basically any drinks served on the rocks, so your negronis, whiskey sours,
etc, but also something like a mai tai or a Moscow mule if you don't have specific glassware for it,
then you can absolutely stick them in one of these and they'll still
look and taste delicious, and that's why they are absolutely an essential for me.
Highball glasses, otherwise known as, you know pretty simply a tall glass or a Collins glass,
technically Collins glasses are a little bit larger again, but we're not going to get bogged
down here, so for instance at Bomba we use this high ball for regular spirit mixers and
then this Collins for cocktails, and there's about a 90 mil or three ounce difference.
They all are, surprisingly enough, taller and narrower than a rock's glass and perfect for
things like gin and tonics or vodka and sodas. Interestingly there's actually not often much
of a difference in volume between a high ball and a comparable rocks glass so our standard
serves at Bomba are these two, and this one is actually only two thirds or 20 mils more
than its sister rocks glass. So if you just prefer drinking out of one or the other then that's great
but at a bar you won't really be getting much more or less sort of the volume of the drink or mixer.
And then given the narrow opening in these I do tend to serve drinks in here with a straw,
unlike short drinks which I serve without unless requested, but that does maybe make people drink
them a little bit more slowly and think that they're bigger but honestly the difference
is mostly aesthetics. I just think that tall drinks just look a little bit more refreshing.
With most drinks which are served in rocks glasses everything is sort of measured out and then shaken
or stirred in a separate tin or mixing glass and then served in the rocks glass, whereas drinks in
highball glasses are quite often actually built in the glass and sort of topped up with something
like soda or ginger beer which is just eyeballed to the correct level, so the size of your glass
will actually have quite an effect on the finished drink and it's definitely something to think about
with these ones. Honestly I just like having a larger one and having a bit more soda or
whatever at home, especially if it's a sort of sunny afternoon cocktail a bit of a longer drink
works quite nicely but you can of course scale up or scale down the other ingredients in the drink
to fit the size of your glass. Again generally around that 300 to 350 mil or 10 to 12 ounce
mark works well for most modern cocktail specs, so this is what you want of course for your Collins
family of drinks and fizzes, as well as your you know high ball style drinks like a classic
whiskey high ball or dark and stormy. It's also what I would use for longer tiki or tropical
drinks like a pina colada or a jungle bird or you know a spritz if you want to put an Aperol spritz
or something and you don't have specialized glassware, then these are the guys for you.
As I said earlier these glasses are not strictly necessary because you could absolutely serve a
drink straight up in a smaller rocks glass if you like, or if you don't have any of these,
but what are cocktails about if not glamour and to me these are the most opulent glasses.
Drinking out of one makes me feel like Audrey Hepburn for a minute and I'm okay with that.
Plus of course, in a practical sense the stem does keep your warm little mitts off the part
that holds the drink and so it helps it stay colder for longer despite it not being on ice.
The legend goes that coupes were moulded in the shape of Mary Antoinette's left breast,
but it actually turns out that they were invented
rather less sexily about a century before she reigned by an English monk.
These were originally used for champagne but they did kind of fall out of fashion
as people realized that flutes helped preserve the bubbles for longer, which is undoubtedly true,
but my favorite glasses ever are ornate hollow stem champagne coupes and I mark
every occasion, and sometimes just a casual Tuesday by drinking bubbles out of them.
So this style of glass was repurposed for cocktails and although they lost their throne
to the martini glass through the mid and late 20th century they have experienced a revival
along with drinks from that pre and immediately post-prohibition era.
An actual coupe is technically quite shallow and wide but it has sort of become a catch-all
term for curved and stemmed cocktail glasses, so everything from this quite large one through to
this kind of ornate Nick and Nora, which is a good in-between because it has that
old-school charm but is a little bit deeper and narrower making it easier to drink from it,
suits complex cocktails because it funnels aromas upwards similarly to a wine glass.
Now the martini glass has its own origin myth and that was that it was invented during prohibition
to make it easier to chuck your drink out quickly if the bar got raided. Which is not true.
The martini cocktail actually predates it by about 40 years and so would have been
served in coupes or other stemmed cocktail glasses originally, and then the martini
glass was really just a modern interpretation of the coupe, when straight lines were prized
over curves in all things art and design. The idea was that a bit of a longer stem
and wider bowl kept your martini chilled and your gin aerated and often it was seen in the hands of
the glitterati throughout the mid-century, making coupes look a little bit twee and old fashioned.
The martini glass did get its comeuppance though when there was a backlash against
their ubiquity. It got to the point where you couldn't serve any kind of drink in one without
it immediately being labeled a martini and people got a bit sick of it I think.
They're also not actually the most practical to drink out of being so wide and they got larger
and larger to accommodate this sweet syrup and juice heavy martinis of the 90s and early 2000s to
the point where it felt a welcome relief to head back to the more restrained proportions of coupes.
It's really a matter of personal preference here, again I have a lot of different sizes and styles
and I just like to swap around depending on the circumstance and the mood. Some say that shaken
drinks should be served in the larger and wider glasses and then stirred in sort of smaller ones,
and that certainly makes sense, especially for martini glasses because something with
a frothy head like an espresso martini or a French martini will be less likely to spill
everywhere because that foam layer makes it a little bit more stable, but you can't go
wrong with something around the 180 ml or six ounce mark for most standard cocktail specs.
So those are my picks for the glasses that you can't live without if you enjoy mixing a drink or
two at home, but if you still have some cupboard space left then consider some of these guys.
Now of course you'll most likely have these already and I'll leave discussions of the
various shapes and sizes to the wine experts but I do know that they make a dang good spritz holder.
Again, the stem just keeps your hands away from the drink so it stops the ice melting as quickly
and you can actually use these pretty interchangeably with high ball glasses,
so for instance a g&t goes great in a wine glass as well- just ask the Spanish.
It's more something to consider if you're writing a cocktail list in a bar setting because you want
to spread your cocktails over a range of glassware to ensure that you have enough of each one to keep
up with demand on a busy night, unless you're blessed with much more storage space than we
are at Bomba. So if you have a couple of sort of spritzy Collins style bestsellers, then consider
serving one in a tall glass and one in a wine glass and it would just sort of spread the load.
Flute glasses can also work well for cocktails like the French 75 or Champagne cocktail,
although they can also be served in a coupe if that's what you have to hand. Or vice versa, if
you don't have any coupes but you do have flutes then chuck your daiquiri in there and happy days.
Yes they're frivolous but some drinks just taste better out of them.
This pineapple glass is one of our fan favorites on here and I love it too because
it just makes everything feel like a holiday. Just bear in mind that they do tend to be larger,
so this one is like 500 mils or about 17 ounce, so if you measure everything and then add ice,
the ice will fill up most of the excess space but I would advise against eyeballing in any of these
because you'll either end up with something really over diluted with mixer or under the table.
The eagle-eyed amongst you might see that my wash lines are not always perfect when I use
these kind of more fun novelty glasses or indeed some of the vintage coupes.
We try our best to keep things visually interesting on here and mix it up
but it's quite often then not the exact glass that I'm used to serving that drink in and of
course that's fine at home, I'd rather drink from a glass I love than have the perfect pour,
but again it's just something to be aware of in a professional bar environment.
Always try the drink out a couple of times in the serving glass to make sure that it's going to look
good consistently before you put it on the menu. You also have your more speciality glasses like
a Julep glass or a Moscow mule. Not really necessary unless they're your favorites,
in which case definitely worth investing. Now this one is a minefield. Believe me,
I've read the comments on my whiskey video. As I said I'm going to go into this more in a separate
video so hit that bell if you're interested. Suffice to say here that if you like drinking
spirits neat then it might be worth investing in some glassware to do so with.
Now I actually like your kind of large shot glasses for American whiskeys and mezcal,
it makes me feel like a cowboy, and then I tend to drink out of stem snifters for single malts.
Of course a lot of people like Glencairns, but you know whiskey from a rocks glass is still
whiskey. Unless you're doing really serious spirit evaluation then drinking out of your
favorite glass is gonna add much more enjoyment than the shape of the glass will in my opinion.
So there you have it, some glasses and their uses. I really hope that you found that helpful. Please
let me know in the comments if you have any other questions and if this has piqued your interest in
all things bar and booze and you'd like to jump in even further then take a look at our bartending
course collaboration with International Open Academy. The link in the description will give
you the best deal currently on offer. Otherwise, I guess all I have left to say is, so now you know.