How to shop for a bar on a BUDGET

welcome back friends it's anders today i am talking budget bottles for your bar a while back i did a video on the essential bottles to have behind your bar and i put a lot of thought into it and i thought this is going to be great and it was received really well but i did receive a lot of questions that has taken me a long time to think about one of the questions was how do i build this bar if i have a really limited budget which is a very appropriate question as we all know building up a bar from scratch can get rather expensive rather quickly so i've decided to compile a list of bottles that i would buy at a budget on a budget to build up my bar from nothing now i'm doing this in two tiers so i'm doing a 100 tier and then a 200 tier and i would like to say up front full disclosure this is a list for my bar and this is based on the fact that i like to build old classic cocktails these are the drinks that i enjoy that's not to say that there aren't bottles that i would eventually go pick up because i want to have them behind my bar but this is if i'm just starting out what i would do also i want to point out that i am here in chicago what's available and the prices for those bottles are going to be different than pretty much anywhere else in the world i am not sponsored by any of these brands i'm also going to mix up a few different cocktails at each level so you get an idea of what you can make behind your bar i am not throwing citrus or syrups into the list of things you have to have behind the bar if you can't afford a couple lemons then you probably shouldn't be buying a hundred dollars worth of booze no judgment just maybe eat if you are new to the channel hit that subscribe button for more sips tips and i've been saying for more have you noticed that hit that like button for more sips tips and recipes and i will bail you out with this list of budget bottles for your bar bye bye actually no we're just getting started don't go anywhere to the bar [Music] so let's start with the dollar list first things first i had to get a whiskey and i decided to go with rye whiskey specifically old overhault old overhault i find to be great value now it does come in a higher proof bottle but that is slightly more money and again i'm really trying to stay under that hundred dollar budget i've used old overhold a number of times he's a fine gentleman and makes a good whiskey i don't really like the red cap though that's fairly new that was a black cap i don't know why the red cap i got this one for right around 20 it's a 750 750 milliliters i wanted a decent sized bottle because this is going to be the base of a number of my cocktails i am using rye whiskey because this is most seen in classic cocktail recipes of course you don't have to get rye if you're a big bourbon fan get bourbon evan williams black label is a good value if you want something a little bit higher proof than the white label let's see scotch whiskey famous grouse that's a good one see there there are options and if you want you can have multiple whiskies but when you're trying to kind of reach across the spectrum of cocktails it's best to just stick with one bottle i thought to stay in the budget so rye whiskey check next up we have gin gin this is a fun one i haven't had this one on the channel but i went with gordon's london dry this is value in a bottle i found it on the bottom shelf don't necessarily be scared of the bottom shelf of your liquor aisle don't spend all of your time down there but there are bargains to be had gordon's is one of them another cheaper option that i like is beefeater but beefeater is actually here in chicago considerably more than gordon's also i want to point out that this bottle is 40 abv and that's here in the united states but i read that in the uk or europe it's a little lower proof this came in right around 14 with tax that's bang for your buck next ah rum i love rum and one thing i love about rum is there is real value in it so i actually went as cheap as i could with the rom and still be quality don q gold i really think is great value 13. after tax it's a light spanish-style rum great in a daiquiri great in any number of easy drinking rum drinks do whatever you want there's a lot of bargains to be found in the rum world i mean you can spend a lot of money too if you want but you don't have to now you might look at this and say well what about tequila what about vodka what about brandy i agree these are all wonderful things but you see i'm having to really rein it in here and i'm not just gonna pick all base spirits i need some modifiers i i i need something to work with so i decided to break it up have three bottles as my base spirit and then bring in some modifiers dry vermouth i'm going to mispronounce this noi pratt noi no i know why no i pratt it does look like noily uh all right you can all yell at me in the comments down below but it's a great vermouth now what you see that i've done here is i went with the smaller bottle i do this even if i'm not on a budget vermouth doesn't last forever once you crack it open keep it in your fridge you all should know this by now unless you're new to the channel then keep your vermouth in the fridge this is i believe the original driver moves from france extremely affordable after tax i ended up paying right around seven dollars it's pretty good all right so as you can guess my next bottle is gonna be sweet vermouth but this might surprise you because the bottle that i'm grabbing is a 750 milliliter bottle of sweet vermouth chinzano don't tell me it's synzano i think it's ginzano this is actually i think a tremendous value after tax came in right around 10 if i'm going to have a bottle that is a 750 milliliter bottle of vermouth i would tend to go towards the suite because i do use sweet vermouth more than i use dry vermouth that's just based on the cocktails that i make so now i still have a little bit money left and i ended up buying two bottles of bitters number one was angostura aromatic bitters not because this is a a budget bottle it certainly isn't this is one of the most expensive bottles we have here this came in at yeah 13 bucks for four ounces that's pretty expensive but it is the classic cocktail bitters it's my crutch if i ever want a okay cocktail to taste great all right the other bitters i went with is orange bitters and i grabbed regan's orange bitters cheaper than the angostura a lot of old classic cocktails call for the orange bitters so i wanted it on the list and i had room on the list now all of this all of these all of these came in at 91 and 92 cents these are a couple different liquor stores here so i was smart shopping uh yeah so we've got a few bucks left over go grab some citrus and some sugar to make syrups which fyi if you are on a budget i highly recommend making your own syrups ounce for ounce you can't beat homemade syrup also grenadine if you're on a budget nothing beats homemade grenadine it's not that difficult to make it is incredibly good you will make tubs of it for way less than small bottles of store-bought grenadine and you can freeze it stuff will last forever it makes your cocktails wonderful on to level 2 the 200 limit but first a quick word from our sponsor thanks to today's sponsor shaker and spoon shaker and spoon is a monthly cocktail subscription all you have to do is supply the booze and they cover everything else every month you get a new box that's catered to a new spirit and inside you will find three original recipes that are gonna be three original cocktails inside this box are three recipes cater to anejo tequila this is a spritz bottle where do you even get a bottle this small citrus all kinds of syrups and recipes all right we have three recipes feather billet tijuana brass and the beet goes on i'm going with the feather billet i want to shake and drink add the tequila syrup lime juice bitters to a shaker fill ice okay let's start with tequila rose syrup smells good one dash not drop chocolate mole bitters one dash lime will garnish tada that was easy let's see if it's any good cheers love the mole in there well this is going to go down really easy and then i'll probably jump over and try the other two drinks use my link down below or the code anders at checkout and you will receive 20 off your first box at shaker and spoon thank you shaker and spoon back to the video thank you anders now the 200 limit if you had a budget of 200 you could go about this a number of different ways one is you could get these spirits but the higher end versions of them so just this list but spend more money i'm not going to do that i am going to expand upon this list i'm going to get a few more bottles so i can make a few more cocktails actually you can make a lot more cocktails options the spice of life first thing i had to get because i really kind of wanted it in this list but it didn't fit was brandy specifically cognac i got maison rouge vs normally i use maison rouge vsop that bottle is tremendous value it's only a couple dollars more than the vs however i am on a budget also the liquor store both liquor stores did not have the vsop in stock so that made my decision very easy you can use any brandy but a lot of the classics are going gonna call for cognac i also like making new orleans cocktails and cognac just works the best in those drinks this came in right around 26 with tax all right next back to modifiers what we're gonna do here is we need an orange liqueur orange liqueur is a very interesting category because you have your triple sex and you have your curacaos and this is for another time we will do a video talking about orange liqueurs also i'm always trying to come up with content and i think that that would be a fun video so we'll probably do that at some point in the future i don't know how far in the future this might be two years in the future you're gonna have to watch every week until that happens there are some very affordable triple secs there are some affordable triple secs that i think don't taste great i think there are some affordable triple sucks that are very good so you could do that i decided to take this in a different direction this is another one i'm going to mispronounce matilda i want to say matilda but it's not an a so matild it's the exo orange liqueur which is going to be in the curacao style slightly richer good on its own if you want a little nip of orange liqueur actually the smaller bottles are typically not as good a value as the larger bottles i think if you were to find this stuff in a liter bottle it probably ounce for ounce be cheaper than this little bottle this costs right around 16 for a really good orange liqueur that's not bad next we have capari paris classic called for and a number of cocktails like the negroni boulevardier old pal fun to work with this offers some bitter notes also has a sweetness up front and it comes in a smaller bottle because this can also be expensive uh let's see i ended up paying ah right around 22. next thing i bought was benedictine and i was really excited about this one the small bottle a small bottle this is a small bottle i was really happy to see this i usually go for the larger bottle it's shelf stable i have a youtube channel i make a lot of cocktails it's great in drinks the last video we did had two martini riffs with benedictine and they were so good uh yeah check out that video it was boy that was a good one this one was a little bit more expensive 27 for a half bottle i was tempted to go for a small bottle of chartreuse but i'm sure wherever you are that stuff is super expensive and here in chicago it is non-existent yeah there's there's a chartreuse shortage here i don't know what we did to piss off the uh the monks but we should repent finally last but certainly not least we went with another aromatic bitters peshovs aromatic bitters that's right because i like it and it's my list and i'm making cocktails for me actually it's called for in a lot of new orleans cocktails and this bottle came in right around five dollars so i mean this this 100 chunk here actually came in at 99.52 i feel like we need some kind of graphic like i really nailed it all together came in at 191 dollars and 44 cents that gives us eight dollars and 56 cents to go buy some limes now this is the fun part all right i'm going to see what sort of cocktails we can come up with just these bottles here no other spirits included just citrus and sugar and then we're going to see what i can come up with all of these i'm not going to go into depth here i will leave the recipes though either down below in the description or maybe we'll do maybe we'll do like a screen thing so if you want you can stop and look at it all right so for the hundred dollars let's get set up i'm gonna go with five because i have three clean shaking tins and two mixing glasses we're gonna include all of these bottles one way or another i've got two syrups here this is my semi-rich simple syrup one and a half to one and grenadine homemade i also have lemon and lime juice manhattan that's an easy one [Music] working clean clean and work working clean [Music] get a good seal [Music] tada we've got daiquiri queen's park hotel super cocktail scoff law manhattan martini no garnishes because i'm just going to move on to the next ones but i will leave recipes with the garnishes down below or on the screen or wherever i decide to place them next yeah not bad for 100 bucks now on to the 200 tier let's see what we can make first thing to catch my eye is the campari where's my oh right here [Music] we have eggs we have eggs [Music] i'm good for a second i thought it might be salt [Music] again doing no real garnishes so for the 200 level these are just a few what i ended up doing here is the sidecar white lady 12 mile limit negroni and the vicar right how many cocktails is this 10. we just made 10 cocktails with bottles that we got on a 200 budget this is just the tip of the iceberg there are so many drinks that you can make now of course you should cater this list to your liking if you want to make margaritas you aren't going to find tequila here so have tequila on your list and the same thing goes with other spirits i do have videos that go in depth on most of these cocktails so go check them out i'll leave a link down below thank you for watching like and subscribe thank you shaker and spoon for sponsoring today's video and i will see you next time cheers [Music] you

Channel: Anders Erickson

Views: 433,506

Keywords: how to shop bar budget, bottles to buy on budget, budget booze bottles, affordable bottles to buy, bottles on a budget, what to buy for a bar, bottles to have for a bar, best spirits to buy for a bar, budget bar, budget bottles, what spirits to buy, bottles to buy for your bar, booze on a budget, budget bottles to buy, budget bar build out, budget alcohol, affordable spirits for your bar, Buying bottles for bar budget, how to build out your bar, what bottles to buy bar

Id: TrWcObh6YKM

Length: 15min 43sec (943 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 15 2022