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 is going to bring you joy.
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too then there is a link below. 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.
