Urban Bar: Bar Equipment and Ephemera

In the previous column we learned about setting up the wet bar, that aspect of homekeeping that supports the making of drinks soft and hard, hot and cold. At its simplest, if you keep cold water in the fridge and/or have a coffee maker, you are keeping a wet bar. Like most basics, though to some it seems obvious, it's important, all the more so for being fundamental. So I wrote the column, knowing that someone somewhere probably smirked that I was giving instructions about water and ice.

There are distinctions between the wet bar, the hard bar (spirits, wine and beer) and the coffee bar. However, there are aspects of the home bar that apply to any and often all of its specialties, and that is where this column comes in. This column addresses the equipment and implements, known as bar ephemera, that support a bar set up. To that end, this column aggregates the wet, hard and coffee bars, with some of the information applying in aggregate, and some applying individually. We've covered many aspects of these home bars individually, collectively and cumulatively at Urban Home Blog. Numerous previous columns will apply here; and those are noted below.

This illustrates a fundamental truth of homekeeping: so much about homekeeping is interconnected while specialized. My practice of housekeeping is practical and sensible along with aesthetic. Being an urban homekeeper often necessitates this: all homekeepers have to account for every resource from budget to time, from effort to efficiency, but urban homekeepers face unique challenges and opportunities that include everything from limitations (space, leases) to advantages (culture, community). Wherever we keep our home, homekeeping forces us to telescope our efforts, to be efficient and effective without sacrificing correctness or style, to balance usefulness against considerations of cost and space.

With that in mind, I always recommend, especially for major purchases, to balance cost and availability against need and usage. This is true from investing in a good vacuum cleaner to taking care of the car; from creating and sticking to a cleaning schedule to having a well-stocked pantry. It applies to the below as well, as I have tried to make recommendations that incorporate usability and cost to provide value.

Urban Bar: Bar Equipment and Ephemera

As with all lists and guides at Urban Home Blog, this list is a based upon my years of experience as a homekeeper and a lifestyle writer, and none of these is a compensated endorsement. These recommendations are for a home bar that experiences average usage. For recommendations on stocking the bar for a party or other large event, click here. 

If you have room, consider one of the compact refrigerators commonly known as a dorm fridge. This is a smart investment for keeping waters and mixers cold while freeing up room in the kitchen refrigerator. A good dorm fridge is reasonably priced and space-efficient with both its exterior and interior dimensions. We use the inexpensive but dependable Igloo 3.2 Cubic Foot Mini Refrigerator. Note that dorm fridges are often on sale this time of year as retailers plan to release display and warehouse space in anticipation of back to school season.

You can also use that dorm fridge to keep a sixer cold for, depending upon your household, a wine cooler is typically a better investment than a beer cooler. The best temperature for beer is 45 degrees F which can be maintained in a regular refrigerator. For wine, optimal temperature is 55 degrees F, which a wine cooler is designed to maintain. The ideal wine cooling set up is separate coolers each for white, red and sparkling wines, but that is often impractical. In our urban home, we use the Culinair 16-bottle wine cooler to store our best bottles and equip it with a wine cooler thermometer to ensure that it maintains an ongoing temperature of 55 - 58 degrees F which is agreeable for whites, reds and blends. We do not cellar sparkling wine but buy it cold as needed by the occasion. Ongoing, we keep a wine inventory on a spreadsheet on the home computer. Not only is this important for insurance purposes for valuable bottles, it is invaluable both for memory-keeping as we annotate each uncorking with tasting notes and dates upon opening and for replenishing during our regular excursions to Central Coast Wine Country.

For the home wet bar, fresh juice is always preferred. As noted in Urban Home's Guide to Kitchen Electrics, the Chef'n Fresh Force Citrus Juicer is indispensable for quick blasts of lime or lemon juice, as is a classic glass juicer (look for one that fits your kitchen style). However, these are not practical for expressing large quantities of juice for happy hour or a pitcher of lemonade. For that, we prefer a lever-press juicer over a heavy-duty juice extrator. We like Best Choice Pro Manual Juicer for its sturdy, user-friendly design. For its price point, this kitchen tool is a perfect example of return on investment. As card-carrying southern Californians, we cannot resist juicing fresh oranges for the breakfast table, and this juicer makes short work of that task. Remember to pour citrus juice through a sieve, and to rinse and save some of the seeds for sprouting and replanting. If you have extra juice, store it for up to two days in a glass jar or pitcher with a tight fitting lid -- never store fresh juice in metal or plastic, either of which can throw off the freshness of the juice.

Many drinks require a blender, an ice cream maker, or both. As noted in a previous column,Cuisinart's Smart Power Seven Speed Blender and Cuisinart’s Classic Ice Cream Maker remain the standards in our urban home. Both meet the criteria for a smart household investment: they are very well designed for longevity and safety with correct usage, and are available at agreeable price points. Hardcore home barkeepers often maintain a separate blender just for the bar, but we have found that one blender is all the typical household really needs. A better investment for the home bar is an ice crusher. As noted in the previous column, the Hamilton Beach 68050 Ice Shaver has the two necessary settings to make cracked ice and snow ice, which are the cuts of ice most useful for frozen drinks.

For the coffee bar, we still rely on Cuisinart's Brew Central 12 Cup Coffee Maker for daily coffee duty. It has remained as reliable as when I first wrote about it. Be sure to replace the gold filter once a year, and to regularly clean the coffee maker with Dip-It to prolong the life cycle of this exemplary kitchen electric. I am excited to report that Cuisinart has also released a reasonably priced burr grinder for home usage. It performs well with all grinds. Whether you use a burr or rotary grinder such as Cuisinart’s Grind Central Coffee Grinder, unplug the unit regularly to clean its mechanisms with a coffee brush and rinse the storage chambers with warm water.

We struggled with the purchase of an espresso maker for the very best ones are imported and their cost reflects that. We auditioned the Nespresso Pixie and found that it delivers a solid demitasse with the ease of operation and handsome design that recall the power of Italian sportscars. If espresso is a passion in your home, the Ascaso Dream is an expense worth saving up for, with the bonus that the necessary training, which should be included with the purchase price, will give you the chance to develop your crema alongside other espresso lovers. That socializing is among the most important gifts coffee gives the world; accordingly, a trip to the local coffeehouse will always be the best way to enjoy, even evangelize, espresso. So if you do get an espresso maker, be sure to invite friends and family over for a well-rendered cup.

If you're not serving espresso, for after dinner or coffee hour service, we like Bodum Eileen French Press served either in coordinating Eileen cups or in gold earthenware after dinner coffee cups we found while antiquing in wine country. Both contemporary European and vintage American coffee service pieces are a great way to express your homekeeping aesthetic. Seeking them out is the very definition of the pleasures and rewards of collecting, for not only do you discover pieces you love, but you perpetuate the lives of those pieces by keeping them in use. Over time you can develop a nice collection, and through acquisition and usage the pieces become important to your home as heirlooms just as they were important in the homes before yours. Remember to include valuable pieces -- for example, high quality china or silversmith pieces -- in your home inventory for insurance purposes.

The pleasures of vintage household collecting also apply to the hard bar. Nothing is a hotter collectible than vintage barware from the Mad Men era. While it is ideal to look for intact hostess sets in carriers, part of the charm of a vintage barware collection is its pastiche. Shop for vintage barware by theme, color or gut instinct rather than perfectionism -- though obviously chipped, cracked, uncleanable or very valuable pieces are to be put on display but not put into practical usage. Whether you stock vintage or contemporary pieces, basic barware set-up includes two cocktail shakers, one for clear liquor and one for dark liquor, two mixing glasses, six to twelve chimney glasses, four to six highball glasses, four to six double old fashioned glasses, two martini glasses, and a two-walled ice bucket with tongs or a scoop. If you serve soda fountain drinks, add two to four soda glasses and a box of paper straws. For additional recommendations regarding barware, click here, and for recommendations regarding stemware, click here.

Ongoing, maintain supplies of cocktail picks, swizzle sticks and pub mats; these are easily available at bar suppliers or online, or through collecting either as above or during nights on the town. Additional bar supplies to have available include a sturdy bottle opener, a lever-press wine opener including a foil cutter and aerating funnel, a waiter's corkscrew, a muddler, a strainer, a bar board with a citrus knife, bar spoons, bar towels, and a pack of matches, safely utilized and safely stored. And, harking to the dorm fridge and the collecting trips that form much of the backbone of this column, while a bar jigger and pony are essential to the hard bar, nothing is more personal to the history of your household and its inhabitants than a collection of shot glasses obtained during your travels, not the least of which is summer vacation!