Getting started
Beginner cocktail equipment
Four tools, one trip to the shops, and you can make most of the classics properly.
It's easy to look at a fully-stocked home bar — julep strainers, channel knives, atomisers, a dedicated ice mould — and assume cocktails require a lot of specialist kit before they're worth attempting. They don't. Almost the entire canon of classic cocktails, from a Daiquiri to a Negroni, can be made properly with four things: something to shake in, something to measure with, something to stir with, and something to strain with.
The order matters less than the fact that all four are cheap and none of them are single-use — a £15-20 shaker set with a built-in jigger and strainer covers most people's first purchase in one go. What's worth avoiding is the instinct to buy a large kit upfront: half of what's in most starter bar sets (channel knives, muddlers, fine strainers) only earns its keep once you already know which drinks you make often enough to justify a dedicated tool for them.
Cocktail shaker
A sealed vessel used to combine and chill ingredients quickly with ice.
Almost every classic sour, fizz or cream-based drink is shaken, and it's the one step you genuinely can't do with your hands. A shaker chills and dilutes at the same time, in the roughly 12-15 seconds it takes to make a drink taste finished rather than raw.
Buying tip: Look for a shaker with a tight seal and a wide mouth for easy ice loading.
Jigger
A small two-sided measuring cup used to pour accurate spirit measures.
This is the tool that separates a good cocktail from a bad one more than any other single purchase. Cocktails are small, concentrated drinks — being 5ml out on a 45ml pour is a bigger error, proportionally, than being 5ml out on a pint, so free-pouring by eye is the single most common reason a home-made drink tastes off.
Buying tip: Choose a jigger with clearly marked, easy-to-read measurement lines on both sides.
Bar spoon
A long-handled spoon used for stirring drinks smoothly and layering ingredients.
You'll use this for every stirred drink (Martinis, Negronis, Manhattans) and for layering. It's cheap, it lasts forever, and the long handle reaches the bottom of a mixing glass in a way a normal spoon can't quite manage without splashing.
Buying tip: A long, twisted handle gives the smoothest stir; a flat disc end helps with layering.
Hawthorne strainer
A coiled-spring strainer that fits over a shaker to hold back ice while pouring.
Once you own a shaker, you need something to hold the ice back while you pour — this clips onto most shaker tins and does that job cleanly. It's the smallest purchase on this list, but it's the difference between a smooth pour and fishing ice cubes out of a finished drink.
Buying tip: Look for a snug-fitting coil and a strainer body that matches the diameter of your shaker tin.
What not to bother buying yet
Muddlers, blenders, channel knives, fine strainers and ice moulds are all genuinely useful — eventually. But they each serve a narrow slice of drinks (muddled cocktails, frozen drinks, citrus garnishes, silky cream cocktails, slow-melting spirit-forward serves) rather than the broad base of shaken and stirred classics you'll make most often when you're starting out. Buy them when a specific recipe keeps asking for them, not before.
The same goes for glassware. Coupe, rocks and highball glasses all make a drink look the part, but any reasonably-sized glass you already own will get a cocktail into your hand at the right temperature. Upgrade the glassware once you're confident you'll keep making drinks, not before.
Not ready to buy anything yet?
You can make a surprising number of cocktails with things already in your kitchen. See our guide to cocktail making without specialist tools for a household swap for every tool on this site, plus a curated list of drinks that need almost no equipment at all.