Expanding Your Bar, One Spirit at a Time

I've been receiving a lot of comments telling me I've been making you spend a lot of money expanding your bar. I'm sorry about that... no, not really. I'm excited about it! Nothing makes more happy than knowing you're all taking the show, recipes and content, seriously enough to lay down money on it.

We also get questions about "what should I buy for my expanding bar?" In other words, what core spirits should everyone have at the ready when planting life into their first home bar. You can try my method, I purchased what I know I needed for my favorite cocktails. I like Mai Tai's and other more Polynesian cocktails so I had a few bottles of rum, coconut rum, apricote brandy, orgeat syrup and grenadine.

Apricote brandy? Yes, I know I only needed it for a few drinks but they were drinks I loved. As long as I could make a few Mai Tai's from the recipe book I had I was happy. Of course, later I found the recipe for a Trader Vic's Mai Tai and haven't looked back. This required Orange Curacao and Jamaican rum so I picked some of that up (almost a year later). I've expanded to whiskey sour's and purchased some good whiskey for it. The end result? My bar is expanding based on my own tastes. I can build new cocktails from my growing list of ingredients.

So, how did I build my initial bottles for my "home bar" (which consists of one shelf)? I found a few tasty sounding cocktail recipes and bought those ingredients. I became a professional in those small subsets of cocktails before moving to the next and before I knew it, a full bar was born! Don't worry about having a bottle of every neutral grain spirit, every schnapps style and all the liqueurs in the world. Build it one bottle at a time and you'll find more respect for each bottle without breaking the bank.

Of course, since starting my show and website(s) the review samples pour in and I'm no longer rolling with a few bottles of alcohols, but this is an extreme case. My method worked for years before the show started.

Latest Announcements

Alcohols by Volume is alive! Our new show, located at alcoholsbyvolume.com is up and running. I'm still working on some site features and layout but I wanted to get the show going as soon as possible. It's all about the content; the site layout will grow with the show. We'll be launching a new show every Saturday and Monday to make up for the two days we don't launch Common Man Cocktails episodes. Yes, this is a lot of work, yes we're dedicated and committed to new content!

Hopefully you enjoy the new show and find it both entertaining and informative. We'll be tasting all types of cool spirits and making cocktails along the way to see how they taste with different brands pitted against each other. We'll rate them and give you a "his and her" impression on each tasting. Yes, Jennifer is joining me in the show!

Also, checkout the latest audio podcast where we review Shiraz/Syrah red wine at EveryDayDrinkers.com.

Latest Reviews

Does anyone own a SodaStream? I bought it to make my own soda water for cocktails but my kids can't get enough of their soda mixes (no high fructose corn syrup either!). I'm definitely going to look at showing this off on a future episode!