So, you’ve got some tasty bottles of your favorite booze, and you’ve got some fancy glasses to drink out. But how do you go about actually making some fancy drinks?

Here’s the thing. You don’t actually need much of anything to make cocktails at home. Do you have a glass and a spoon? Really, you can get by with that. It won’t be as elegant. It won’t feel the same. But in a pinch, you don’t actually need much of anything to mix a drink.

But, I’m guessing you’re not here because you’re happy mixing your cocktail in an Ikea glass with a table spoon. You, like me, are trying to build out a home bar: something with character and maybe even a touch of class. It doesn’t even take all that much to up your home bar game! With a few key pieces of gear, you can wow all of your friends with how much of a cocktail dork you really are.

Mixing Containers

To start, you need to have something to mix your drinks in. Shaken or stirred? It may feel like a classic James Bond question. Depending on what you’re drinking, you’ll want to be ready to do both.

For stirring, I like having a tall, straight-sided mixing glass. The glass provides a nice layer of insulation that helps you chill the drink without loosing much of that chill through the container. A pint glass or something similar can also serve as a nice mixing glass if you don’t want to invest in anything fancy. And you’ll need a spoon for stirring everything, but more on that in a bit.

To get all shaken up, you have several well-known options. You’ve probably seen the classic 3-piece cobbler shaker. It consists of larger tin container, a top piece with a built-in strainer, and cap to keep everything in while you’re shaking. For a number of reasons, I’m not a fan of this approach (and as such, I don’t have one to take a picture of).

I love what’s called tin-on-tin shaking. As you can see above, my home bar has a set of tin shakers of two different sizes. The small one fits very nicely inside the larger one and quite easily forms the seal needed to get your shake on. The tin will get cold as you shake, so be ready for some frosty hands, but the simplicity of using and maintaining this setup will be worth it in the end.

Measuring Tools

Now to transfer your favorite ingredients from the bottle to the mixing container. Here, a good deal of precision is required. Mixing a great cocktail is in large part about getting the measurements (or at least the ratios) right. So you need a way to measure your ingredients before adding them to your mixing container.

For this you’ll probably want a nice jigger or two. The important thing here is to get something that gives you all of the measurements that you need and is also easy to use. Many jiggers will be double-sided, with a smaller side and a larger side. Some of them will also have lines or other markings inside to mark off smaller measurements. The jigger I have here is 30mL on the small side (with marks for 10mL and 20mL) and 45mL on the other side (with marks for 15mL and 30mL). I find that having that range of measurements does quite nicely for accurately measuring the amounts that I need (if you really want to dork out, you should make sure to calibrate all of your jiggers using a kitchen scale — they can be impressively off in their measurements).

A Few Other Handy Tools

When I was talking about stirring above, I didn’t really give much attention to a good bar spoon. But a good bar spoon can make your stirring as silky smooth as some of the finest bed sheets in existence. Get yourself a solid, long bar spoon with a nicely twisted handle. That twist lets the spoon roll around in your hand as it spins in your mixing glass.

Once you’ve stirred or shaken your drink, you’re going to need to pour it into your drinking glass. And you want to pour all of the beverage out, while keeping all of the ice you used to chill the drink in your mixing container (even for drinks served on the rocks, you’ll want to use different ice in your drinking glass). To help with this pouring, you’ll want a strainer to hold back the ice while the drink pours.

Again, there’s a world of options out there, but to get started, I recommend a simple Hawthorne strainer. It fits well in both shaking tins and mixing glasses. The handle on it makes it easy to hold in place while pouring. And the spring around the edge lets you manually position it against the edge of the container to set the right gap for whatever you’re pouring.

For pouring shaken drinks, you may also want a fine-mesh strainer to pour through. This can catch the small chips of ice that break off during the shaking process and also bits of pulp that may be in fruit juices used in the drink among other things. A simple kitchen fine-mesh strainer will do.

Wrapping It All Up

In the picture at the top, you may also see that I have a couple of items called “speed pourers.” These are certainly not required. And by no means am I going for speed at home. But I find that having a couple of these around can aid with pouring precise measurements from otherwise difficult-to-pour bottles and I enjoy using these on a semi-regularly basis. But of course, you may find them utterly useless. I certainly would not call them an essential home bar tool.

Similarly, there are many important and not-so-important bar tools I left off the list here. I didn’t talk about muddling. I didn’t talk about cutting fruit or making garnishes. I didn’t talk about a whole host of accessories that can make your home bar all the more delightful and fun. As you build up your home bar, you may very well find yourself getting fancier tools and experimenting with all sorts of nifty things.

There’s a fine balance to be struck between simplicity and having all of the gadgets. As you make more of your favorite drinks, you’ll naturally figure out the tools that you use most often. Keeping these accessible and not among a clutter of lesser used tools will help keep your home bar flowing easily.