Setting Up Your Home Bar

This is a very basic and introductory guide to stocking a home bar.

You may be daunted by the prospect of building up your home bar.  "What should I buy?  Everything is so expensive.  What brands are good?" may be some thoughts that run through your mind.

If you spend a bit of time thinking about the basics, invest in some basic tools and glassware, and stock up on some essential liquors,  you can have a homebar that will impress amateurs and even make die-hard cocktail enthusiasts nod in quiet approval.
Core to your liquor cabinet will be the six basic spirits:
Brandy, Whiskey, Rum, Tequila, Gin, and Vodka.
To this you will also want to add Dry Vermouth, Sweet Vermouth, and Triple Sec. With just those nine basics, and some pantry items like lemons, limes, sugar, juices and soda, you can get started making many mixed drinks.
Of course, over time, there will be additional spirits, liqueurs, and cordials that you'll discover you'll need, and we've provided a list below to get you started.

One thing to consider is your personal taste, and the drinking habits of your friends. Are you a gin drinker?  Do your friends like tequila drinks? If the answer is no, don't be in a hurry to add a bottle to your collection just because it is on a list.

Below, is a list of some basic supplies you may want to consider adding to your home bar.  Specific brand recommendations are added (in pink) for a bit of guidance, but keep in mind that this is a matter of personal preference.  Links in blue will take you to an page that will introduce you to that ingredient.

Base Spirits (one bottle each of these six spirits)
Brandy, Cognac, Grappa, Pisco, Calvados and Apple, Cherry, Plum

(Ernest and Julio Gallo makes a serviceable Californian brandy for mixed drinks)
(Macchu or BarSol for a decent Pisco)
(Laird's Bonded 100, or AppleJack for a decent apple brandy)

Whiskey, Scotch, Irish, American Rye, American Bourbon, Canadian

(Old Overholt for Rye, Buffalo Trace for Bourbon)

Rum, Rhum Agricole, Cachaca

(Cruzan for white rum, Gosling's for dark rum)

Tequila, and Mescal

(Sauza Plata is fine for mixed drinks)

Gin
(Gordon's, Tanqueray, or Plymouth)
Vodka

(Sobieski or  Ketel One)

Cordials
Amaretto
Bitters(Potable) (Campari)
Coffee (Kahlua is fine)
Curacao, Triple Sec, or other Orange Cordials (Cointreau is best)
Creme de Cacao (chocolate)
(comes clear or brown, choose clear for your first bottle)
Creme de Cassis (blackcurrant)
Creme de Menthe (mint) (comes clear or green, choose clear)
Herbal (Benedictine) do not buy B&B, which is mixed with brandy
Maraschino (Luxardo)
Sloe Gin (Plymouth)

Bitters
Angostura find at any supermarket
Peychaud's find at Premier Gourmet
Orange Bitters (Regan's) find at Premier Gourmet

Syrups and Sweeteners
Table Sugar, Bar Sugar, and Simple Syrup
Honey
Agave Syrup
Grenadine, and other flavored syrups

Juices
lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit,
pineapple, cranberry, tomato

Diary
milk, cream, butter
eggs

Garnish
lemon (for peel and twist), lime (for peel and twist), cocktail olives

Tools
Two piece Cocktail Shaker (Boston Shaker)
Hawthorne Strainer (Oxo makes the best one)
Fine Tea Strainer
Measuring Jigger (Oxo makes a good one)
Citrus Juicer
Long Handled Bar Spoon
Muddler
Wine Bottle Corkscrew
Bottle opener


Glassware
V-Shaped cocktail glass, highball glass, old-fashioned glass

SeaBar Closes Williamsville Location. Will Expand Bar and Lounge Area At SeaBar City

Yesterday, Mike Andrzejewski, owner and chef of the popular SeaBar restaurants wrote to Bill Rappaport's Buffalo Restaurant Guide and announced that SeaBar would be closing it's Williamsville location and concentrating on it's SeaBar City location at 475 Ellicott St, Buffalo.

In an attached press release Andrzejewski stated that "in late April we will be punctuating our move with a full service Bar and Lounge, and an expanded menu. We will be proud to offer a contemporary, yet relaxing top shelf bar, a thoughtful wine list, and a larger selection of great sakes and beers. The Seabar menu will still feature the unsurpassed quality of seafood and sushi, as well as Mike and Sherri’s uniquely creative and  beautifully executed cuisine."

While SeaBar's closing is a regrettable loss for the Williamsville community, it is an easy to understand decision.  Great owner/chefs are driven, often single-minded in their pursuit of quality and running a successful restaurant at a consistent level. And often, the logistics of running several smaller locations can be a drain on artistic and expressive talent.

Regardless of the reasons behind the announced closing, we are optimistic that Andezejewski and crew will continue to shine in the city, and the expanded bar service at the City location will be a success.

Creme Yvette to Return to Store Shelves After Fifty Year Hiatus

Three years after introducing St Germain Elderflower Liqueur, Cooper Spirits Company is reintroducing the violet liqueur Crème Yvette in the U.S.

Nearly all mid-century bartending guides suggest that Creme Yvette was part of any well-stocked bar, and it was essential in classic cocktails such as the Blue Moon or Affinity.  But in 1969, it disappeared.

Cooper's family business, the Philadelphia-based Charles Jacquin et Cie, has owned the recipe for decades but discontinued the product in 1969.  But after the success of St Germain, and increasing nagging from cocktail experts and writers David Wondrich and Dale DeGroff, Cooper began to look into resurrecting the unique cordial.

Crème Yvette is a blend of dried violet petals from Provence, a fresh berry maceration of blackberries, red raspberries, wild strawberries and blackcurrant from Burgundy, and a spice blend of honey, orange peel and vanilla.
If you are a fan of berry liqueurs like Chambord, Creme de Cassis, Pama, or Sloe Gin, this is one liqueur you are going to want to try.  Creme Yvette sounds like the perfect ingredient for adding fruity and floral character to a drink.

Already, to be totally  predictable, the folks at MarthaStewartLivingOnmiMedia suggest's mixing Creme Yvette with sparkling wine.  (Is there anything the editors of ML Living don't mix with sparkling wine for a "quick and easy festive drink?)"

Although initial distribution is extremely limited, (the liqueur was unveiled at New York’s Astor Wines and Spirits and sold out instantly,) Cooper Spirits has more on it's way to NYC and Los Angeles, with distribution to expand to Illinois, Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts by May.

So, when will it arrive in smaller markets like Buffalo?  It's hard to tell, but if you have an interest in a taste or bottle, it would be wise to start asking your favorite bartender or liquor store manager about it now, so that they can start nagging their distributor about it.

Buffalo makes another Top 100 List. Let's Drink to that!

In a recent Men’s Health article, "America’s Drunkest Cities," Buffalo ranked in 66th place out of 100 cities. Fresno, CA, came in first, while Boston, MA, came in dead-last.  Buffalo was more sober than neighboring friend Pittsburgh (59th), but a bit more tipsy than those lightweights, Cleveland (73rd) and Rochester (98th).

Usually, when Buffalo makes a top 100 list of any kind, we like to jump all over it like Ryan Miller on a puck. But in this case, Men’s Health ranked cities according to “most liver disease, most binge drinking, most deaths in DUI-related crashes, most DUI arrests and least stringent DUI laws.”
Oops. Perhaps it's not exactly cause to lift our glasses in celebration.

Men's Health took a cue from Forbes magazine who, four years ago, published a top list of their own.  In the Forbes list of drunken cities, Buffalo was not mentioned.

So what happened? Did Buffalo get less sober, or were the methodologies of the two lists different? Well, if you ever attended a statistics class in college, (or were friends with a drunken frat boy that did,) you will know that things can get pretty misleading with statistics, and the same statistics can usually be presented in totally different ways when you interpret the data on which they are based.  Politicians do this all the time.

For example, would not "DUI crashes and arrests" be logically higher in snowy Buffalo, where more people drive their own car - rather than densely urban cities like Manhattan or San Francisco, where drinkers are more likely to walk or take public transportation?  Of the five criteria of study, three of them involve automobiles, and the fourth, "binge-drinking" relies on self-reported numbers, not the most accurate.   The survey doesn’t attempt to correct for those sorts of differences.  And no effort was made to look at per-capita consumption of alcohol based on reliable sources like tax revenue on beer, wine, and spirits sales.

But, you can't really blame Men's Health for inadequacies like this in an attention grabbing list like "Drunkest Cities."  Like Cosmopolitan for women, Men's Health often has a tendency to resort to fluff and content-lite features to fill their pages, and I doubt that many, besides us, paid much attention to the List.

A win-win situation for Buffalo's Flying Bison and Utica's F.X. Matt

Flying Bison Brewery of Buffalo recently voted on a deal that would mesh Flying Bison with the F.X. Matt Brewing Company of Utica, NY, makers of the Saranac line of beers and the 7th largest craft brewery in the U.S.

According to a Flying Bison's website, the agreement will allow Flying Bison President Tim Herzog and his staff to "do what they do best - brew beer, talk beer and support the community. The only difference the community will see is that our beers will more readily available.”

Flying Bison had difficulty producing beer at a profit, as ingredient prices continued to rise, while recession-driven retail prices remained flat and beer consumers curtailed their spending. In October 2009 Flying Bison stopped bottling their beers and decided to only sell their beer in kegs. By December, some taverns could not receive keg beers.

Originally, rumors circulated that under the agreement, F.X. Matt would move production of Flying Bison bottled beer to it's bottling plant in Utica where it has excess capacity.

But the Flying Bison website assures that, instead, the Ontario Street facility in Buffalo will be expanded "to brew, bottle, keg, promote and distribute more beer out of the facility than in the past."

According to Herzog, Flying Bison will begin by focusing on stocking local retail stores with bottled Buffalo Lager and Aviator Red, while trying to win back taps at local pubs and restaurants.

The Utica Observer-Dispatch reported that ideas that were discussed for the future included partnering to produce some Flying Bison beer in Utica if the brand became more popular, while testing new Saranac beers in smaller quantities at the Buffalo microbrewery, instead of having to make larger quantities in Utica.