Glassware

Glassware

You have to serve mixed drinks in something, and there’s a good chance you already have something that works perfectly fine, rather it be a small mason jar or a Solo cup. I have a particular love/hate relationship with glassware. This is based on having minimal space to store glassware, wanting things that are more utilitarian, and having a tendency to break things. On the flipside, I love shapes and functional geometry while enjoying the situational changes that a different vessel can bring.

Throughout Tipply, we’ve chosen to use “serving vessel” to refer to all the different shapes and types of things you consume a drink from. This ties into our use of “service ice” to distinguish the ice which a drink is delivered with, in contrast with “preparation ice” which is used to dilute a mixed drink and often discarded. By attributing every drink by the type of service vessel, type of ice, and dilution that occurs, Tipply is able to use data to guide you to the most practical service vessels to procure. Not only what type, but what size. While there are 30 general types of service vessels used in the more than 2,500 recipes accumulated in Tipply, these are the most practical:

Cocktail glass, coupe, or Nick & Nora

Collins, fizz, or highball

Old fashioned or rocks

Tiki mug

One of these types of service vessels is requested in 64% of the recipes. There is simply no need to have every type of fancy pants vessel out there. If you do, that’s great - I’ll still have a drink with you, but I myself would opt for less. For many years now, my primary service vessels have been a set of stackable old fashioned glasses I got when a local bar closed down. As these have been left at neighbors houses or broken, I wish I had bought more of them. At 12oz, I’ve served almost every drink in them, and I had a good time with each of those drinks. One day, after getting bit by the tiki bug, I decided to buy a tiki mug. I quickly realized how slippery a slope service vessels can be. So proceed carefully, and don’t forget that however nice the vessel is, it arrives empty.

What to look for in glassware

There are four key attributes I look for in an ice mold:

• Shape: Ice is used in the preparation and service of drinks. It doesn’t matter what the ice looks like when you’re preparing a drink, but it can increase the visual appeal when serving a drink. For that reason, I like a simple, utilitarian shape for ice - either cubes or spheres. Depending on the glassware you are serving drinks in, you’ll want to choose an ice mold that makes ice that fits nicely in the glass. An oversized cube in a small glass can look ridiculous, or that big sphere might not even fit!

• Ice size: Specifically, I am interested in two things. First, is the resulting ice a size that can use to calculate in my head the amount of dilution I am adding to a drink? An ice mold that makes 1 oz of frozen water is great! Second, is the ice too big to fit nicely in my glass?

• Ease of removal: Does the ice cube out of the mold easily in one piece

• Compactness: My ice is made in the same freezer my family uses, so space is limited. It's good if the ice mold is a compact shape and if I can stably stack molds on top of each other.

Cocktail (“Martini”), Coupe, or Nick & Nora

5.5 - 7 ounces

This group is the one that most folks will dive into first - it’s the hoity toity stemware. It just feels sophisticated and a little more golden when you’re holding the stem, sipping from the bowl, and pointing your pinky at who knows what. The most common type in this group is the cocktail glass, commonly referred to as the “martini glass.” I find It’s V-shaped bowl prone to sloshing a drink on my hand, and instead prefer the more rounded shape of the coupe glass. The Nick & Nora is more rounded, almost goblet shaped. But what each of these three glass types have in common is a wide bowl and a stem. The stem helps to keep the drink colder, that is, when you hold it by the stem and not the bowl. The wide bowl helps disperse the drink’s aromas, not directing them straight into your nose and overpowering you. These glasses contain less volume as they are typically called for in recipes where the drink is served without ice. The three types have been used fairly interchangeably over the years, with the cocktail glass becoming more prominent in the 80’s-90’s, then eclipsed by the coupe which re-gained popularity in the 2010’s.

Cocktail Glass

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Coupe Glass

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Nick & Nora Glass

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Collins, Fizz, or Highball

8 - 12 ounces

With straight sides and a slim body, these glasses are distinguished by their narrowness, height, and volume. Typically, the collins and highball glasses are called for in recipes that include ice when served. The between the collins and highball glasses are almost not worth presenting, as they are used fairly interchangeably, and often the collins is taller and narrower than highballs while also containing more volume. The fizz glass, however, is typically narrower than a collins and contains less volume than a highball, and is often called for in drink recipes that are not served with ice. By being both tall, narrow, and with lower volume, the fizz glass shape enables the drink’s foam to better rise above the rim.

Collins Glass

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Highball Glass

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Fizz Glass

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Old Fashioned or Rocks

5 - 9 ounces

Old fashioned and rocks glasses are short, wide glasses. Old fashioned glasses have a thick base and the sides feature ornamentation, such as patterns cut, molded, or etched into the glass.The thicker bases is more supportive of muddling ingredients in the glass.Rocks glasses often have faceted sides.Both types, have a wide brim. As this type of glass is often called for in spirit forward recipes, the wider brim allows for the alcohol vapors to be spread over a larger area and not overwhelm the drinker.

Old Fashioned Glass

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Rocks Glass

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Tiki Mug

10 - 12 ounces

You’d be hard pressed to find a more creative category of drinking vessels than tiki mugs. Tiki mugs started appearing in bars in the late 1940’s, initially as ceramic vessels representing exotic scenes, rum barrels, and skulls. These days, you can get a tiki mug sculpted like just about anything, from mass-produced quality to art collector quality.

Tiki Mug

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Flute

6 - 8 ounces

Flute

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My recommendation

First off, glassware is reflective of your particular style. Any specific example of glassware you find below is meant to be illustrative, even if it is the glass I use. If you want a gilded glass, an etched glass, a taller stem, or something colorful: do you.

Based on the data presented above, I recommend conservatively expanding your glassware to include a set of glassware from each of these categories:

Old fashioned or rocks

Cocktail glass, coupe, or Nick & Nora

Collins, fizz, or highball

Furthermore, I recommend that you purchase them in that specific order and here is why. As I mentioned above, you can drink a cocktail out of anything. Investing in a decent set of old fashioned or rocks glasses can be used for any drink, with or without ice. Whereas a cocktail, coupe, or Nick & Nora not only are traditionally used for recipes that are not served with ice, if they were used with ice, they would be prone to letting the ice slide out and onto the face of the imbiber. Start with practical - start with an old fashioned or rocks glass.

Next, pick up a set of cocktail, coupe, or Nick & Nora glasses. Once you’re sure you enjoy mixing drinks, you won’t feel too awkward spending money on glasses you won’t use for anything else. It’s a splurge. Having a diversity of glassware is fun and can help set some moments apart from others. No matter how classy my friends are, 50% of the time I serve a drink in a cocktail glass to a friend they sort of chuckle and act impressed. It’s that easy!

After acquiring stemware, I suggest branching out into collins, highball, or fizz glasses. This will be less used than the aforementioned types of glassware, but when you need them, they are a practical vessel for that size of drink. For many years I served my gin & tonics in a pint glass - because that’s what I had. The pint glass had too much room, so I usually turned it into a double. Not because I always wanted to, but because it’s what the glass allowed. To me, it feels like a bad conversation if you’re sitting down to enjoy a fresh drink that is only half there. Collins, highballs, and fizz glasses are perfect for longer drinks and presentations that look great with a full glass (i.e., foamy fizzes).After having these three types of glassware, you venture into the area of unreasonable and unnecessary serving vessels. Brandy snifters, shot glasses, port glasses, cafe glasses, pouse glasses… and tiki mugs. It would be extremely difficult to suggest a type of vessel that is more unreasonable, unnecessary, and beneficial than a tiki mug. You don’t need a tiki mug - but I love mine. Every zombie, shrunken skull, coconaut, and jet pilot I make tastes better out of a tiki mug. My tiki mugs reflect my mood. I suggest you find one or more that match your moods.

As you advance your cocktailian techniques, you'll want a Lewis Bag and a mallet, but don't worry about that yet. What you should worry about instead is keeping you molds filled and cleaning them. If you make a lot of cocktails, you'll use a lot of ice. Go ahead and buy two of the regular sized, 1.25” ice cube molds. Each mold is good for about 5 drinks, so if you're serving friends and family, buy accordingly. The larger 2” ice cubes can be used interchangeably with spheres. Heck, you can use regular cubes in lieu of large cubes, or vice versa. It's just fun to have some variety.

And remember: cocktails are usually diluted 20%, and that dilution comes from your ice. Dilution is good, so use good ice.

And if you do run out of ice, you can use Tipply’s “No Ice” filter for a list of cocktails you can still enjoy.