How I Refresh My Bar When The Weather Changes

Seasonal STUFF I Do to my Home Bar to Keep Things Fun.

I doubt any of us really need another thing to add to our to-do lists right now, but hear me out on this one. Doing a seasonal home bar refresh isn’t the most important bit of seasonal housekeeping, but it’s one of my favorite things to do when the weather changes to feel like I’m ready to offer hospitality.

Especially going into the holidays, I know how great it feels when you’ve got a fun new Toddy recipe to serve on a cold night. If you love offering “drinks at my place” to fill time before a late dinner reservation, you get it.

This doesn’t require big effort for big results, but whether your home has become a constant social destination or you’ve just got one friend who really likes martinis,

Clear Some Space

You might be able to skip this step, but I always find that when the weather shifts, I’m shifting bottles around. The pineapple rum is going to the bottom shelf, and the dustier Irish whiskeys and cognacs are coming back up top for the season. I’m done with spritzes for the next six months, but I’ll still use Aperol for Paper Planes year-round. The margarita syrups? Not so much.

They’re getting used (or at least tested) so that I don’t feel twice as bad tossing them in the Spring. For the martini drinkers, this is a good time to remind you that your vermouth’s shelf life in the refrigerator is about a month (some people say two). Also, you’re out of olives.

Aside from the seasonal changes, I’ll also take this time to do one of my favorite things: eliminating nearly empty bottles.

There’s a very good reason not to leave a bottle on the shelf for six months when the contents are mostly air: oxygen. Over time, it flattens flavors in everything, and while liquor won’t necessarily “go bad” on a shelf, it can lose flavor, get cloudy, and generally decline in quality.

Stick Some Cocktails in the Freezer

You don’t have to chug this stuff, by the way. I like to eliminate a bottle by making a batch of freezer cocktails.

Martinis and Negronis are a great candidate for this kind of drink — their ingredients have a high alcohol content, and there are no syrups or juices. You generally don’t want to pre-batch drinks with perishables in the recipe because lowering the proof makes an environment for bacteria to thrive (and lowers the proof enough for the ingredients to freeze, which will shatter glass in your freezer).

But you can also batch portions of a recipe, and add the juices and syrups later. I often mix the various spirits for Singapore Slings (gin, heering, benedictine, coiintreau, bitters) once I can see that I’ll kill two or more bottles with a batch.

I’ll combine the ingredients according to the recipe, note how many servings are in the bottle, and which ingredients are included with Blue Painter’s Tape, and the next time I go to make a round, five minutes of measuring is already done for me.

You don’t have to have an encyclopedia knowledge of cocktail recipes to do this — collect the mostly-empty bottles on your bar together and type all of their names into Google with “cocktail ingredient” to see what comes up. There are apps out there that can help too, but it’s more fun to poke around in a good cocktail book.

A great place to start is Three Ingredient Cocktails ($11). Poke around in the index. (I love this book. Robert Simonson please tell me what I should do with the half-empty apple brandy on my shelf.)

Brainstorm a Menu

Speaking of recipes, the real fun of this project is the chance to make a menu for the season. You can style and print something elaborate, but I usually just pick two or three new cocktails to add to my repertoire each season. Over time, you’ll memorize a nice mental menu.

How you pick them is totally up to you. You can connect your new drinks with a theme, like your favorite garnish, or just grab adventurously the next time you’re at the liquor store and see where life takes you.

If you’re going to be hosting a lot for the holidays, it may be worth practicing some hot drinks and punches. If you’re looking for inspiration, the book Winter Cocktails ($9) is a solid place to start. It has a wide variety of cocktail flavors and styles, and the photography is gorgeous, thanks to Lizzie Munro. You might also want to look into find a copy of Gather Around Cocktails — a great volume of drinks for the holiday season.

Go Shopping.

Hit up the liquor store, the farmer’s market, and wherever else you go to get your bar stuff. It’s the time to assemble your ingredients, but this is also when I may restock non-alcoholic ingredients like white and brown sugar for syrups, or dehydrate some garnishes.

I also use this time to replace or upgrade any bar tools that need it.

I love most of my current kit, so if you’re in the market, I’d recommend:

• This Stainless Steel OXO Jigger ($12) is great for non-professionals. The numbers are easy to read; it sits flat on the counter while you pour; it’s sturdy and dishwasher safe. I’ve had them for over a decade, and typically buy another one every few years to cut down on washing between drinks (I’m up to five now).

• This Cocktail Kingdom Shaker ($27) is my current default. It’s easy to clean and stable on the counter. It makes a too-good seal that I frequently have to tap loose (user error). They’re rust-resistant, though I stick to stainless to avoid chipping finish coats (just in case).

• These 1-Liter Flip-Top Bottles are just the right size for freezer cocktails — they give you room to make bigger batches but still seem to fit comfortably in the fridge and freezer doors. I’ve tried the square-shaped bottles, and they’re a good alternative if you need to lay your freezer drinks down to get them to fit. You could also pre-batch the drinks in a larger vessel and then measure servings into smaller bottles.

• This Glencairn Glasses Six Pack is a quick solution if you don’t own proper whiskey tasting glassware. It’s $40 and is generally all I need to put together a flight for a friend, or serve one round to a smaller group of friends. You can buy smaller sets or singles, but the six-pack is like half the price per glass.

Serve Some Drinks

Curating the space could just mean remembering to bring out that 20-pack of holiday cocktail napkins you’ve been forgetting in the pantry.

As I said at the beginning, I do this because it’s a fun reset, not because I consider it basic housekeeping.

That said, I’m still looking for some inspiration for this year, so if you have a favorite drink when the weather turns cold, drop it in my comments so I can figure out how to winterize my bar.

I already know I’m out of Kahlua. And olives.