10 Home Bar Ideas: Small, modern home bar appliances & wine glasses
Building a home bar in a small space if you carefully consider the dimensions, layout, and storage areas.
By Home & Decor Team -
Nothing helps us unwind after a day’s work like a good drink – and there’s no better time to be your own mixologist at home. Here's what you need to know when building out your home bar.
For those who enjoy mixing up the occasional tipple during a home party, a well-stocked bar that’s equipped with the tools of the trade is an essential element.
You can even get home bar kits that range from $1,500 to over $10,000, including in-home training by a respected craft bartender. And if you want to improve your knowledge on the subject, there are also cocktail recipes, technical guides and other books available.
Royal Selangor Toolbar Set
Keeping your guests occupied is a crucial aspect of hosting - the drinks.
Royal Selangor’s six-piece set is ideal for a smaller home bar from their rugged Toolbar collection, a range of barware and drinkware inspired by basic hardware shop essentials.
This set comprises two highballs, a cocktail shaker, a muddler, a measure and a bar spoon.
All with charming details like a muddler with a screwdriver handle crafted of bright pewter for a comfortable grip and a glass shaker topped with a pewter hex nut-inspired cap.
The set is housed in a wooden toolbox caddy for ease of storage and portability
Bar Drinking Games: CB2 Ring Toss Game
Easy on the eye and with universal rules is the CB2’s Ring Toss Game elevated with its five slim powder-coated rods on a sleek black Marquina marble base.
Handsome design details like the engraved marble point values and painted acacia wood rings further update the classic outdoor game in timeless style
CB2 Acrylic Tumbling Tower
These CB2 game sets are fun to break out and look good as decorative pieces even when they’re not in play.
The Acrylic Tumbling Tower comprises forty-eight clear, frosted, light and dark grey pieces that create an ombre effect inside a tall clear acrylic bowl.
With no player limit, this game of delicate balance is excellent for parties of any size.
Bartesian Cocktail Machine ($299)
For those of us who are not adept at measuring precise amounts of spirits and mixers, try a Bartesian cocktail machine.
It functions just like a Nespresso coffee machine - albeit for cocktails.
You purchase the machine, cocktail pods, and then fill up the tanks with water and the different spirits of choice.
Slot in your pod, close the machine, and select your drink via the touch screen top.
Enjoy your drink, voila!
3 Home bar renovation tips
Here's what you need to know when speaking to your interior designer and contractor about building out a perfect chill home bar.
Best home bar height
Your home bar should be at a good height for both sitting at and preparing drinks.
“You want it to be slightly higher than your kitchen counter, but not too high, because it would make preparation like cutting and stirring very difficult,” says James Li, former bartender at Zouk with 12 years of experience.
The ideal height is around 1.1m.
The length depends on how many people you’re planning to seat, and whether the bar is pulling double duty as a dining table. A bar that’s about 2.5m long can seat up to six or eight people comfortably, with enough room for a prep area.
Have sufficient storage
When it comes to storage, think about the optimal workflow when you’re preparing the drinks. Glasses and bar tools should be kept within easy reach of the preparation area, either within built-in storage or in a separate sideboard nearby. “You’ll need a drawer for things like bottle openers, coasters, straws – tools you’ll need at a moment’s notice,” says James.
As for liquor bottles, an overhead rack is a great way to make a visual statement and save space at the same time. Ensure that the rack is installed with enough headroom – James recommends a height of 1.8 to 1.85m.
“It should also be load-bearing, because each bottle of liquor weighs about 2kg on average when full,” he says. If you have a large collection, the overhead rack should be able to withstand about 500kg of weight.
Home bar layout
Apart from the tools and bottles, your refrigerator should also be close at hand. This makes getting ice and chilled mixers much easier. A sink built into the bar itself would be ideal, but may involve major plumbing – check with your designer or contractor if this is feasible.
“You’ll also need a wet preparation area,” says James. This area, designated for chopping up fruits and pouring in the different liquids, should be waterproofed and ideally near the sink. After that, you can move the mixing glass or shaker to the dry prep area for mixing up and adding the garnishes.
Tip: Quartz is the recommended material for your bar top. Porous stone, like natural marble, may absorb wine stains and make them harder to clean.
How to choose wine glasses?
Staying home and dipping into the cellar more than usual? Your burgundies, vintage champagne, whisky, or even beer will have much more to give just by drinking them out of the right glassware.
Are wine glasses necessary?
If wine geeks got their way, there would be a different wine glass for every possible grape and wine style out there. For now, we’d have to contend with only about a dozen for a couple of generalisations.
3 Types of Red Wine Glasses
Reds usually get divided into 3 types of profiles:
Bold: Bordeaux glasses
Light and floral: Burgundy glasses
Spicy: A “typical” glass used for spice-forward varieties like syrah or zinfandel
2 Types of White Wine Glasses
White wines are typically split into two categories:
Full
Light bodied
Fortified wines
Sweet wines
Sparklings
Specialised glassware: Such as the Riedel differentiating glasses for Gruner Veltliner and Riesling
Have no wish to faff about with an entire cabinet full of stemware?
Universal glasses split the difference, usually offering a larger bowl that tapers towards the opening, making it suitable for most wines.
If you’re looking for the ideal glass for a particular bottle of wine, it’s easy enough to get an answer online. What is important to understand though, is how these glasses achieve that.
Here’s what to look out for:
Thickness of glass
As a general rule of thumb, the thicker a glass is, the more material there is to get in the way when you’re drinking, which distracts from the actual wine itself.
Plus, thinness that’s relatively durable requires quality and workmanship — two signs of luxury.
Bowl shape and size
A larger bowl allows for bolder, more complex wines to express a wider range of aromas — not unlike how a gas chromatograph is more differentiated when spread over a larger area.
A larger surface area exposed to air allows for more evaporation, releasing more aromatic compounds and ethanol.
Generally, you’d also want something that tapers towards the rim to trap and concentrate aromas, and it’s for this reason that straight champagne flutes usually receive some amount of disdain in the wine world.
Size of the mouth of the glass
This has to do with the flow of wine entering your mouth.
A larger rim spreads the wine over a larger surface of your tongue, increasing mouthfeel and the perception of acidity; while a narrower opening directs the liquid to the tip of your tongue, decreasing perception of acidity and directing your attention to fruitier notes.
Glasses for spirits and cocktails
For the longest time, glasses to drink spirits out of — like the tumbler or shot glass — did little to enhance the drinking experience.
One of the first was the Riedel Single Malt Whisky, a glass that was made to “emphasize the elegant creaminess of top quality single malt whisky”, created in conjunction with a panel of scotch experts in 1992.
Then there’s the iconic Glencairn, which is made to hold and concentrate aromas, and was first produced in 2001.
These glasses, however, aren’t just made to hold scotch — single malt or not.
Any spirit that could benefit from a better nosing experience will work. Rum is particularly well suited, so are aged tequila or mezcal, and probably even a craft vodka with actual flavours to savour.
Best Beer Glasses
While they’re usually also designed to improve perception of aroma, quality beer glasses work a little differently from wine and spirits.
For one, they need to be a little tougher, with thicker stems to accommodate the much larger volume of liquid you’re going to be drinking.
Another important feature of beer glasses is the ability to retain a head — which, besides making a cold pint look delicious, allegedly helps trap the fizz in your beer, slow down oxidation, and disperse aromas.
Just like with wine, different glass shapes accentuate the profiles of different styles of beer – from juicy IPAs to rich, toasty stouts.