For Big-Batch Cocktails, Choose Your Bar Spoon Wisely

When hosting your next party, batch cocktails can come to the rescue. Scaling up your cocktail recipes to make a jug-full means that you can pour, garnish, and serve when the time comes or let your guests help themselves. This party-prep move can alleviate some of your stress as the host and ensure that drinks flow late into the evening. However, while dumping alcohol into a glass pitcher and storing it for later may sound like an easy enough task, there are plenty of mistakes to be made when preparing larger quantities of beverages. Using the wrong spoon is just one of them.

Bar spoons are created with drink makers in mind, as the spoons have twisted handles to make stirring easier and more quickly effective, and extended lengths are meant to stretch down to the bottom of glasses. While professionals can yield these specialty utensils to layer drinks, float ingredients, and even crack ice, a batch cocktail maker's focus is to mix liquid well. Bar spoons can be found in a range of materials and lengths, so as you fill your chosen containers with various libations, pick a tool that can reach the bottom of the pitchers you intend to set out for your guests. The goal is to mix and stir the batch cocktail easily without your fingers clanking against the sides of the pitcher, or worse — serve a drink in which thick layers of booze rest at the bottom of the container untouched.

Whether you're batch-making old fashioneds, a prosecco punch, or Manhattan cocktails in your fanciest pitchers, reach for bar spoons with longer handles to easily stir liquids in taller containers. The idea is to pour drinks that are strong and well-balanced from the first sip until the last. Failing to mix your batch of cocktails before serving could result in a drink that is diluted or packs too boozy a punch. While most bar spoons are a standard 12 inches long, spoons measuring over 15 inches are best for larger containers. You can pour carbonated liquids down twisted-handled bar spoons into a drink to prevent them fizzing over and do the same to add layers of liquid, but these are really bartender skills, and when it comes to batch cocktails, the main focus is simple stirring to produce a well-combined beverage. 

If you don't have the right-length bar spoon, get creative with the utensils that you do have in your kitchen or tucked behind your home bar. Skewers and chopsticks can step in during those urgent moments. Once you've made the cocktails of your dreams and they're in your prettiest containers, set up drink stations for guests to pour and garnish their drinks with fruits and spices you've prearranged. Leave the bar spoon handy so that your guests can stir before they pour. The only work left for you will be replenishing ice buckets and cleaning up after your friends have left the party.