Does The Material Of Your Bar Spoon Really Matter?

Whether you're mixing up a cosmo, martini, or margarita, there's a list of necessary bartending tools you need for your home bar. One of the most important gadgets on this list is a bar spoon, which is essential for stirring up liquor-heavy drinks such as Manhattans or Negronis. One steadfast rule for choosing the best type of mixing tool is to avoid buying a bar spoon without a coiled stem because a twisted version helps make better drinks. 

These tools also come with an assortment of features that can help measure, muddle, and layer ingredients, and they can be made from a variety of materials. So, does the material of your bar spoon really matter? Yes, it does. The most common materials on the market are stainless steel, copper, brass, and gold. The best choice is a stainless steel one, as it is an ideal metal for kitchen appliances because of its longevity, due to its resistance to staining and rust. 

Copper, brass, and gold spoons, on the other hand, usually aren't thoroughly made from those materials, but instead are only plated with them. This means once they've been used often enough, the clinking of the spoon against glass and ice causes the metal plating to corrode — right into your drink. While floating gold flakes may be a welcome sight in Goldschlager, the copper, brass, or gold pieces that chipped off a bar spoon don't belong in a cocktail.  

It's clear that stainless steel is the best option when choosing a stirring utensil for your bar. But what else happens when certain metals and cocktails are exposed to each other? Besides metal pieces flaking off of a plated bar spoon into a beverage from getting beat up, metals such as copper can have a chemical reaction when they come into contact with acidic liquids found in some cocktails, such as carbonated drinks, orange juice, and wine. 

A Moscow mule, for example, is almost always served in a copper mug. The acidic ingredients of ginger beer and lime juice corrode the inside of the mug, which then leaches into the drink. While this was once thought to give the cocktail an extra kick, it's now considered unsafe. Today, many copper mugs are lined with stainless steel to avoid this.

Similarly, brass also reacts with acidic substances in this way because it is an alloy or compound of zinc and copper. Thankfully, the amount of time a brass or copper bar spoon spends in a drink isn't long enough for the metals to corrode, so you don't have to worry about this chemical reaction happening while stirring. Just be sure to check for any wear-and-tear damage if you choose to use a bar spoon made from one of these materials. However, if you choose one made of stainless steel, you won't have to worry about a thing.