Section Last entry 18/08/2026

Bar essentials: the working end of the counter

A home bar is a small workspace with a social function bolted on, and almost every complaint about one comes down to reach. The bottle you use most is on the wrong shelf, the strainer is in the kitchen drawer, the ice is two rooms away, and the light is coming from behind your own head. None of that is solved by buying more equipment.

This section deals with the parts that decide how a counter behaves rather than how it looks: what actually gets picked up, what the light is doing to the bottles and to the faces opposite, how ice changes a drink after you have handed it over, and the handful of measurements that separate a counter people sit at from one they lean on for a minute and then leave.

On the shelf

The working file

Newest at the top. Each piece gives the numbers where numbers exist.

Six bar tools arranged in a row on a grey linen cloth, jigger, muddler, strainer, spoon, opener and knife, flat overhead shot in daylight

Kit

18/08/2026

The six tools that actually earn their drawer space

Most home bars own twenty gadgets and reach for the same handful. Here is the handful, what each one replaces, and the three that can wait.

A back bar shelf lit from underneath by a warm strip, bottles glowing from the base, the wall behind left in shadow

Fittings

02/04/2026

Back bar lighting without the glare

Light the bottles, not the faces. Strip position, colour temperature, and the one fixture that ruins every photograph taken at your bar.

Large clear ice cubes in a steel tray on a kitchen counter, backlit by a window so the light passes straight through them, water beading on the metal

Technique

13/01/2026

Ice at home: big cubes, clear cubes, and when it matters

A big cube is not a style choice, it is a dilution rate. How to make clear ice in a normal freezer, and the drinks where ordinary cubes are the right answer.

Three wooden stools tucked under the overhang of a kitchen counter, seen from the side at seat height, morning light raking across the floor

Measurements

06/11/2025

Stool height, counter height, and the gap between them

Three standard counter heights, the seat that belongs with each, and the knee gap that decides whether anyone stays sitting down.

Next to it on the shelf

What tends to come up next

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