What's in my bag?
When I first started bartending, the pub I worked at had no cocktail program. Because of this, they had no tools for making cocktails. Since I had fallen in love with cocktails and cocktail making, I wanted to make great drinks with the right tools.
Enter The Backpack
I carry this bag with me absolutely everywhere. I kid you not, it's the first thing I pack when I'm getting ready to go somewhere, I have taken it on road trips and I take it to work every single day. Here's what I pack in my bag:
-My bag itself is a Herschel Retreat Mid volume in navy. It holds everything I can thing of and then some, it has nice wide shoulder straps that are padded and has a drawstring and flap closures.
-Cocktail shaker, I use a copper Boston tin on tin shaker from Cocktail Emporium
-Mixing glass, I also got this from Cocktail Emporium and there are literally 100s to choose from. I picked the least expensive one (that's how I roll; you do you though!)
-Basic muddler, made of unstained wood and it has little feet on the bottom. (My current one is starting to crack and this makes me sad)
-Bar spoon, mine is copper and slightly weighted on the end. It's pretty basic and came from Cocktail Emporium as well.
-My bar roll, similar to a chef's knife roll, I had this specially designed to hold all of my smaller tools by a local (and amazing) leather worker Atelier 1606
My roll currently holds a pairing knife (I think this one came from the grocery store but is neat because it has a cover and I'm super accident prone!), my jigger/pony in copper (mine measures 1oz with 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 marks and 2oz with a 1 1/2 mark), a copper Hawthorne strainer, a copper julep strainer, a copper fine mesh strainer, a Y shaped veggie peeler (again this came from the grocery store and has a cover) and a 2 step "waiter" corkscrew.
In case you hadn't noticed, I love copper and all my tools are copper (they were once very shiny).
Also in my bag, I carry a bottle of lime juice, a bottle of lemon juice, a bottle of simple syrup and often a bottle of flavour simple syrup (more on simple syrup in another post!), as well as a ton of different bitters. I really like bitters and collect them when I can find new and different ones. I currently have Dillon's Distillery Orange, Lime, Hops, Wormwood, Lemon, DSB. I also have a bottle of good old Angostura bitters (I carry one of these in my purse too, serious life saver when you have tummy troubles). Recently, I picked up the Compass Distillers Aromatic Orange and Grapefruit-Hops bitters and have been using them a fair bit too.
There's also usually a host of pens, some pain meds and allergy meds, along with my glasses and about 3 note pads.
It's often a sticky mess and I should wash it more than I do, but that's the problem with your favourite thing! You want to use it so much, you can never not have it! It also has a broken front strap, super sad about that one, I really don't want to replace it.
