I’m one of those people that struggle to get people great gifts. If you have a home bartender in your life, this guide should be your ticket to a holiday gift on any budget. These gifts are perfect for a significant other, favorite bartender, good friend or cocktail blogger. 

$50+

• • Ice Ball Maker – Cocktail Kingdom – $159.99
    • This is a show stopper that can sit on top of any bar. It takes a solid block of clear ice (Home Method). It then uses the heat conduction of the metal and the weight of the top plate to make a perfect sphere of ice. This is an impressive addition to a rocks glass of whiskey. 
  • Handheld Food Smoking Gun 2.0 – Amazon – $147.98
    • Smoking cocktails adds a rich flavor and elevates a simple drink to something complex and original. This is the new version of the appliance that is much easier to use and clean but they did up the cost 50%. You can find the old one, if you look hard enough. 
  • US Bartender’s Guild Membership – USBG – $125-$150
    • You don’t have to be a bartender to join. Many enthusiasts (like myself) are part of it. You get access to training, exclusive spirits/tastings, competitions, unique events and so much swag. If you want to take your home bartending to the next level, this is an ideal place for networking. 
  • Custom Ice Cube Logo Brand – Cocktail Brandalism – $110 +/-
    • Branding the name of home bar onto the top of an ice cube is far too cool for school. This company (based in Russia) will custom machine your logo, name or whatever into a professional grade tool that will actually melt that image into the top of an ice cube. Really wow your guests. My logo cost $110 so contact Vladimir (no joke) for a quote.

• • Custom Bourbon Barrel Top – Red Envelope – $100
    • I’m typically turned off by the “Things Remembered” type gifts but I was smitten by this when a coworker gave it to me. It shows off who owns the booze and is perfect for Instagram photos of your prized home bar. 
  • Make Your Own Bitters Kit – Hella Bitters – $59.99
    • Not only do they make great bitters but they make a kit so you can do it at home. I’ve even seen this in some local Michigan stores like Holiday Market. 

$50-20

• • Pottery Rocks Glass – Pewabic Pottery- $45
    • They are a Detroit Institution making pottery for over 100 years. These stylized rocks glasses are something different that are a true part of the city.
  • Yarai Mixing Glass – Cocktail Kingdom – $32.99
    • While you can use any pint glass to make a stirred drink, the Yarai is the gold standard for classy bars. They are heavy, durable and impressive.
  • Clean Crown – Bottle Opener – Website Direct- $25
    • You know those maps of Michigan or the US that you can insert all the beer bottle caps you have saved over the years to track your exploration? This bottle opener makes it even better by removing the beer cap without putting a crease in it. Show off those pristine caps the right way with this opener.
  • Spin Chill: 1 Minute Beer Cooler – Website Direct – $24.99
    • I adore this product. If you want a cold beer (or wine even) fast, just prepare an ice bath and spin it for 1 minute. It is a marvel of science.
  • The Carry On Cocktail Kit – W&P Design – $24.00
    • What started as one kit (the Old Fashioned) has blossomed into 7 varieties plus some special custom branded ones. These are compact and easy ways to spice up your flight or train trip. They are FDA certified and fit easily in a carry-on. 
  • Watering Holes: Your Guide to Detroit’s Bars – Direct – $20
    • It might be hard to believe, but there are people in this city that have visited more bars than I. Enter Mike Kline author of Watering Holes. He made a guide for over 150 bars, pubs and taverns in the city. A must read.
  • Imbibe Magazine – Direct – $20
    • The best cocktail magazine in my mind. Constant and informative.
  • Meehan’s Bartender Manual – Amazon – $20
    • Every year there is one stand-out book that just nails it in the cocktail world, this year its by Jim Meehan of New York’s PDT. The simple hard cover reminds me of an old library book and the dense 488 page tome is filled with techniques, tips and recipes. I read mine cover to cover.

Less than $20

• • Real “Boi Lele” Swizzle Stick – Cocktail Kingdom – $17.99
    • Swizzle Sticks actually come from a swizzle tree and are the only way to make certain cocktails like the Ti Punch. Any true bar would be naked without one.

• • Proper Drink Glassware – Hugh Detroit – $12-$75
    • Hugh on Cass Ave in Detroit is the best place to buy high end glass ware in the city. They stock amazing vintage and new products that constantly blow me away. I encourage you to check them out. They range in price.
  • Nick Drinks Glassware – Direct – $14.00
    • What do you get for someone that has everything? A Nick Drinks Rocks or Coupe glass of course. Made in the USA and printed in Michigan. Limited quantities so act fast.
  • Santa Mug – Miracle at the Skip – $9.99
    • In partnership with Cocktail Kingdom, The Skip Detroit is offering 4 different limited edition holiday mugs with their Miracle pop-up. The Santa Mug and Santa Pants are both pretty amazing but the shot glass and rocks glass are vintage delights. You can’t go wrong.
  • Japanese-Style Jigger – Cocktail Kingdom – $8.99
    • This is my favorite style of jigger. Not only does it take up very little room on a bar top but it has markings on the inside for smaller measurements making this act like many jiggers in one. Plus it looks really cool in your hands.

The post Nick Drinks’ 2017 Gift Guide appeared first on Nick Drinks.

Father’s Day is on Sunday. Have you purchased your gift yet? If not, why not check out my recommendations for a boozie gift? I did a post on DIY Network’s Blog Made & Remade with a few good ideas. Good luck.

Budmo!

The post 5 Boozie Father’s Day Gifts appeared first on Nick Drinks.

Getting clear ice is challenging and takes some effort. Camper English at Alcademics.com has done some great work on exploring the different ways that work and don’t work. I’ve experimented with a number of the processes over the years. It would be great if you could just pour plain old tap water into a mold and get perfect ice. So far the product by Wintersmith’s is the closet to that to date. They decided to focus on spheres for their first ice product launch.

It started as a Kickstarter last year. I missed out on it but they were extremely nice and sent me one to review. The product clocks in at $85 (for $5 more you can make it a kit for Father’s Day). This puts it in the middle for ice sphere pricing. You have the Tovolo & Arctic Chill under $20 on the base end, Wintersmith’s under $100 in the middle and Cirrus around $500+ on the high end.  With each jump in spend, you get clearer more uniform ice with a slightly bigger time investment.

Wintersmith’s is a happy medium. Reasonabe price point and about 36 hour +/- turnaround.

The unit looks like a slick coffee tumbler with molded inserts. The instructions say to assemble the mold and then fill the water from the top. I found it easier to fill the tumbler with water then push the mold into it. Both options trap some air in the assembly which was removed with some shaking and tapping.

Freeze this guy in the coldest part of the freezer for 24-48 hours and you have a great sphere of ice ready to go.

The resulting product is very clear especially compared to regular ice molds. It has a good shape but can get numbs on the top and the bottom where the filling holes were. These can be chipped off or just ignored.

Compared to the Tovolo ice mold, you can see the difference. The Wintersmith’s product is a much slower freezing process allowing time for the dissolved minerals and gas in water to escape or come to the surface. It does take longer to do this but results in a superior product.

It is a highly impressive product that looks great in a glass of dark spirits. The money is worth the investment. Check it out.

Budmo!

The post Product Review: Wintersmiths Ice Baller appeared first on Nick Drinks.

I’m excited to review another product from Arctic Chill. This is their ice ball maker. There are three ways to make ice balls; cut them by hand, press them from a bigger block or freeze them with a mold. Arctic Chill is the mold method. While it produces the least clear ball, it is the easiest and cheapest.

As an experiment, I froze up four balls with four types/temperatures of water.

The result was four nicely frozen ice balls. There was an issue with some water seeping out of the top. This snapped off fairly easy. It is hard to judge how much water to fill in the ball. I went all the way up but trial and error for a bit less (water expands when frozen) would be in order.

Since there was too much water, the tops popped up a bit. This created a ridge on the balls. You can see the clarity of each ball based on the type of water. Not much.

Here are the balls in water. Starting on the left with Sample A and moving across to the right with Sample D on the end.

There isn’t a lot of different between my samples. What I did notice is tap water was clearer with bigger blocks of white while distilled has evenly distributed white and was nearly all opaque.

Here is a product show of the ice ball. You get four in a pack which makes the price of $15.95 much more manageable.

I finished up the shoot with a little whiskey and it does make for a nice presentation.

Pros: 4 Pack, easy to clean, light in weight, and freezes quickly

Cons: Tricky to fill, ridges on balls, and standard downfalls of ice ball molds.

Overall: I would give this a maybe buy. It’s great that you can make 4 with only one purchase but $15.95 is a bit high for me.

Budmo!

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This is a really exciting review. The Arctic Chill Muddler is the first product that has been sent to me without my prompting. This means there are some cocktail nerds hiding out there that happened upon my site organically. I was gosh darn excited about it.

I own a lot of muddlers. Some bartenders only use unfinished wood, some don’t care, and others don’t use muddlers. This one does not replace all your muddlers and I would consider it a specialized one. There were three tests that I did with it; Herb Muddling, Citrus Muddling & Spice Crushing.

Let’s look at what makes this different. The base is very wide and offers small prism-like points covering the head. This increases the pressure applied at those points and grips the muddlee (?) in the valleys.

Herb Muddling: Making a mint julep was the first test. I used it to muddle the mint into the glass. The results were awful. In general, you don’t want to destroy the mint. The pressure focused on the points of the pyramids bruised the mint even with light pressure. The product should not be used for herbs as it is just too aggressive. This isn’t a bad thing and is what made me classify this as a specialized muddler. Why? See the next two tests.

Citrus Muddling: Muddling citrus to make Oleo Saccharum is where this product excels. The added force you can focus to extract the citrus oils made very fast work for a batch of this stuff. I churned through two lemon sand one orange is less than 5 minutes. The resulting product (after it sit for a number of hours) was incredibly fragrant. Two thumbs up.

Spice Crushing: Every once and a while you want to crush up whole spices into a cocktail. The one that comes to my mind first would be peppercorns for a savory drink. The Arctic Chill is the most amazing invention ever invented for this. The valleys grip the spices and the points crush them to oblivion. I could even see this cross over into cooking. My Japanese Pestle and Mortar has grooves along the side that keeps spices & herbs in place while you are crushing them. The same principle applies for this muddler. Three thumbs up.

Overall: The product retails on Amazon for $14+. It is stainless steel with a nylon head. It seems very well built but is light as a feather. I would category this as a secondary purchase as you expand your bar. Start with a basic unfinished wood muddler and add this as you get more specialized. If you cook a lot and grind your own spices, this is a must buy as it makes small batches of grinding spices a simple joy.

Budmo!

The post Tool Review: Arctic Chill Muddler appeared first on Nick Drinks.

The Nick Drink’s household consumes a lot of wine and learning how to open a wine bottle takes some practice. There are a number of tools on the market and some are better then others.

SKIL is known for their power tools but did you know they make bartending gear too? The SKIL iXO Vivo Power Corkscrew is a unique and easy way to open wine bottles.

The package comes with everything you need and even had a charge out of the box. The corkscrew connects to the drill with a standard hex socket. However, my biggest complaint is that the corkscrew has a tendency to slip out. It doesn’t snap in or isn’t magnetic. That would be a great upgrade.

Once you get it over the bottle. It’s just a matter of hitting the trigger and it drives the cork out of the bottle in one motion. With the cork out, you just reverse the drill to remove it from the corkscrew.

Overall, I think this is a fun tool both for novelty and practicality. The kit comes with a small set of drill bits which means that it is great in the kitchen for opening bottles as well as repair tasks.

We have a special treat for NickDrinks.com visitors. Anyone that posts a comment about their favorite holiday wine on this page will be entered for a chance to win your very own SKIL iXO Vivo Power Corkscrew. We will pull a winner Friday, 21st, 2012.

Good luck!

UPDATE: We didn’t have any entries by the end date of our sweeps so we extended it to 12/31/2012 at midnight. Good luck!

The post Tool Review & Giveaway: iXO Vivo Power Corkscrew appeared first on Nick Drinks.

How many movies have you seen that have the lead drinking out of a hollowed out Pineapple? At least one? Maybe? Ok. Pretend with me you have seen a movie where this has happened. You do some research online because you want to do this at home.

The easiest way to do this is a special tool from the gadget store. I picked up the Pineapple Slicer & Wedger from Bed, Bath and Beyond. The tool retails for $9.99 but if you bring a 40% coupon that cuts back on some of the cost.

The tool is easy to use.

1. Make sure the pineapple can stand up straight. If not, trim a bit of the stem off.
2. Chop the top off.
3. Slide the wedger up to the top until it clicks
4. Center the tool over the pineapple and start twisting.
5. Twist until you run out of tool or go to nearly the full depth of the pineapple. Take care not to cut a hole out of the bottom.
6. Remove the fruit by reversing the tool up. There may be some slight suction.
7. Place the tool and fruit and place on a flat surface. Then push the wedger down.
8. You now have a hollowed pineapple and a pile of perfect pineapple pieces.

That is it. If you need a better demo, check out “Todd” on the BBB website.

Need a recommendation on what to fill in your pineapple. How about a Mai Tai?

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In doing research for the blog, I came across an advertising for the Margaritaville Mixed Drink Machine or MDM. After some discussions with the public relations agency, I was graciously offered one to review. It was perfect timing as our blog launch was right around the corner.

The MDM is an automated cocktail dispenser. It does all the mixing for you and allows you to pick one of 48 different cocktails. The machine has a full color LCD as well as a speaker for sound effects. MSRP is $399 but you can find it for $299 retail.

Out of the box, the machine is basically fully assembled. There is the main unit with various trays that remove for cleaning and four tanks with caps that dispense the drink ingredients.

Each tank holds one of four liquids; cranberry juice, sour mix, orange juice and alcohol. The alcohol can be tequila, vodka or rum. Your selection of which alcohol will determine which set of mixed drinks you have access to in the menu.

Set-up: Each tank is color coded. Fill each tank with the appropriate liquid, cap the tank and refrigerate overnight. The day of your event, over turn each tank into the color coded slot. Keep the caps on the tanks. Plug the machine in and power it up. The machine will confirm the tanks are inserted properly and ask which alcohol is in the booze tank. Confirm and you are in business with a nice round of applause. Compliment the MDM with a bucket of ice, scoop and cups.

The machine has a captain’s wheel that is used to select which drink you want to choose. It shows what ingredients go into the drink too. Two additional buttons on the machine allow for an extra shot of booze or an “I feel lucky” button which selects a random drink.

—–REVIEW—–

Pros: 

• More Time with Guests – While it can’t make every drink under the sun, it can make a lot of drinks to keep your guests entertained while you finish up some last minute party tasks. It even gives you time to actually hang out with your guests. During the time when guests are flooding into your party and you are greeting, cooking, hanging-up coats, etc, this is a huge helper. I think this is its key feature.
• Easy Clean-Up – While it might sound like an infomercial, the clean-up is really simple. There are a few trays in the main machine and each tank need a quick wash in the dishwasher. If you don’t have a dishwasher they are also easy to clean with soap and water.
• Tasty! – This was the most surprising. The drinks are good. They aren’t super high end craft cocktails but they are staples that have been around for years as well as some new ones. I would recommend using fresh juice. Sour mix is pricy to make on your own especially when you are trying to make 1.5 liters but it is well worth it.
• Lots of Fun – I’m a gadget geek and this is a hoot. You get to pick your own drink and watch the machine dispense it for you. It’s also a conversation starter.

Cons:

• Doesn’t keep the liquids cool – Solving this problem would probably ratchet up the price by a few hundred dollars. However, for long parties it does lead to some warm drinks. Once it is poured into ice it isn’t the worst thing ever.
• Annoying – I get what they were trying to do but it’s annoying. If you leave the machine for too long, it tries to draw you back in by spinning the wheel and playing the sound effect. This doesn’t time out. It goes on until you run out of power. The good thing is you can turn this off. It’s not obvious so read the instructions.
• Pricey – $299 is a lot of money and could go toward hiring a bartender for a party. Granted you own this forever so it might workout in the long run.
• No virgin drinks – We burned through the alcohol pretty fast even without double shots. We wanted to start pouring some juice or better yet virgin cocktails to help sober up. This unfortunately isn’t an option. I would like to see this option in 2.0 and maybe an option to put soda in instead of booze.

Final word: Buy it. For the fact alone that you can spend more time with your guests is worth it. This would be a great registry item or shared purchase with roommates.  

The post Tool Review: Margaritaville Mixed Drink Machine appeared first on Nick Drinks.

The Japanese-Style is much taller than American-Style.  Think back to chemistry class.  Taller is better.  Compare a graduated cylinder vs. a beaker.

Craft cocktails have a much higher tolerance for measurement than some of the mainstream cocktails.  These means you need to measure all the ingredients in your drinks.  Velvet Tango Room in Cleveland, OH even goes so far as weighing all their concoctions for higher accuracy.  Like graduated cylinders, these jiggers have at least one additional measurement on the inside of the cones.  So when a drink calls for 1/4 of an ounce you can do it without guessing.

Cocktail Kingdom seems like the main place to buy these.  I bought mine from Amor y Amargo in New York City, NY which turned out they bought them from Cocktail Kingdom.

If you are looking to upgrade the jiggers you bought at the dollar store, this is my first recommendation.

Price:

• 1/2 oz & 3/4 oz: $6.95 USD – Link
• 2 oz & 1 oz: $8.95 USD – Link

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