Stirring up the perfect bar

Ideas

Do you often entertain guests at home but don't have a compact organised bar yet? What other options do you have besides a wooden, granite or a glass countertop?

Do you plan to place the bar in the kitchen or in the living room? Is it worthwhile to invest in a overhanging glass rack? Would you rather have the bar in your library where you also run the home theatre?

Most of these above decisions will be influenced by personal choices, but you could hire a professional bar tending company who can offer tips on how to manage the interior of the bar, what to stock, where to place the chiller or sink, and generally how to get ahead in the venture.

At the outset, there are no modular bars available in India, which means you have to either hire an interior designer or design it yourself , then follow it up with a fabricator. The budget for a basic bar could range anywhere between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 10 lakh .

A bar will consist of the back bar, which will consist of the chilling unit or a mini bar, wine cooler and a wine rack. The front bar will be the working space, where you will lodge the ice bin and storage space. Minimum time required to build an elemenetary bar and stock goods is three to six months.

According to Yangdup Lama, director of Cocktail & Dreams, a bar consultancy company which set up Steel bar at New Delhi's Ashoka Hotel and London Pub at Kolkata's Golden Park Hotel, home bar can be equally fancy as your favourite bar in town. "The foremost concern should be space which should be at least 9ft by 6ft. It will not be an elaborate one but you can create a compact bar," he says, adding that kitchen equipment supplier or a steel fabricator can specially design your bar needs.

"It could be a well-balanced combination of stainless steel, wood and granite which makes great counter tops as its easy to clean and mainatain," he adds. While steel should be the choice for interiors under the main counter to avoid damage due to spillage, dimensions of table tops and workstation are equally important.

Ideally, table top should not be more than between one and one-and-a-half feet and total height from the guest side should be 3.5 feet while the work station inside should be about 2.5 feet.

The advantages of a home bar is that you can dress and stock the way you want with your own time... Crystal glass, lounge seats et al. Unlike a fast-moving commercial bar, where a speed rack or rail (a display counter for bottles) and a good drainage system is critical to its efficent performance, you can skip it for a simpler solution like a basic sink.

To indulge, you can invest in a chiller (no ready-made chillers are available in India but you can source it from Perlicks or Glass Tender which are distributed in India) and ice sink to store ice but you can easily manage with a minibar (roughly Rs 10,000).

The workstation must have proper equipment, which includes blenders, cocktail shakers, strainers,openers and glasses. A dozen glasses each to serve whisky, beer and wine is essential, backed with champagne and cockail glasses. There are plenty of choices for glasses in the market such as Libbeys, Bormiolli Rocco and Ocean, which approximately cost Rs 1,500 for a dozen of glasses.

What's a bar without the drinks? Apart from the whisky, vodka, rum, gin, beer and brandy, it's worthwhile to stock pineapple, orange, mango and tomato juices, aerated water like tonic, soda, ginger ale, coke, sprite and limca. There is a wide choice of syrups in the market.

Monin, a syrup brand, has a range of 75 flavours such as cinnamon, jasmine, green apple to choose from. Lama recommends five flavours of the season: Blue Curacao, Triple Sec, Mint, coconut and melon.

"A bar should always be visible to guests but in a subtle way. You could organise a candles and flower evening, an impeccably quiet sit-down or even serve fruit-based mocktails to children. The idea is to bring five-star culture to your home," says Sandip V of Shaken or Stirred, who has designed bars such as Capitol in Delhi and Under Deck in Hyderabad.

And then if you don't want to play the bar tender for the evening, you can always pay for service. For a party of 30 people, a bar tender and a back-up boy will charge Rs 3,000-Rs 3,500.

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