How to Stock Your Bar for a Party?

So, you are hosting a party at your home next week? That’s wonderful. But, if you are the host it means that you need to take care of everything related to the party. That includes the event invitations, preparing your home for a party, music, food, and drinks. And while you can easily take care of the invitations, home décor, music, and food, you need to seriously work on the drinks. It’s because all other things are arranged and made in advance, by someone else, you need to prepare and serve the drinks when the party begins.

However, you need to buy all the drinks you think are going to be drunk in advance. You can do that by buying liquors from a local store or buying alcohol online. But how to decide which types of liquors you will need at the party and in what quantity?

Deciding on what to buy and how much to buy is a tricky question because you can’t predict what people will ask for and how much they will drink. That’s why you need to stock up your bar with different liquors and additional ingredients. Here’s how to do that.

Which Liquors to Choose?

The first thing you need to take care of when stocking up your bar is the variety of drinks you will include. Since you can’t know which drinks your guests will choose, you should start with the most common ones, such as vodka, tequila, gin, whiskey, wine, beer, and so on. When choosing your liquors, you should take into consideration their quality and price.

Quality over quantity

Instead of buying 20 different inexpensive bottles of alcohol, you should buy less but more expensive liquors. It’s because the expensive ones are of higher quality and offer a much mouth-filling taste than the others.

Choose a more affordable variation of a drink

Instead of choosing an expensive bottle of Scotch, you can buy a good bottle of bourbon, and instead of Cognac, you should buy Armagnac. And, don’t forget to buy XO or VSOP brandy, which is another must-have in your bar.

How to Make the Most of What You Have?

Having a lot of different liquors doesn’t guarantee you will have all the drinks your guests will ask for. It’s because even if you have dozens of good liquors, they might want to taste something else than just a straight vodka or tequila. And, if you don’t know how to use what you have in your bar, investing in all those drinks is a waste of money.

Therefore, you can stock your bar just with the basic liquors mentioned above and add mixers, such as fruit juices, tonic water, or club soda; bitters, such as Angostura bitters; and garnish, such as oranges, lemons, and limes. By having the basic stuff from each of these things, you will be able to make the most of what you have. In that way, you will be able to use your liquors to prepare at least 3 or 4 cocktails with each of them, which creates plenty of choices.

How to Stock Your Bar for a Party 2

Copyright: Unsplash / author: ibrahimboran / I License: CC0 Public Domain

How Much to Buy?

Once you know which liquors to buy, it’s time to decide how much to buy of each. And, that’s where things get more difficult because you don’t know how much your guests will drink. But, there’s a common rule that quests usually drink 2 drinks in the first hour and then 1 drink per hour. In order to plan the quantity of the liquors you will buy, you need to consider:

  • The number of guests
  • The number of shots in a bottle
  • The amount of each liquor, mixer, bitter, and garnish you need per drink.

Usually, a small party of 10-24 people requires a bottle of each of the most common liquors. A medium-sized party of 25-59 people requires 2 bottles of each liquor. And, a large party requires 3-4 bottles of the most common drinks. Here’s one tip, if most of your guests are under 35, you should increase the amount of vodka, beer, and rum.

When buying mixers, you need to take into consideration how much you will need per each cocktail you will make, referring to the most common cocktails. And, in terms of the garnishes, it’s always better to have more than less, especially since they are affordable. You never know which cocktails and how much of them your guests will drink.

The last thing you should purchase is ice because it’s an inevitable part of every alcohol. Regardless of whether your guests will drink straight liquors or cocktails, they will always want 2 or 3 cubes of ice in their glass. In order to decide how much ice you will need, keep in mind that there should be 1 pound of ice per person.