I Now Have My Bar Arsenal (Barsenal?)

So about this time last year I blog posted about drinking hotel mini-bar-sized bottles of alcohol just to get by.  I don't know if I talked about this in length, but at the start of the pandemic and lockdown last year, I spent hours on the Internet looking up liquor and cocktails.  I then had a lot of time on my hands (hey, as did we all, amiright?), and I imagined that if this keeps up, or if I face another pandemic, making alcoholic drinks for myself would be the perfect way to spend my time.  If there have been larger and longer rabbit holes into which I entered from the Internet, I can't recall them.

I have since thought about drinking from time to time, and actually doing it.  I think around Thanksgiving 2020 was my first time, and my first time subbing in The Fourth Department a few months ago was my second (have I talked about this?).  But now with my folks gone, I'm ready to take the next step and actually begin mixing drinks.

First I bought the tools: jigger, juicers, and shaker ... well, the shaker recommended on The Wirecutter is out of stock, so I need to wait on that.  I then bought the liquor.  But it was important for me not to get the regular-sized bottles, which are 750 mL because I just wanted to dabble (at least for now) and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to finish the whole thing, especially since I was determined to buy several spirits.  So I decided I would only buy half-bottles only 375 mL big.  That filtered out all but the most well-known brands of each spirit, but hey, that's what well liquors are, and The Wirecutter had its recommendations for those as well.

In the end, I bought Prairie Organic Vodka (after I picked up PO's gin, which I returned last/Saturday night in exchange for the vodka), Tanqueray Gin, Bacardi (White) Rum and Hennessey Cognac.  Those liquors, along with lemon, lime and orange juices, yield full drinks I could try and do.  For variety's sake and because it popped up on many ingredient lists, I bought a small-sized Cointreau at a liquor store in downtown Minneapolis because there wasn't such sizes at Total Wine (where I bought the vodka, gin and rum).  That's the same reason I bought the Hennessey there.

With all those combinations there are several drinks I can learn to make.  I will list those at some point, I think.  In the meantime, the IBA-sanctioned vodka cocktails remain scant.  There are a couple vodka-based drinks whose missing ingredient is cranberry juice, so I might grab an Ocean Spray at the store.  And then, well, I have to either get or wait for a shaker.  But once I do those things and grab the pertinent glassware from the kitchen shelf, I'm ready to start shakin' and stirrin' drinks that I hope will knock my socks off.