The Spirit World

I’m not sure how often some of the rest of you might run into this problem, but I find myself quite often needing to “go on the road” with my bar tools. Sometimes it’s because I’ve been invited to a dinner party where I’m expected to make the drinks, or perhaps I’m heading across country to do some sort of bar seminar… or sometimes it’s just because I like to be prepared.

Some time back, I saw what looked like a fabulous travel kit, which had been specially made up by a distillery as a special gift to some bartenders who had helped them out with a seminar or something. It was designed sort of like a traditional chef’s roll up “knife bag”, but out of leather and a beautiful silver rayon. It included a special slot at one end for a Boston Shaker, which would form the center of the roll, and then places to put jiggers, pour spouts, strainers, muddlers, channel knifes, bar spoons, juicers, paring knifes… almost anything a bartender would want, in one tidy package.

This got me thinking, what would be the perfect traveling bar kit? I’d seen various sturdy metal attaché cases with foam cutouts on the inside to provide safe and secure storage for all of your tools, so I bought one of those, but it was just too clunky awkward to use. Plus if you wanted to store something it wasn’t prepared for, you had to cut a section of foam out for it, eventually you end up with a mess.

I thought back on this roll-up kit I saw, and started looking around for a leathersmith who could perhaps make me up something similar. But I also needed to a design, and to figure out exactly what might be needed so I could have a proper slot for everything. In the meantime, I also had a real need for something to tide me over. One day while browsing around on eBay I spotted this interesting travel case. It was apparently an old case used by Beltone reps or staff to carry their hearing aid testing equipment in, but it looked like something which might suit my purposes as well. Thankfully I got it for a pretty good price.

It was a hard-sided case, with a “clamshell” type top, which opened to reveal side compartments, as well as a bottom compartment. As luck would have it, the bottom compartment could perfectly fit 10 of the 4 oz cocktail glasses which I have taken to using, and the upper compartments could do a decent job of storing my tools. This was a good solution to tide me over.

But it wasn’t quite perfect. It was still a tad too large and bulky to travel easily with. The thought did strike me however that this “doctor’s bag” approach might work well. I went back to eBay and browsed around, but after a few weeks couldn’t quite find what I was looking for. I resulted to searching out medical/doctor supply companies, and ended up with a nice new doctor’s bag, and it only cost about $40. It was big enough to carry all of the tools I might need, and simply being a big bag with no compartments (besides a side zipper compartment which nicely stored my cutting board, knife, peeler, and channel knife), it meant it could hold all sorts of random things quite easily, including a smaller “kit bag” in which I keep a small stash of bitters.

I’m still thinking about the “perfect” bartender’s kit bag, but frankly this has ended up coming pretty close.