Shaker Showdown: The Best Cocktail Shaker for Your Bar

Ready? Yeah. Hey y'all. Jesus. Hey y'all. Chris here. A lot of people have asked us. That's what I did. It would be like, no man, happier. More energy. Come on. Not louder. Not too loud. No, no. Your face looks good. Yeah. You're excited to try out these shakers. You don't know which one's the best. You don't. A lot of people have asked us which is the best cocktail shaker to have behind the bar. So we picked out five of the top shakers in the market to evaluate and rank. This is the Shaker Showdown. We've tried a lot of different shakers over the years from the tried and true classics to some of the newer advanced models. To kick this thing off, we're going to go back in time and start with the first known shaker. Hailing from 1850, weighing about one pound, six ounces, the beast from the northeast, the Baston shaker. So prior to this shaking technique, bartenders would literally throw a cocktail from glass to glass, which is not the easiest thing to do. So that looks difficult. But finally, some innkeeper, probably who got tired of picking up cocktail at the end of the night from behind the bar, came up with a better design. They took a glass, which they already had, combined it with a slightly larger metal tin to fit over the glass, and the Boston shaker was born. For the Boston shaker, the classic way to build a drink is to add all your ingredients to the glass. Gives you a nice visual appeal. Add the metal tin over the top, and you're ready to shake. So the advantages of the Boston shaker, the glass makes it look cool. You can see really what's happening when you shake the drink. It is quite functional and easy, and if you're feeling a little nostalgic, you might enjoy the fact that it's sort of the classic, original cocktail shaker. A couple disadvantages with the Boston shaker, the glass does make it heavier, so it's a bit more unwieldy. The fact that this is rigid means that the metal has to form around the glass. The seal is not always great. It is a little bit leak prone. In fact, this is kind of leaking all over me right now. The last drawback for the Boston shaker is glass does get brittle over time. You're using it, it's getting cold, it's going in the dishwasher. Eventually, the Boston shaker will catastrophically fail, which is kind of terrifying to think about. But at some point, you're going to shake this, snap it, and the whole glass is going to shatter. So the Boston shaker is the classic two-piece shaker setup. But this next version will probably suit you even better. Next into the ring, from 1870s France, the two-tin shaker! So across the pond in France, the French were watching the Americans in Boston with their silly two-piece glass metal combo, and they said, that is annoying. So they came up with this, probably a better design. Hats off to the Frenchman. This is the Parisian or French style. No one really calls it by that anymore. We call it the two-tin shaker setup. This is the standard professional shaker setup for bars across really the world at this point. So let's see how it performs. So the advantages of the two-tin shaker over the Boston shaker is that it's lighter. The metal just doesn't weigh as much as the glass, so it's a little more economic. Nope. It's a little more ergonomic. Yep. And most importantly, the two metal tins kind of form around each other when you're shaking, and the cold really constricts the metal, so the seal is really good. One of the main disadvantages of the two-tin shaker setup is that a really nice tight seal can be a bit difficult to separate, particularly for first-timers. We're going to take a second to show you how to separate, like a pro, two tins or a Boston shaker. You can see the tin is tight here, and you have a gap up here. What you want to do is hit with the flat of your hand on the big tin halfway around on either side, and it should pop right off. So besides that difficulty, it's also going to get really cold. These two tins are not insulated, and you're also going to have to use other pieces of equipment, right? This does not have a built-in shaker. There's nowhere to measure your cocktail. You'll need a separate jigger and a separate strainer to make this thing work for you. As crafting cocktails got more and more popular in the 19th century, a lot of inventors started trying to cash in on new designs for the cocktail shaker. Really only one was good enough to stick around to the modern day. In the third corner from 1884, hailing from Brooklyn, the cobbler shaker! Absolutely brilliant! So at this point we've graduated from the two-piece shaker into a three-piece design. That's the hallmark of a cobbler. You've got your large tin, small cap, plus the built-in strainer. So this design is a lot more intuitive, easier for novices to kind of wrap their heads around and to use. But let's see how it really performs. So now is kind of the hardest problem about these cobbler style shakers. They are not insulated. They get very cold, just like a two-tin setup. They get a lot of condensation, and it's kind of hard to like get this thing undone sometimes. Ideally you should be able to just twist this off and use the built-in strainer. You want to make sure you don't get separation here. When you strain it, you really need to make sure you're keeping the rest of this together. Otherwise you could just lose the whole top. A lot of people love this design. They find the cobbler easy to use. They like the fact that you have a built-in strainer. You don't have an extra piece of equipment to keep track of and to clean. But ultimately it's not favored by professional bartenders because it's a little bit slower, a little bit clunkier, and it has actually less volume. The second tin that would normally be up here would let you shake two or three drinks. This one, two's pushing it. Three is probably impossible. So good for the home bar, but not really a pro style shaker. So we're going to fast forward 150 years, present day. Companies are still trying to perfect the cobbler style shaker. They know home bartenders love them. They're trying to make them unique, make them a little bit better. So we're going to evaluate two top contenders, OXO and Elevated Craft. Next into the ring, we're going to dive into the OXO. OXO is known for their ergonomic design being high quality. And this thing is bananas on Amazon. Everyone seems to love it. So we're going to evaluate it here in a proper bar setting, tell you what we think. First thing you notice about the OXO is it's a similar size and shape to a lot of cobbler shakers. They didn't really reinvent the toolbox there. But what you quickly notice is this gasket. We already kind of complained earlier about how those cobbler style shakers can leak. This one seems like they're going to try to solve that issue by having this rubberized gasket. The other thing you notice besides this main gasket is the top has sort of a curve here. It makes it easier to grab when this thing is cold and wet compared to the old style cobbler shakers. Pops off easily. Also has a gasket, again hopefully to prevent leakage. And as soon as you take this off you notice that there is a graduated jigger built in to the top. I don't love that it only seems to go up to a, well it only advertises one and a half ounces. It's probably two to the rim. We'll do a couple tests to make sure this thing is accurate. So we just shook this up probably 20 seconds. Maybe over shook it a little bit to really test it out. It is ice cold. It's not insulated. But it is not leaking. So let's see how easy this is. Super easy. Strains out. No leaks. Strainer works well. One thing about this is it is pretty small. I mean it's easy to shake with one hand which is great. But I don't think you're going to be making three drinks at a time with this. So suffers from the same issue that most cobbler shaker do. I kind of like the OXO. It's only 20 bucks which is pretty economical. And I feel like it's definitely a step up from the traditional cobbler style shaker. Kudos to OXO. The final entry today in our shaker showdown is this beauty from Elevated Craft. This is still a on the cobbler shaker. But rather than the snap fit like the OXO, this actually has threads. So it's a screw-on design both for the main piece as well as for the top. They do have a built-in strainer. Looks great. They do have gaskets hopefully to prevent leakage. And maybe most interestingly and certainly new to this series or this set of shakers is the fact that this is insulated. It's a thicker wall, kind of like a Yeti-style drink container. This should keep things more comfortable for the bartender. Your hands shouldn't get ice cold and there should be less condensation buildup. So you should be able to keep a grip on this thing when you're shaking it. The other interesting thing about this design from Elevated Craft is that it has a jiggered top level. A lot of people were putting the jigger in here. This is too small. What you actually have to do is put the tip back on, screw it tight, and then you have one to six ounces. It does have it in milliliters but I think the drawback for this is that it's stepped from one, two, three, four, five, six ounces. There's no half ounce. There's no three-fourths ounce measure or anything. Yes. So they have a really helpful pamphlet. Diagrams out in great detail where the measurements are. At the very bottom is a quarter ounce which is up to the strainer in the lid. Above that there is a measurement for half, three quarters, one, and then it steps from one, two, three, four, five, all the way to six. I think we're good. So it's not cold. There's no condensation. Notice it's a finer strainer. It's not, the holes aren't very big so it comes out a little bit slower but it also means it's going to hold back some of the, you know, citrus juice pulp and things that are in your cocktail. The Elevated Craft is a very unique design. Very easy to use. The double-walled insulation means there's no tight feedback loop between when you're shaking the drink and how cold the cocktail is really getting. Usually you can tell by how cold your hands are. So in this case we'd recommend just making sure you're counting how long you're shaking a drink. 10 seconds is a great ballpark figure. The other thing to be aware of is this is not a fast shaker. The screw-on design is elegant. It seals well. But if you're trying to make drinks quickly that's going to be getting pretty old after the third or fourth cocktail that you're making. So this is more a statement piece. It performs really well but it's not really a professional style shaker that you would find in a craft cocktail bar. The Elevated Craft is a big step up from the basic cobbler style shaker. It is the most feature-rich shaker that we tested today and for those reasons it also commands a price point of $70. So which one of these should you buy? Let's start at the bottom. Basic cobbler. Old school. This thing is kind of a pain in the butt. Three pieces. Gets super leaky. It's hard to undo when it's ice cold. Just don't don't do that. The next one to get knocked out of the ring here, Boston Shaker. It's heavy. It's glass which is kind of terrifying. And it's also super leaky. It's just not very user-friendly. Sorry Boston. If you're looking for simplicity and just plain ease of use, OXO is probably your winner. It's 20 bucks. There's a reason it's so well reviewed. This thing just works really well. There are a few drawbacks which we talked about in the more detailed review but OXO is a great bet. The upgraded pick, Elevated Craft. This is the best cobbler of the bunch. Looks great. Insulated. Built-in jigger. A lot of features. It's pricey. 70 bucks but this is your best bet if you're looking for a statement piece for your home bar. And that leaves us with the tried and true classic. This is the winner for the pro style category of shaker. Two tens. Lightweight. Doesn't leak. Won't break. Super fast. Big enough to hold two or three cocktails with ease. It's inexpensive. It's a workhorse. There's a reason every bar uses this. You really can't go wrong with the two ten setup. We've got links to all these in the descriptions below. Check them out. Let us know which one's your favorite. If you have an alternative shaker, drop a comment below. Let us know what it is. Like and subscribe for sure. Don't forget about that. And happy shaking!