Forget holding two pint glasses together to shake up your mixed drinks. This ain’t college anymore.
If you’ve got the class to entertain people at your own meticulously laid out home cocktail bar, then you’ve got the class to stock it with the right tools—and you can’t have a serious bar without a seriously reliable cocktail shaker. If your bar is a temporarily shoved-aside corner of the countertop where you usually pile dirty dishes until you get in a “cleaning mood,” you’ll appreciate a quality shaker just the same.
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Quick Look at the Best Cocktail Shakers
- Best Boston shaker – Cocktail Kingdom Koriko Tin
- Same brand, different look – Cocktail Kingdom Leopold Weighted Tin Set
- Best cobbler shaker – OXO Steel Single Wall Cocktail Shaker
- A close second – Piña Boston Shaker Tin Set
- Quality, with a thump – A Bar Above Boston Shakers Set
- Another great choice – The OXO Steel Double Wall Cocktail Shaker
- Light and tight – Barfly Soho Cocktail Shaker Tin Set
- Modernist curves – Elevated Craft Hybrid Cocktail Shaker
- For the outdoorsy – Yeti Rambler Cocktail Shaker
How we evaluated
There are two main types of cocktail shakers: Boston shakers and cobbler shakers, also known as two-piece and three-piece shakers, respectively. For Boston shakers, you’ll need to buy a strainer, too, such as Cocktail Kingdom’s Hawthorne Strainer, which I’ve used primarily for the past seven years.
Build quality matters the most—as in, could this thing survive the end of the world so that you can drink your way through the apocalypse? Tins couldn’t have sharp edges or be made so flimsily that they flexed like a 120-pound weight lifter. You can’t have portions of cocktail sloshing out of a leaky shaker as you flip it around—there needs to be a tight seal. For cobbler shakers, they couldn’t have caps that unscrewed roughly or were so stiff they’d fight you when trying to take them off, either.
Lastly, cocktail shakers can be tough to separate when you’re done shaking because their cold, iced contents cause the metal to contract. If you’ve ever seen a bartender tap a shaker against the bar before separating the tins, it’s because it’s stuck. A good cocktail shaker needs to open easily instead of clamming up.
Best Boston shaker – Cocktail Kingdom Koriko Tin
You have to buy the matching large and small tins separately, but the Koriko is what I use most often at home. These feel perfectly weighted to me. The base of one tin has a heft to it that gives the two tins, once fitted together, a balance that ensures confidence that I won’t fumble them, no matter how crazy I get with my shaking.
There’s no leakage, and separating them is easy and smooth as butter. The quality is spot-on, too. The metal sides are thick and solid, and the rim is nicely finished. There are no cuts or scrapes to worry about here.
Same brand, different look – Cocktail Kingdom Leopold Weighted Tin Set
Unlike the Koriko, this shaker comes in a set of two tins. The flared bases of the Leopolds have a bit more heft than the Korikos’, but otherwise, they function identically. The weighted base of one tin gives a solid balance for confidence while shaking. The two tins separate cleanly after shaking, and the thick, metal sides laugh off any suggestion of flimsiness.
The choice comes down to looks. Cocktail Kingdom has several product families, such as Koriko and Leopold, that span selections of mixing glasses, drinking glasses, and shakers. If you’ve bought into one family and want to keep a similar design language, go with whichever one matches your set. Or, if you like to mix and match, go nuts. Who’s going to object? A bunch of drinkers?
Best cobbler shaker – OXO Steel Single Wall Cocktail Shaker
Even kitchen-brand heavyweight OXO has its own cobbler shaker on the market. As you’d expect from OXO, which puts its wonderfully grippy rubber coating on nearly all of its behemoth catalog, the rubber-coated cap is very easy to unscrew. The cap, which doubles as a jigger (measuring cup for ingredients), has measurement marks for every ¼ fluid ounce, a nice touch that makes life easier when encountering recipes with unusual measurements.
Customers report it as being leak-proof, thanks to silicone seals. But at 24 fluid ounces, it’s somewhat big. That’s good for making a small batch of cocktails for a group of friends all at once, but not so good for folks with smaller hands.
A close second – Piña Boston Shaker Tin Set
This two-piece set of tins hits all the marks, if you ask customers: It doesn’t leak, and the tins come apart easily enough, only occasionally needing a light tap to break the seal between them. Customer reviews state that they are particularly well-weighted. So well-weighted, in fact, that they’re heavier than most of the competition.
That weight leads to sure-handed balance during shaking, which improves control. While few seem to mind the extra weight—it’s not a dumbbell, after all—it’s something to keep in mind if you have a physical condition that makes holding a pair of heavy tins difficult.
Quality, with a thump – A Bar Above Boston Shakers Set
This set comes with both large and small tins. There are mixed reports on the build quality. Overall, customers praise how solidly the tins are made, but they also report that the edges are sharp. They also say leakage isn’t a problem, although the extreme tightness of the seal between the two tins seems to be a mixed blessing, as the tins can be difficult to separate after shaking.
If the Cocktail Kingdom shakers are sold out, or if you claim to know just how to thump a glass ketchup bottle to get it unstuck, then the A Bar Above shakers are worth a look.
Another great choice – OXO Steel Double Wall Cocktail Shaker
Compared to its single-wall cousin, this double-wall cocktail shaker offers better temperature retention through its vacuum-insulated sides. The vast majority of customers reported no leaks. The cap also doubles as a jigger. It includes measurements of 1/2, 3/4, and 1 fluid ounce, which is all you need to measure out ingredients for any cocktail recipe. That omnipresent, OXO rubber on the cap is as grippy as ever, which customers say makes removing and tightening the cap a cinch.
Given the same capacity, double-wall vessels are larger and heavier than single-wall vessels. Even though it holds a modest 18 fluid ounces (still more than enough for any cocktail recipe), it’s on the larger and heavier side for a cocktail shaker.
Light and tight – Barfly Soho Cocktail Shaker Tin Set
This shaker set is a solid choice if the other Boston shaker sets on our list are sold out. These are a bit more difficult to separate than the Cocktail Kingdom shakers, customers say, although they seal well and don’t tend to leak.
Some note that they’re lighter than average, and because of that, they don’t balance quite as nicely during shaking. If you decide to go with these, you might want to tone down the theatrical cocktail shaking.
Modernist curves – Elevated Craft Hybrid Cocktail Shaker
What a gorgeous three-piece shaker. Elevated Craft pulled off a design that looks both handsomely Modernist and Art Deco. This shaker’s double-wall, vacuum insulation keeps your hands from freezing while also preventing your hands from warming up the cocktail and ice as you shake them together. It also adds a significant amount of weight. Customers rave about the complete absence of leaks and how easily the cap unscrews.
Cobbler cocktail shakers tend to have a problem with cap removal, so that’s a huge plus when it comes to making your life easier since you’ll be removing that cap once for every drink you make. The biggest sticking point is its price. It’s twice as expensive as the other cocktail shakers in this guide, so if you’re seduced by the Elevated Craft’s curves, prepare yourself to pay extra for it.
For the outdoorsy – Yeti Rambler Cocktail Shaker
If you dream of whipping up margaritas on the beach, this vacuum-insulated shaker is your unicorn. Yeti’s scratch-resistant powder coating, available in a rainbow of colors, is tough as nails. It stands up better to outdoor abuse than bare stainless steel, and the insulation means your ice won’t instantly turn to tepid water in the summer heat.
Customer reviews almost universally report that the cap is easy to remove, although it doesn’t double as a jigger (to measure ingredients), which seems like a missed opportunity. The Rambler stands out like a Range Rover among the usual limousine of cocktail tools and glasses at home. Those who embrace such flaunting of their outdoor credentials are exactly who the Rambler is meant for.
