Shot Glasses

Thirty millilitres. That's the nip most bars pour to for a single spirit, and it works out at about one standard drink for a spirit at 40 per cent alcohol. The Olympia American at 30ml is that glass.

Some venues pour a 25ml single, which is a smaller serve that keeps the price down on a round of shots, and some pour 30ml but charge for a 60ml double poured into the Boston glass. Decide the pour before you order the glasses, because the glass sets what staff and customers expect to see.

Four, all from Olympia: a 25ml, the American at 30ml, the Orleans at 40ml and the Boston at 60ml. It's a small choice by design, since a bar only needs one or two sizes and then needs them in quantity.

Most venues buy the 30ml as the everyday glass and add one other. A cocktail bar takes the 60ml Boston for doubles and mixed shooters, a restaurant takes the 25ml for a small digestif pour, and a nightclub selling rounds usually runs the 30ml on its own and buys deep.

That's what the thick base is for. A shot glass carries far more of its weight in the base than a tumbler does, which keeps it upright on a wet bar, stops it skidding when it's slid down to a customer, and lets it take being put down hard.

What actually breaks them is the wash-up and the ice well. A small glass tipped into a bus tub with cutlery on top of it chips at the rim, and using a glass to scoop ice is the fastest way to put broken glass into the ice. Keep a scoop in the well and hold everyone to it.

Not in this shape. All four sizes are glass, so for a festival bar, a pool deck, a beer garden with a glass ban or an event on grass, use the Kristallon polycarbonate tumblers instead. They don't smash and they stack, which matters when a bar has to be packed into a van at the end of the night.

Polycarbonate scratches with age and dulls in a hot drying cupboard, so treat it as something you replace every couple of years and wash it on a cooler cycle.

Only as a rough guide. These glasses are measured to the brim, and nobody fills one to the brim, so a pour by eye lands anywhere between 20ml and 35ml depending on who's behind the bar. Across a busy night that's a lot of spirit given away or a lot of short drinks.

Use a stamped jigger or a measured pourer for anything you're costing properly, and keep the glasses for serving. If a glass is being used as the measure on a quiet bar, mark the level on the outside of one glass and keep it as the reference.

In a rack with small compartments, standing upside down. A short glass sitting loose on a flat rack tips over on the first spray arm, fills with water and comes out dirty, and it knocks the glass next to it while it's doing it.

Run them through the glasswasher rather than the plate machine. A plate machine runs hotter with harsher detergent, which dulls a glass over time. Let them cool before they go back on the bar, because a hot glass filled with ice is how a glass cracks.

More than the bar needs on its busiest night, and then some. Shot glassware goes missing faster than anything else behind a bar. It ends up in bus tubs, in the kitchen holding sauces, in pockets on the way out the door and in the bin under a pile of napkins.

Packs of 12 make that easy to manage, so buy several dozen of the size you pour most and keep a sealed carton in the storeroom. REO prices on glassware are sharp, and buying the year's worth in one go costs less per glass than a dozen at a time whenever the shelf runs low.

No. They're straight sided or slightly tapered, so pushing one into another jams them together, and pulling them apart chips a rim or breaks both. It happens most often at the end of service when everything gets stacked to save a trip.

Store them upside down on a bar mat or leave them in the rack they were washed in, on a shelf where they aren't in the way of glasses that get used all night. Keep the spares in their carton until they're needed, since an open shelf of unused glasses collects dust and kitchen grease.

A rack that suits the size, a bar mat for the glasses to sit on while they drain, and an ice scoop so nobody uses a glass in the ice well. A stamped measure is worth having if the drinks are costed tightly.

The rest of the bar glasses go with them. Hi ball and rocks tumblers carry most of the drinks, and cocktail glasses covers the stemmed shapes if there's a cocktail list. Order them at the same time, since one delivery from one supplier costs less than three.