Jenever & shot glasses

The choice starts with the way you drink. If you want to serve jenever the way it should be, take a spouted glass or a rummer of 3.5 to 6 cl, preferably with a fill line, because a brim-full pour without a line quickly gets out of hand in a bar. If it is about spirits that go down in one go, a straight shot glass of 3 to 6 cl makes more sense: thick glass, heavy base, no stem in the way.

For liqueur that you sip, choose a small glass on a short stem of 7 to 12 cl instead. You fill that glass only halfway, so the aroma stays above the liquid, and you hold it by the stem to avoid warming the drink. Check the number per pack as well: sets of twelve are usual for hospitality, sets of four or six for at home. Anyone carrying glasses around on a tray benefits from a low, wide shape that does not tip over; anyone putting them in a display cabinet may go for the cut crystal.

Serve jenever cold but not ice cold, around ten degrees, and put the glass on the table before you fill it. That way you can go right up to the rim without spilling, and the guest takes the first sip with the glass still on the table. A young jenever can come out of the freezer, an old jenever loses its maltiness there. The combination with beer is called a kopstoot, and the rule is that you take the jenever first and the beer only afterwards.

Shots work differently. You line them up, chill the bottle in advance instead of the glass, and pour only at the moment you hand them out. Layered shots such as the B52 are poured slowly over the rounded back of a bar spoon, so the layers do not mix. Liqueur and limoncello are served at four to six centilitres after the meal, and limoncello may well come straight from the freezer.

Small glasses often go through the dishwasher and that is exactly their biggest risk. They are light, so they turn over in the rack, fill with water and knock against each other. Use a rack with compartments or a separate glass basket and place them at an angle rather than straight upside down. Heavily cut crystal, such as the shot glasses from RCR, is better washed by hand if you want to keep the shine.

Sticky liqueur and syrup dry quickly and leave a ring that is hard to remove later. So rinse the glasses straight away with warm water, even if they are only washed later on. Keep glasses with a gold rim, such as the Timeless models from Pasabahce, out of the dishwasher, because the rim visibly wears there. Store these small glasses upright and without pushing them into each other.

If you are specifically after little glasses for spirits in one go, they are gathered under shot glasses. For the slightly larger stemmed glasses, look at the liqueur glasses, and for the narrow glasses that hold ice-cold limoncello, at the limoncello glasses. If you want to taste rather than drink, the tasting glasses are more suitable, because they capture the aroma better. And if you pour to measure behind a bar, a jigger belongs with it, because it measures more precisely than a glass with a line. Still unsure about the capacity? The questions below answer that.