My home bar has kind of exploded recently so I took advantage of my home bartender/boyfriend being out of town and decided to inventory and organize my spirits. I still haven’t found an app that does quite what I want, though I feel like it MUST exist. In a perfect world, I would scan the barcode on a bottle and then tell it how much is remaining in the bottle – that’s all I really need. Having recipes that use what’s in my bar would be a nice bonus.
Anyway, it’s not like I’m trying to do inventory management very 
precisely at home. But when the spirit collection starts to overflow the bar, it’s nice to see which bottles are nearly empty and need to be used up. It’s also nice to have a clear idea of what bar staples are low or out – for instance, last night I killed our bottle of Cabin Still for the sake of space management. Yeah, let’s call it that. Knowing what we have also means remembering that lovely Glenrothes from last Christmas that doesn’t get sipped nearly as often as it should.
Not every home bar enthusiast needs to be this particular. Hell, I’d go so far as to say *I* don’t need to be this particular – but once in a while I enjoy it. Plus, we have a cocktail party coming up soon and will need a clear shopping list for that. Since I couldn’t find an app that did what I wanted, I settled on my other favorite tool – Google Docs. I’ve set up a very basic spreadsheet with spirit type, name, notes, inventory date, percentage left in bottle (rough estimate), bottle size, and approximate volume. The next stage in this insane process will be cataloging the things like mixers, bitters and vermouth.
If you sort the sheet by approximate volume, you can see that when my
bartender…I mean boyfriend…gets home, he needs to find a way to use up the wee bits of Svedka (left over from a brunch party), cognac, navy strength rum, and pear liqueur. I was tempted to just pour all four in a glass and drink it, but a)three of the four ingredients deserve better and b)I had to come to work today.
I learned a few things from all this.
- One, I really like organizing stuff and making spreadsheets. (Well, I knew that already. My friends verbed my name to reference organizing by spreadsheet.)
- Two, bottle shapes and sizes are annoying.
- Three, we have a bizarre collection of liqueurs.
- Four, I’m pleased with the number of local spirits we’ve got.
- Five, for a cocktail novice, I have an enviable bar. Thanks honey!
- Six, we need a bigger bar.
- Seven, you totally want to come to our cocktail parties.
Now I need to catalog the beer cellar. See you in a few months!