I was traveling last week for a conference and met up with some old friends for drinks. Most of us ordered interesting-sounding house cocktails (Lavender + Pisco!) but one friend ordered vodka and seltzer water. The crowd pounced: Vodka?! Who drinks vodka anymore?

For serious mixologists and cocktail kings and queens, Cocktail Kingdom is the dream. From high end Japanese barware to exotic and unusual bitters, this New York store (which also has an online shop) offers an impressive selection of beautiful, functional, and high-quality bartending tools and supplies. The store also carries its own line of tools and ingredients, designed by founders Don Lee and Greg Boehm:

The art of the 3-ingredient cocktail is perhaps the best way for a budding home mixologist to get into the act. We love our complicated cocktails, infused and smoked and shaken within an inch of their icy little lives, but we leave them to the bar experts; the simplest drinks are the best ones to make with a limited home liquor cabinet, especially on a casual Friday night at home. These simple drinks include such classics as the Liberté Cocktail (Lillet Blanc, gin, and orange bitters), and the Gold Rush (bourbon, lemon, and honey). What about you? What's your favorite 3-ingredient tipple? 

Talk about summer living! This bicycle has been outfitted with a custom-fit box to stash a few bar basics. The box also doubles as a table, so you can have your own outdoor cocktail hour. Just pick a park, or a field, or the side of the road! 

It's cocktail week here in the Kitchn!  Practical gal that I am, I thought I would just leap to the most important piece of information you'll need when it comes to cocktails:  the hangover cure.  I'll share mine, if you'll share yours!

Love the cool, crisp flavor of a gin and tonic during cocktail hour? Lucky for us, there's no good reason that fragrant lime flavor has to be relegated to a cocktail shaker. Why not bring it on over to the dessert side of things? 

The Gold Rush

It's Cocktail Week at The Kitchn, so we're going to be pushing nibbles and drinks on you all week, in one big happy hour. We'll have smart ideas for pitcher drinks and easy cocktails, little snacks to go with that drink (up first, savory scones!), and yes, plenty of non-alcoholic as well as alcoholic drinks that everyone can enjoy. What would you like to talk about this week? Any cocktail topics you're curious about or obsessed with at the moment? What's the best cocktail hour appetizer you've discovered lately? 

This week's 10-Minute Happy Hour is inspired purely by the long overdue dose of gorgeous weather here in the Northeast. My hubby had been outside shoveling mulch into our much-neglected gardens for about 5 hours now, so off I went in search of finding him the perfect cold drink to toast his hard day's work. A bright orange box that shouted Perfect Margarita was just too hard to pass up.

Sunshine. That's all I want right now. Bright golden sunshine — enough to justify a pair of flip flops. And if it comes in liquid form, like this seasonal brew from Sam Adams, I'll totally take it.