Guide

Mixer pantry starter

Buy lime, orgeat, pineapple, and simple syrup before you collect rum styles. The bottles on the cart decide what you can actually mix.

Updated August 1, 2026 · 5 min read

Spirits are not the bottleneck

Most home bars stall on mixers, not rum. A Mai Tai dies without orgeat and lime. A Painkiller dies without pineapple, orange, and cream of coconut. A Daiquiri is rum, lime, and simple syrup, two of which live in the kitchen already if you squeeze fruit.

Shop non-alcoholic mixers here when we have a listing. Buy rum, curaçao, and Campari at a liquor store. If you want to see which recipes open from what you already own, use the pantry matcher on the recipes page.

The first grocery bag

Fresh limes (a bag, not two). A bottle of orgeat (the Torani almond orgeat in the kit is a working home-bar bottle, not a boutique 100 ml). Granulated sugar for simple syrup (1:1, shake in a jar). Canned pineapple juice for Jungle Birds and Painkillers. That set plus one rum already in the house covers more nights than a wall of syrups.

Lime juice, squeezed the day you mix.
Simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water).
Orgeat for anything in the Mai Tai family.
Pineapple juice for tall drinks and Painkillers.
Then grenadine, cinnamon syrup, or falernum syrup. Not before.

What can wait

Passion fruit, guava, and macadamia syrups are for a second shopping trip, after you know you will mix twice a month. Velvet falernum is a liquor-store bottle; non-alc falernum syrup is the mixer substitute when you do not want another liqueur.

Tools: a shaker kit and a small cutting board. You can use a kitchen knife. You cannot fake lime juice from a plastic lime forever and still like the drink.

Make syrup at home when the bottle is silly

Simple and demerara syrups are cheaper as DIY. Orgeat and falernum have a real method if you want to cook; that is a separate guide. For week one, buy the orgeat and squeeze the limes.