• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
Howcast

Howcast

The best source for fun, free, and useful how-to videos and guides.

  • Arts & Crafts
  • Entertainment
  • Food & Drink
  • Health
  • Home & Garden
  • Relationships
  • Explore Guides
  • Contact
  • About
  • FAQs
  • Explore Guides
  • Arts & Crafts
  • Entertainment
  • Food & Drink
  • Health & Wellness
  • Love & Relationships
  • Home & Garden
Food & DrinkBar Life & the Art of Drinking

How to Choose the Proper Cocktail Glass

Instructions

  • Step 1: Have a highball Mixed drinks like gin and tonics and Long Island iced teas go into a tall, 10- to 12-ounce, straight-sided glass known as a “highball.”
  • Step 2: Use a Collins glass Use the highball’s taller, skinnier cousin, the 14- to 16-ounce Collins glass, for weaker, juice-based cocktails like Cape Cods and screwdrivers. The reduced surface keeps drinks colder, longer.
  • TIP: Always put stronger cocktails in shorter glasses; they take up less space because they’ve got less mixer in them.
  • Step 3: Know your sour glasses Use a sour glass when serving a whiskey sour or some other drink that ends in “sour.” A shorter, slightly wider version of a champagne flute, the sour glass lends elegance to drinks with a foam head and allows the drinker to preserve the cocktail’s coldness by holding it by the stem.
  • Step 4: Be old-fashioned Serve “on-the-rocks” cocktails, which are liquor poured over ice, in an old-fashioned glass, also known as a “rocks glass.”
  • Step 5: Plot a coup Use a coupette glass, which has a broad rim for dipping into salt or anchoring a fruit garnish, when you make margaritas and daiquiris.
  • Step 6: Be prepared for Hurricanes Use Hurricane glasses – so named because they resemble Hurricane lanterns – to serve their namesake drink and any exotic, tropical concoctions.
  • Step 7: Use martini glasses Use martini glasses for martinis and any shaken, strained cocktail, like a Cosmopolitan. The conical shape helps prevent ingredients from separating.
  • FACT: The term for an abnormal or insatiable craving for alcohol is dipsomania.

You Will Need

  • A variety of glasses

Lessons in this Guide

How to Cure a Hangover with the Latest Science

How to Make a Still

How to Tap a Keg

How to Drink Four Loko Responsibly

How to Calculate Blood Alcohol Level

How to Like Beer

How to Sell Alcohol at an Event

How to Drink in Moderation

How to Drink Scotch

How to Chill Beer on the Beach

How to Build a Beer Kegerator

How to Drink like a Man

How to Choose the Proper Cocktail Glass

How to Drink Absinthe

How to Order Drinks like a Bartender

How to Avoid Getting a Hangover

How to Crush a Beer Can on Your Head

How to Quickly Eliminate Beer Foam

How to Keep Beer Cold

How to Do a Shot

How to Clean Out Your Liquor Cabinet

How to Properly Stir a Cocktail

How to Bounce a Drunk

How to Stock a Home Bar

How to Avoid Drinking When You’re the Designated Driver

How to Get Guys to Buy You Drinks

How To Become a Barfly

How to Order in a Bar

How to Get a Free Drink from a Bartender

How to Get a Drink at a Crowded Bar

How to Keep Ice Cubes Frozen Longer

How to Make a Shot Glass Out of Ice

How to Pack a Beer Cooler

How to Cure a Hangover

How to Hold Your Liquor

How to Fake Being Sober

Copyright © 2026 · Howcast · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Ventures with Springwire.ai

Privacy Manager