Best cocktail shakers

Every other question in this category is downstream of one: are you always the person shaking?

If yes, buy tins. They hold more, the thinner metal transfers heat faster so the drink chills quicker, they are faster to load and empty, and you get to choose a strainer rather than inheriting whatever is punched into a lid. Every bar in the world uses them, and not for reasons of tradition.

If somebody else shakes regularly - a partner, a guest who wants to help, anyone who has not spent a month learning a palm strike - a cobbler earns its place. One object, no separate strainer, no technique to explain. The performance gap is real and it is smaller than the gap between a guest making a drink and a guest not making one.

These are selections based on published specification, construction and what owners consistently report - not on test results, because we have not shaken with all of them. We weighted, in order:

• Whether the seal is designed or accidental. A machined taper seals and releases predictably. A boxed set's fit is luck.
• Capacity against handling. Enough room for two drinks and a full ice charge, in something you can hold at arm's length.
• Chilling. Thinner metal transfers heat faster. This is a real and underrated advantage of tins over a heavy cobbler.
• Strainer quality, where it is built in. A lid strainer that lets pulp through defeats the purpose of a cobbler.
• Edge and rim finish. The surface that decides whether a seal is still good in three years.

A shaken drink is chilled by ice moving through liquid, and the tin's job is to get out of the way. Thin stainless conducts heat quickly and has little mass of its own to cool down first, so nearly all the cold goes into the drink.

A heavy-walled cobbler has more metal to chill before the drink gets the benefit, which is part of why a cobbler shake often feels like it needs longer. It is not a large difference, and it is measurable in how quickly frost forms on the outside - which is the practical cue most people use to decide when to stop shaking.

The corollary is that chilling your tins in advance does very little for a shaken drink and quite a lot for a stirred one in a mixing glass, because a mixing glass has real thermal mass. Mixing glass vs shaker covers which drinks belong where.

A pair of tins strains nothing on its own, and the strainer you choose changes the drink more than the tin does.

If you buy one, buy a Hawthorne - it covers the shaken drinks that make up most of what people shake. If you also stir, a julep is cheap and does the job far better than balancing a Hawthorne on a mixing glass. Hawthorne vs julep strainer settles the order.

• A glass-and-tin Boston set. The classic pint-glass-plus-tin pairing looks right and breaks - the glass half is a genuine hazard when a seal sticks and somebody applies force.
• Anything with a built-in jigger cap. Universally too small, universally inaccurate, and it adds a part that can leak.
• Copper-plated interiors. Decorative plating inside a vessel that holds acidic citrus is a wear problem dressed as a feature.
• A twelve-piece boxed set. You are buying a stand and a muddler to get a shaker. Best bartender kits covers the kits that are genuinely worth it and the ones that are not.

And a note on price: past a fairly low threshold, more money in this category buys finish rather than function. A plain pair of weighted tins performs like a bar's, because it is what a bar buys.