Fine Mesh Strainer

The fine mesh strainer is a small conical sieve, usually sold as a tea strainer, and it is the difference between a drink that looks professional and one with ice shards and bits of mint floating in it. It is also the cheapest tool on the list by a wide margin.

Our picks

Buy a stainless conical tea strainer about 7 to 9cm across the mouth, with a handle and a resting hook on the opposite rim. That size spans a coupe without being unwieldy and sits on a glass if you need both hands.

The mesh should be fine and double-layered if available. A single coarse mesh catches ice but passes the fine sediment that makes a drink cloudy, which defeats the purpose.

A kitchen tea strainer from a cookware shop is the same object as a bar-branded one at a fraction of the price. There is no bar-specific technology here.

How to choose

Hold it up to the light. Fine mesh looks like fabric; coarse mesh looks like a grid. You want the first.

Check the join between mesh and frame, which is where these fail — a glued or poorly welded seam traps pulp and eventually separates. A one-piece crimped rim lasts.

Check the handle length. Too short and your fingers end up in the pour; too long and it is awkward to hold alongside a tin. Roughly the length of your palm is right.

Buy two if you make a lot of egg-white drinks. They clog, and rinsing mid-service is tedious.

How to use it

Hold it in your non-dominant hand, a few inches above the glass, and pour the shaken drink through it from the tin with the Hawthorne already in place. That is double straining: two filters, one pour.

Keep it well above the glass rather than resting on the rim, so the stream breaks and the drink aerates slightly on the way down. Resting it on the rim also risks it tipping its collected debris into the finished drink when you lift it.

Tap the rim gently against your hand — not the glass — if it clogs. Scraping the mesh with a spoon stretches it.

Rinse it immediately. Dried egg white and fruit pulp set into mesh and are genuinely difficult to remove once dry. It takes two seconds under a hot tap straight away and five minutes of poking later.

It has a second use worth knowing: straining homemade syrups and infusions. A hibiscus syrup or a steeped herb syrup passes through it cleanly, and it is finer than most kitchen sieves. For anything with real sediment, line it with a coffee filter and accept that it will take a few minutes.

What to skip

Skip large kitchen sieves — the bowl is too deep, you lose drink in it, and it will not fit over a coupe. Skip coarse mesh, which passes the sediment you are straining for.

Skip plastic-framed strainers, which stain, hold smell and warp in hot water. Skip anything with a fixed basket or a lid.

And skip double straining where it is not needed: a spirit-forward stirred drink with no fruit does not need it, and it only costs you temperature. Every extra second the drink spends in transit is a second it is warming, so the habit of double straining everything is not harmless thoroughness — it makes clean drinks slightly worse while making dirty ones much better.

Questions

What is double straining? Pouring through the Hawthorne in the tin and a fine mesh strainer at the same time, so both ice and sediment are caught.

When do I need it? Egg white, muddled fruit, herbs, crushed ice, citrus with pulp. Not for clean stirred drinks.

Can I use a tea strainer? Yes. That is exactly what it is.

How high above the glass? A few inches. Do not rest it on the rim.

Why has mine clogged permanently? Dried egg or pulp. Rinse it the moment you finish pouring.