Most people throw this away.

Today, we’re fixing chipped glasses 

and making them even better  than they were with gold.

It’s called Kintsugi, a Japanese repair technique that turns damage into the best part.

I fell in love with this as  soon as I learned about it 

at a bar show in Poland.

I knew I wanted to share it with all of you.

And you told me you wanted to learn it as well. So, here we are.

And here’s the bonus. This isn’t just beautiful.

It can save bars real money.

I reached out to bars to ask them firsthand how many glasses they throw away.

Their responses about the cost  of chipped or broken glasses 

are really eye-opening.

This technique could save them up to...

Before we learn the technique, let’s take a look back at where Kintsugi started.

It’s closely tied to wabi-sabi and the Japanese tea ceremony.

About 600 years ago in Japan,  

there was a powerful shōgun named Ashikaga Yoshimasa.

He loved art, beauty, and his favorite tea bowl that he received as a gift from China.

One day, this tea bowl broke,  so he sent it back to China, 

hoping to get it restored or even replaced with something of the same quality.

The bowl came back repaired with big metal clamps, 

basically a staple repair,  which was common at the time.

And here’s where the legend splits.

Some say he didn’t like how it looked.

Others say he actually loved  that the repair was visible, 

like the bowl now had a story.

That bowl was named Bakōhan.

It still exists today in  the Tokyo National Museum.

Back to the legend.

Yoshimasa then asked local  craftsmen for a more beautiful way 

to repair a broken bowl and highlight the cracks instead of hiding them.

So they started working with urushi lacquer, then finished it with powdered gold.

And that’s the idea behind Kintsugi.

A crack isn’t a failure. It’s part of the story. 

It’s what makes it beautiful.

Traditional Kintsugi is a real art form 

that has developed over centuries and can take months to complete.

It’s mainly used for pottery  with high sentimental value, 

but we’ll adapt that for a faster turnaround 

so you can use it for your  favorite cocktail glassware.

The goal is simple. Make it look beautiful and useful again.

As mentioned, there’s another benefit.

Here’s what our friend Gabriel, bar manager 

at Sexy Fish in Miami, has to  say about cocktail glassware.

Glassware is not just a cosmetic thing. It’s a hidden cost to it.

More about those costs later on, 

but it can affect anyone  making cocktails at home, too.

Between you and me, we’ve chipped or broken a lot of glasses in this studio.

Mixing glasses, too. Even a Chemex.

And we did what everybody does. We threw them away.

This time, we’re doing the opposite. We are sacrificing a few pieces on purpose.

Plus, I got a few chipped glasses from the bar I used to work at.

All that so we can learn the technique properly and show you how to do it.

I learned about this during a seminar at the Better Bar Show in Poland.

Alicja from Tag Cocktail Bar in Krakow 

is fixing glasses as part of a bigger environmental issue in her country.

Thank you, Alicja, for sharing your knowledge.

Before we touch tools, we  need to talk about safety.

First rule, always check your glasses before you put them in front of a guest.

This goes way beyond Kintsugi. You have to know what you’re serving is safe.

So before you serve anything  to your friends or patrons 

in glassware that’s been fixed, make sure you’re really confident  

with this technique and the end results.

Practice on test pieces and don’t forget about safety first, always.

Next, the gold.

Not every gold paint is suitable for this, so make sure you get one  

that’s okay to use with glassware and that is safe to use around food and drinks.

And when you’re working with a Kintsugi set, 

get one that uses food-safe adhesive. I’ll link one below.

OK, to fix your chipped glasses, you basically need just a few main things.

Sandpaper or a grinding set, and the gold paint with a thin brush.

The full Kintsugi set comes next with the mixing glass.

And don’t forget about protecting yourself and your working surface.

Step one is inspection. Make sure there are no cracks in the glass, 

because that could lead to a  break further down the line.

Then prep the glass by sanding the edge.

Sanding paper works fine for a few glasses and gives you a nice feel for what you’re doing.

If you’re doing a bigger number of glasses, 

you can use this handy grinding tool with multiple heads.

Go slow. Use light pressure. And keep checking your progress.

You want a soft, clean edge to work with.

So next, we clean it.

Any dust or grease will ruin the finish, so wipe it well, then make sure it’s dry.

Now, the fun part. The gold.

Use a small brush. Start with a thin layer.

Don’t rush it. Use smooth strokes. 

If you made a mistake, wipe  it off and start again.

The paint I’m using needs four hours to dry. Then we bake it in the oven.

It makes it more durable, but also waterproof, dishwasher-safe, and saliva-proof.

Once it’s done, let it cool down completely.

Now we check what we did. This is the best part.

The chip is still there, but now it’s intentional. This is what I love about it.

You’re not hiding the damage. 

You’re not throwing the glass away. You’re giving it a new purpose.

What about when something is fully broken, 

like a mixing glass or a crystal ice bucket that we broke a while ago?

Sadly, it’s too late for the ice bucket because we already threw it away, 

but here’s how we could  have fixed it with Kintsugi.

As for the mixing glass, breaking it with a hammer was a bit for show, 

but a break like this can happen quickly if you take it from a dishwasher 

and use it to make a cocktail before it fully cools down.

If it broke in several pieces, first perform a dry fit, 

making sure you have all the pieces so you can actually repair the mixing glass. 

If there’s a small piece that’s missing or has shattered, you’ll fill it in later.

Then it’s time to sand the edges. Again, you can use sanding paper 

or the grinding tool.

Wipe the edges with a damp cloth, and of course, clean your working surface.

Next, mix the adhesive and the gold dust according to the instructions in the set.

Traditional Kintsugi uses natural urushi lacquer and pure gold powder, which are both safe 

for food contact, but most modern  

Kintsugi kits use epoxy resin to simplify the process, 

and a lot of them aren’t food-safe. I’ll link a food-safe kit in the description.

After you mix this for a few minutes, it’s time to start applying the gold mixture 

on the broken edges and carefully sticking the pieces together.

This takes a bit of skill, a lot of practice, and precision. 

As you see, I’m not quite there yet either, 

but I’m trying and learning — and that’s the fun part, right?

For the best result, I would leave this to set for about eight hours, 

then trim off the excess adhesive on both sides.

This glass doesn’t hold that sentimental value, 

and for filming purposes, I’m going on with the process 

to fix the entire glass — repeating the process from before 

and applying the Kintsugi gold mixture on all of the exposed edges.

Once you have all the pieces together, you’ll need to leave this to cure and set. 

Then we can trim off some of the excess before applying the golden finish.

Traditionally, you would add another fresh and very thin coat 

of the golden Kintsugi mixture and sprinkle it with golden dust, 

but I’m using the same golden color I used for fixing the chipped edges on glasses.

This won’t come in contact with the liquid, 

so no need to cure it in the oven — but if you do, make sure to use 

a lower temperature because of the Kintsugi resin.

With that, our mixing glass is fixed and ready to be used, 

but also adored for its unique beauty.

We’ll talk about how much money that could save bars annually, 

but now that we have this beautiful glass fixed, 

it would be a shame not to use it for a golden throwback cocktail.

Start with prepping the large ice block by carefully placing an edible gold leaf on top.

Then into a chilled Kintsugi mixing glass, first add beeswax bourbon, 

followed by honey pollen cordial. I just posted detailed instructions 

on how to make both on the Cocktail Time Patreon page, linked below.

Now we add saline solution, plenty of ice, 

and stir until it’s nicely chilled and diluted.

Pour next to the ice block — and that’s it. 

24K Gold Rush, served Kintsugi style.

Now let’s get down to the numbers.

I reached out to a few bars to ask a simple question: 

How many chipped or broken glasses do you throw away, 

plus, what’s the price of those glasses?

These numbers vary depending  on the size of the bar, 

but as pointed out by Gabriel from Sexy Fish Miami, 

glassware is one of the hidden costs of running a bar.

In their cocktail bar, they can throw away anywhere 

from 24 to 36 chipped glasses in a busy week.

We also heard from Arnaud from Bar Bello in Montreal. 

On big weeks, we can break 10, 12 — so we try our best not to break all the glasses, 

but it’s part of the business.

If you hop over to Europe, Wax On, one of the best bars in Berlin, 

has an average of 10 chips or breakages per week.

Thank you to Guste for the info.

And our friends from Silk&Fizz, who helped us test tequila for cocktails, 

need to replace around 15 glasses per week in their cocktail bar in Ljubljana.

These bars said the prices of glassware can vary from $3 

up to $10 for specialty glassware, but let’s take $7 as the average.

If we take an average of 10 to 15 chips per week, 

in a month that can bring the number of glasses thrown away to around 50,

or 600 glasses per year.

That’s a yearly cost of $4,200, but a high-volume bar like the Sexy Fish 

actually spends around $18,000 on glasses each year.

And then there’s Paradiso, former number one bar in the world. 

So for Paradiso, we broke around  25 pieces of glassware every week, 

for average price of €13 each, between the rocks glass, they are less expensive, 

to some handmade, unique glasses,  made just for us at Paradiso. 

So we think we spend on broken glasses  every year around almost €20,000.

However, some bars that are already taking action to address this.

Bar Bello has a technique to save lightly chipped glasses by torching the edges, 

and in Oslo they’re all-in on Kintsugi.

Adrian Michalcik from About Contrasts Oslo 

attended the same seminar on Kintsugi, 

and with this technique they’re saving chipped glassware 

and ceramic bowls. They are on pace to save up to 240 glasses per year.

But just as importantly:

- It's not just about saving money — it’s about responsibility, 

choosing care over disposal 

and finding beauty in what already exists.

Beautifully said. And now I'm asking you:

If you run a bar, 

I’d love to hear how many glasses you throw away in a week.

And if you don’t run a bar, do you have a special glass 

that you’d never throw away?

Let me know in the comments, and I hope you learned something new today.

I’ll see you in the next one. Cheers, Friends of Cocktails.