I love my Boston shaker. The metal tin and pint glass form the perfect vessel for shaking and straining drinks, especially when coupled with a Hawthorne strainer to catch loose bits of citrus or mint. When I’m traveling, however, all these components can be a bit cumbersome (not to mention being a pain to clean). Given my bartending duties at family gatherings and events lately, I need something more portable.

Enter the mason jar.

A hipster staple and a mainstay at Southern weddings, the mason jar makes a surprisingly effective shaker as well. A standard one-pint mason jar is all you need to make most single drinks, and a one-quart jar lends itself perfectly to mixing small batches. Additionally, the lid can serve as a makeshift strainer to catch ice, but admittedly, it’s not ideal for straining out bits of citrus. Still, if you’re at an event, a single jar beats hauling around a full shaker set. In a pinch, the jar can even serve as a glass, but you’ll definitely want to wash it thoroughly after using it this way.

This past weekend at Wild Goose, I knew I would be in the woods for three days with few ways to clean a shaker. With alcohol and lemon juice being natural disinfectants, I hatched a plan: I carried a mason jar for each spirit I planned on mixing— a bourbon shaker and a gin shaker. For the most part, the only things going into these shakers were spirit, citrus, and bitters, so a quick rinse with water was all I needed in between drinks. That being said, I still wiped down each shaker for drinks whenever I used simple syrup (which is itself easy to make in mason jars), and I cleaned them out at the end of each day. While I will always prefer my Boston shaker at home, the mason jar was simple and effective, so I think I have my official camp shaker!